I am not Lord and Miller's [
imdb.com] biggest fan, but at least they do things differently. The Lego Movie seemed scatterbrained at times, but it had some really funny moments along with biting satire and the ending was wonderful. 21JS had some plot twists and gags that elevated it slightly above the typical U.S. comedy.
Evidently a lot of their clashing with Kathleen Kennedy was their more improvisational style and they were not changing the camera angles as much the studios had expected. Lawrence Kasdan was not in their corner because after they did a few takes using his script, they would start having the actors improvise. The Hollywood Reporter has a good update on the behind the scenes drama [
hollywoodreporter.com]. Anonymous sources say that much of the Lord and Miller footage will be "very usable."
I think the bigger problem is that the Star Wars franchise is getting a reputation as a place where young talented directors go to
not be able to put their own spin on things. Maybe this will change after the first new trilogy finishes up, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe (even though they let a few directors go during pre-production) allows the directors a bit more room for creativity and doesn't have constant
emergency reshoots. Here is a short history on directors' battles with studios for some historical perspective [
hollywoodreporter.com].
Some fans refer to the new Star Wars movies as big-budget fanfilms. I don't know if things would be different if they at least partially used George Lucas' story treatments (which are much better than his scripts). Looking at the writing credits for the recent SW films and I get the sense that Kathleen Kennedy is playing it way too safe by using writers that are now more producers and haven't written many great films in recent years. We will find out in 2018, but I wouldn't be surprised if Lawrence Kasdan is passed his prime (and using nepotism to help his son's career), but Ms. Kennedy decided to use his name just to garner Star Wars fans support for the project - which in some ways is riskier than Rogue One due to recasting Han Solo. Hopefully it turns out well, but I would like Star Wars to be more original than it has been recently.