‘Rogue One’: Is This the Opening Crawl It Needed?

Rogue One was the first live-action Star Wars film not to feature an opening crawl, with the filmmakers noting that the movie itself draws inspiration from the crawl to the original 1977 Star Wars.

But after viewing Rogue One, one fan felt inspired to create his own, spending about an hour after his Thursday night screening to craft the words and then using an online tool to put it all together. Here’s the text (and you can watch the finished product above):

The Jedi are all but extinct, the Republic has fallen and in their wake, the Galactic Empire has engulfed the far reaches of the galaxy in fear. Persecuted members of the Old Republic have been thrust into hiding. Only members of the REBEL ALLIANCE dare take a stand against the ruthless Imperial forces. Deep in the Outer Rim territories, the dastardly Director Krennic has discovered the location of a long lost friend; one capable of completing the Empire’s most powerful weapon yet…

“When I was formulating the crawl, I needed it to do two things. It was important for it to conform to the pulpy style and language of the series, and it needed to contextualize the action we were about to see,” says Andrew Shackley, who created the crawl and posted it to Reddit, where it got some traction.

Though Shackley, a writer and reporter based out of northern Los Angeles County, says the presence of a crawl doesn’t make or break the movie for him, he notes the crawl makes a Star Wars film feel like a Star Wars film.

“If any film in the new Star Wars canon needed a crawl just to let people know where we are in time in this universe, it was Rogue One. At the very least, I feel these words give added weight to the opening prologue of the film.”

Shackley is in good company. Dan Perri, who worked on the 1977 crawl, feels the same way.

Source: hollywoodreporter.com