The Sequel Trilogy is the Peter Principle in Action
An object lesson in knowing your limits
When it was announced in 2012 that George Lucas was stepping aside from all things Star Wars and selling the franchise to Disney, many fans were enthusiastic. To put it lightly, the Prequels were not very good. With the sale, Lucas would no longer be directly involved in making Star Wars. Instead, he hand-picked a capable steward to help Lucasfilm move forward.
Kathleen Kennedy had a long track record as a movie producer, working closely with Steven Spielberg through their jointly owned Amblin Entertainment (along with her husband Frank Marshall). Her filmography is basically a who’s who of 80’s and 90’s movies: E.T., Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, The Goonies, Gremlins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Schindlers List, Jurassic Park, and The Sixth Sense, to name a few. All told she’d had a hand in over 60 films before taking the Lucasfilm gig. She knew how to get movies made.
It seemed like a perfect match of talent and opportunity. Not only was Star Wars back, the woman at the helm was one of the all-time great producers.
It turns out, however, that there is a world of difference between a producer and a creative. Expecting one to be the other is a recipe for disaster.
The Peter Principle is a theory of management developed by Laurence J. Peter which posits that people tend to rise to their “level of incompetence”. It explains why there are so many terrible managers — they were promoted based on success in previous roles, until one day they reached a level where their skills no longer transferred.
With the promotion to the head of Lucasfilm, Kennedy found her level of incompetence. And the new Star Wars films suffered as a result.
This is not to suggest the films released under her leadership are bad films. But they all demonstrate a lack of imagination. The Disney-era films all occur during the same 40-year window as all the other films, despite literally millennia in which to play. And they largely concern the same old characters — if Solo hadn’t under performed, we probably would’ve gotten Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Boba Fett spin-offs — to the detriment of the Sequel Trilogy (cough Palpatine cough).
Up until 2012, Kennedy had worked with the sort of directors (Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Robert Zemeckis, etc.) that took on the heavy-lifting of story, leaving her to see to the film’s logistical concerns — managing budgets, putting out fires, negotiating with agents, etc. But as the head of Lucasfilm, she was now the one making story decisions, and was clearly out of her depth.
Nowhere was this more clear than on the Sequel Trilogy. Each entry was largely made in a vacuum, with little concern for what came before or after, and no overarching plan. Kennedy tried to outsource what should be one of her core competencies as Lucasfilm president by relying on the directors to build her a trilogy piecemeal and retroactively. She abdicated her responsibilities to the story and Star Wars as a whole, to predictable results.
Say what you will about the Prequels, but at least they told a unified story.
One need look no further than Lucasfilm’s sibling Marvel Studios to see the benefit of a studio head whose first responsibility is to story. Kevin Feige weaved a 23-movie narrative out of disparate elements, genres, and themes by planning for it. He looked ahead, figured out where he wanted to go, and brought in directors to make the movies, while still giving them broad leeway. It’s the model Kennedy could’ve followed, if she’d had a plan.
In a funny bit of irony, Disney recently rewarded Feige by letting him play in Kennedy’s sandbox.
From all the rumors floating around about Kennedy’s job, it seems like the writing is on the wall. Star Wars is simply too important to leave in the hands of a bean counter. Even one as talented as Kennedy.
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