The problems with Disney Star Wars start and stop with Kathleen Kennedy. By her own admission, she isn't a Star Wars fan (who knew, eh?
), but she is a political ideologue hellbent on inserting her particular views and opinions into a franchise which has hitherto, quite rightly, been politically neutral. George Lucas may be Left-wing politically, but he wisely made Star Wars for everyone. That makes for not only good entertainment, but good business sense too.
I'll say this much for KK, she must be one hell of a good actress to fool poor old George all those years such that he actually thought his company would be safe in her vandalising hands! Nothing could be further from the truth of course, and once in charge under Disney's ownership, she immediately set about transforming Star Wars into an identity political, steaming pile of woke garbage, devoid of originality, good writing and storytelling, that utterly disrespected the established canon / lore, the franchise as a whole (shitcanning the EU anyone?), the characters (killing Han and leaving Luke all but out of TFA, not reuniting Luke, Han and Leia on screen, character assassinating Luke Skywalker and then actually assassinating Luke Skywalker in the simply inexcusably execrable TLJ, 'Retiring' the character of Princess Leia as Jabba's Prisoner... The list goes on and on).
KK also publicly trumpeted that 'The Force is Female' ('The Force is F*cked' would have been more accurate; Star Wars is and always has been for anyone and everyone that likes it, be they male, female, young, old, black, white or anything else. It wasn't previously NOT for females, so why try to deliberately feminise it now?), and set about hiring politically similar female non-fans into Lucasfilm, and then set them loose via the Lucasfilm Story Group and tasked them, not with pleasing the fans, but with pleasing themselves. And they did this across all licences under Lucasfilm's control; Willow is dead, Star Wars is on life support and Indiana Jones is being led into the slaughterhouse even as we speak.
With hindsight, the fact that 'Rogue One' turned out to be good can only have been more by luck than judgement, especially since by all accounts it was very much saved in the edit. At the time we neither noticed nor cared that the casting was deliberately ultra-woke with the only white males in the entire film being villains (naturally), because the story was great and it actually looked and felt like Star Wars. However, whoever it was that cared enough as a Star Wars fan to save that film was presumably sadly let go, or at any rate was either nowhere near or not able to repeat the feat with subsequent films, and hence the care disappeared, but the wokeness remained strongly in Force (pun intended).
'The Mandalorian' seems to have slipped under KK's radar since she had her hands full making Rey the BESTEST EVARRR in the sequel trilogy at the time, and hence Jon Favreau (a true Star Wars fan) was able to create something enjoyable, albeit on a smaller scale. The fans liked it, and hence so did Iger, who effectively gave Jon a large amount of control over his show, which is why KK wasn't able to wreck season 2 immediately. However, the hugely successful return of Luke Skywalker at the end of season 2 riled KK quite gargantuanly, such that she searched for a way to scupper Favreau's plans, and successfully found it when she grotesquely unjustly fired Gina Carano quite literally for no good reason, lying about her and libelling her in the process!
By all accounts KK then tried her best to undermine 'The Book of Boba Fett', and had far greater creative control over the simply appalling 'Obi-Wan Kenobi'. With those two duds having disappointed fans (TBOBF had its moments - especially the 2 Mandalorian episodes crowbarred into it by Favreau to try to salvage something from the train wreck made of his work by KK and Robert Rodriguez - but was otherwise not really very good), few were prepared to give 'Andor' a chance, which is of course a shame as it's actually very good. And hence, given all that, combined with the 2-year gap between seasons 2 and 3, and with Disney clearly insisting Grogu be returned to the show for purely merchandising reasons, and especially with the thoroughly nasty taste of Gina Carano's firing still fresh in everyone's mouths, is it any wonder Mando season 3 has lost a ton of viewers?
In short, KK is quite extraordinarily talentless and incompetent at her job, losing or costing Disney billions of dollars in lost revenue and production overruns on virtually every project she has touched (don't even get me started on the Hindenberg-in-waiting of 'The Acolyte'). Her non-Midas touch is legendary, yet her status as a famous and supposedly successful female Hollywood producer has shielded her for years from cries that the Empress isn't wearing any clothes. Just about the only thing her titanic ego has made her good at is self-inserting into every film project she's overseen; a petite, white, brunette female, albeit an English one (presumably she either wants to be English or likes them more / thinks they're more sophisticated than American actresses; Daisy Ridley, Felicity Jones, Emilia Clarke and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in the upcoming looks-like-it's-going-to-be-supercrap 'Indy 5').
She is a complete and utter disaster for Disney, and whilst Disney as a whole has lurched to the left politically thanks to Bob Iger's appointments and hires under his previous reign as CEO, Lucasfilm has been especially guilty of not giving the long-suffering fans what they actually want. Marvel had a good run before Phase Bore of the M-She-U, Pixar and Disney Animation have previously made a string of classics prior to their dreadful and money-haemorrhaging woke fayre of recent years, yet Star Wars is still firmly in the red from its $4 billion purchase.
Until Kennedy gets the boot, I can't see anything changing.
