January 3, 2024

I’VE GOT A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS: New Jedi Order Director Gives Super Woke Film Update.

[Sharmeen] Obaid-Chinoy of “Ms. Marvel” fame just suggested the first “Star Wars” film since 2019’s “Rise of Skywalker” may actually start production soon. “Soon” is subjective, of course. As of November, Ridley had yet to read a finished script of the film, to be penned by “Peaky Blinders” alum Stephen Knight.

The director teased the project during a New Year’s Eve interview on the far-Left CNN.

“I’m very thrilled about the project because I feel what we’re about to create is something very special. And we’re in 2024 now, and it’s about time that we had a woman come forward to shape a story in a galaxy far, far away.”

CNN did its part to push the director’s Identity Politics bona fides, describing Obaid-Chinoy as the first woman and first person of color to direct a “Star Wars” film.

That’s CNN being CNN, which ignored female directors like Bryce Dallas Howard and Deborah Chow. Both have directed episodes of small-screen “Star Wars” projects.

Still, Obaid-Chinoy is reading from the dog-eared playbook that has sent Disney’s fortunes into a tailspin.

She’s also flat-out wrong.

Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia played an outsized role in the first three “Star Wars” films. More recently, actress Felicity Jones headlined “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” and small-screen “Star Wars” projects include “Ahsoka,” led by Rosario Dawson, and other strong female heroes (Gina Carano’s Cara Dune).

The director’s quote recalls Jennifer Lawrence lamenting the dearth of female action heroes while ignoring pioneers like Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Princess Leia and Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton).

Not to mention:

It’s “about time that we had a woman come forward to shape a story in a galaxy far, far away?” Really? Did Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy miss the part where Kathleen Kennedy has been in control of Star Wars for the last decade? Maybe I’m confused, but I’m pretty sure she’s a woman.

I’m also pretty sure that before Disney bought and castrated Lucasfilm, “Empire Strikes Back,” the best piece of Star Wars property in history, was co-written by a woman. You know what Leigh Brackett, the writer in question, didn’t care about? She didn’t care about what sex she was as she penned one of the greatest films of all time. She was out to write a good story, and she did just that. I’d say that counts as a woman shaping a story in a galaxy far, far away.

And then there’s the very genesis of the franchise:

How instrumental was Marcia Lucas in making the original Star Wars a massive hit? This influential: The ‘secret weapon’ behind Star Wars.

She was really the warmth and the heart of those films, a good person [George] could talk to, bounce ideas off of, who would tell him when he was wrong,” Mark Hamill said in a 2005 interview with Film Freak Central.

“I know for a fact that Marcia Lucas was responsible for convincing him to keep that little ‘kiss for luck’ before Carrie [Fisher] and I swing across the chasm in the first film: ‘Oh, I don’t like it, people laugh in the previews,’ and she said, ‘George, they’re laughing because it’s so sweet and unexpected’ — and her influence was such that if she wanted to keep it, it was in.

“When the little mouse robot comes up when Harrison and I are delivering Chewbacca to the prison and he roars at it and it screams, sort of, and runs away, George wanted to cut that and Marcia insisted that he keep it.”

Marcia was also responsible for arguably the most iconic sequence of the film: the trench run. According to Kaminski, the original run was scripted entirely differently, with Luke having two runs at the exhaust port.

“Marcia had reordered the shots almost from the ground up, trying to build tension lacking in the original scripted sequence, which was why this one was the most complicated (Deleted Magic has a faithful reproduction of the original assembly, which is surprisingly unsatisfying),” Kaminski writes.

“She warned George, ‘If the audience doesn’t cheer when Han Solo comes in at the last second in the Millennium Falcon to help Luke when he’s being chased by Darth Vader, the picture doesn’t work.’”

Additionally, Marcia Lucas significantly ratcheted up the tension in the final act in other ways: “Star Wars‘ initial edit did not have the Death Star approaching Yavin 4. Using voiceover and Death Star gunner footage stolen from the previous destruction sequence of Alderaan, Marcia Lucas created a ticking clock for the final battle. Originally, the only danger belonged to the X-Wing pilots and the Death Star denizens. Marcia Lucas removed the threat-exclusivity from the battlefield and placed a target on those good Rebels not yet in the fight. If Luke Skywalker doesn’t hit his target, millions more will die shortly after.”

Why are Disney cronies airbrushing Marcia Lucas out of history?

Posted at 10:35 am by Ed Driscoll