Kathleen Kennedy Says Star Wars Has No Need to Cater to Male Fans

Both Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story actress Felicity Jones are not letting the vocal minority of Star Wars fans griping about female leads get to them, The New York Times reports. Jones, who plays the lead Jyn Erso in the upcoming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is mostly excited to be playing a strong, relateable character. "It's hard to find an indie that has a good female lead. It's hard to find anything," she says.

Jones went on to say that she "wanted the audience to relate to Jyn as a person." She said, "Like all of us, she's just trying to figure out what the hell to do." Gareth Edwards, the director of the movie, had nothing but praise for Jones. "The cool thing about Felicity is she's not an actor, she's a person," he said. "And there are a lot of people out there that are actors first and people second."

Edwards said that he throught in many ways Jyn's story in Rogue One was a delibetate reversal of Luke Skywalker's in A New Hope. "A New Hope is a story about a boy who grows up in a tranquil home and dreams of joining the war. What if we have the story of a girl who grows up in a war and dreams of returning to the tranquility of home?"

Edwards states that with Jones he wasn't looking for "an action hero in the classic sense- the cliched expectation of soldier or rebel." He said, "You can teach anyone to fight with enough stunt training. But you can't teach someone to have that soul in their eyes. When you point the camera at Felicity, there's so much going on inside."

Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy also spoke on the "controversy" about female leads in Star Wars, stating "I have a responsibility to the company I work with. I don't feel like I have the responsibility to cater in some way. I would never just seize on saying "Well, this is a franchise that primarily appealed to men for many, many years and therefore I own men something".

The hubbub about Star Wars daring to have female leads is ridiculous in my opinion, so I'm glad to hear Jones and Kennedy aren't taking it to heart. Women have also beena part of the Star Wars fandom since the beginning, whatever some people say. I look forward to discovering who Jyn Erso is along with everyone else when Rogue One comes out and I have every confidence she'll be a good character. What do you think? Any Felicity Jones fans in the house?

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