Listen, we know you’re probably sick of Star Wars news. That’s fine. After today (and the coming days for a little while), we expect the hype to die down a little bit. But Lucasfilm master Jedi Kathleen Kennedy? Totally not sick of Star Wars. I mean, you don’t rise to the rank of master Jedi only to get sick of the Force, do you?
On the carpet for The Force Awakens‘ LA premiere on Monday, Kennedy was asked about how she plans to curb Star Wars from becoming “too much.” She said:
I think, the plan is to tell interesting, diverse, standalone stories. So we’re not necessarily just trying to feed a pipeline of ongoing similar stories. If the movies really stand on their own, and the fans are attracted to the stories that we come up with inside the universe, fantastic.
If it starts to feel like one is corrupting the other, then we’ll back off. But right now, we’re pretty excited about what we’re developing.
Sure, she’s expected to be excited about what’s coming down the pipeline. But given the early buzz around The Force Awakens, I think her excitement’s totally justified.
Oh, there’s more! Kennedy also spoke about Princess General Leia and how important it was to have characters like her in such high-visibility films. When she was asked about what it means to her to be able to bring that kind of character to women today, she said:
It feels great. I have two daughters, two teenage daughters. The fact that they have such a strong female character and role model inside this movie to relate to and little girls are going to have the same thing, I think the diversity inside the movie more reflects the audience.
On the other hand, I want to hand it to George, because he did have Princess Leia, very cutting edge character at the time. He had a diverse cast. So that was really the springboard for wanting to continue that.
Soak it in, folks. We live in a future with a (hopefully) great new Star Wars movie with a female Lucasfilm president who totally gets how important it is to have characters like General Leia in the world.
It brings a tear to my once-cynical eye.
(via Comic Book Resources, image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore)
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