Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

A few weeks ago, online rumors erupted that Kathleen Kennedy was stepping back from her longtime role as the head of Disney's Star Wars franchise.

Though the rumors were false, they were enough to incite a social media flurry,

analyzing the state of our art and our entertainment and our culture. Now, Kennedy's time at the

helm of that galaxy far, far away, has been controversial. The Mandalorian and Andor were hits,

but most of the other offerings and ideas during her tenure did not go over nearly as well. That was especially true when

quote-unquote woke storylines were confused with good storytelling. For example, the creators of

the acolyte bragged that the series would be the most gay in the Star Wars franchise. It was

pulled after just one season for low viewership. Even so, at least according to

Pastor and Lutheran satirist Hans Fien, it wasn't just the wotness that was the problem.

In a recent article, he wrote, and I quote, the failure of modern Star Wars was not just a

Kathleen Kennedy problem. It was a cultural problem. We do not want our heroes to be more righteous than we are,

end quote. Our superheroes certainly have been downgraded over the years, and more than just from

being superhuman to enhanced human. Remember in the Toby McGuire movies, Spider-Man was an earnest

hero who could identify the enemy and understood his role in the fight. Even in the darker

themed Batman movies that struggled with deeper questions of meaning and revenge and morality and

justice, Christian Bale was still clear that there were bad guys and they needed killing. Today's

Marvel movies feature quippy heroes who don't take much of anything seriously, but, you know, they still do end up

on the right side of Thanos. Those stories stand in sharp contrast with others that fully

blur the lines of good and evil, hero and villain. In the movie Malefica, the bad queen is

working through her trauma of not being invited to Sleeping Beauty's christening. In Wicked,

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