It’s price stating, nevertheless, that the mass-politicization of on-line fandom basically in a post-Twitter, post-Joe Rogan world has been trending within the path of performative outrage for years—-i.e. it’s maybe inevitable nowadays that Marvel followers who grew up loving Anthony Mackie in Captain America: The Winter Soldier 11 years in the past are actually serving to form opinions with 45 minutes about him starring in Courageous New World is outrageous, really.
Kennedy walked into this area with eyes extensive open to run a manufacturing unit in an period the place “franchises” weren’t meant to be nurtured and guarded, however exploited and strip-mined. Nonetheless, even inside these confines, she produced a number of good Star Wars films and at the very least one terrific tv collection in Andor, which took extra dangers with its IP than nearly anything being produced beneath the Marvel umbrella, or amongst opponents who’ve equally tried to make superhero films or Lord of the Rings shared universe expansions.
And, once more, Kennedy has loved a outstanding profession properly earlier than that contentious galaxy far, far-off.
A California lifer, Kennedy wasn’t even 25 when she acquired her foot within the door as an assistant for John Milius, the director of movies like The Wind and the Lion (1975), the man who considered giving Quint that iconic speech in Jaws, and in addition the chief producer of Steven Spielberg’s 1941. That epic comedy could be one among Spielberg’s few missteps, however on the manufacturing he observed Kennedy’s capability to pitch nice concepts regardless of nominally being a secretary. He rapidly would make her his affiliate on Raiders of the Misplaced Ark. By the point the sequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom got here round three years later, she was a junior producer on the film.
Within the interim, she helped co-found Spielberg’s manufacturing firm Amblin Leisure, which led to her govt producing Nineteen Eighties favorites like The Goonies, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and the Again to the Future trilogy. She additionally would turn out to be one among Spielberg’s most trusted private producers on movies that embrace Empire of the Solar, Jurassic Park, and Munich. She likewise labored exterior of Spielberg’s orbit within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s as a producer on movies that run the gamut from Tornado and The Sixth Sense to Seabiscuit and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
The rationale Kennedy acquired the Lucasfilm gig after the Disney buy is she had a historical past of arising in the identical Hollywood the place filmmakers like Lucas and Spielberg made these cultural touchstones Disney so eagerly builds on. She was there on the laying of the foundations within the case of manufacturing two-thirds of the unique Indiana Jones flicks. She earned her place in movie historical past for being a sensible, resourceful filmmaker who contributed to films that weren’t solely commercially viable, however in lots of situations constructed to final as classics by way of the a long time that adopted.
