The opening text crawl, a staple of all seven Star Wars films since the original film hit theaters back in 1977, was infamously omitted from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. In fact, the opening crawl, a nod to the old Flash Gordon serials of George Lucas’ youth, isn’t going to be a part of any of the so-called anthology films from now on, as a way of differentiating them from what they’re now calling the “saga” films (basically, the ones that revolve around the Skywalker lineage.)
There is at least one person who isn’t happy about the removal of the opening text crawl: title designer Dan Perri, the man who spent months creating Star Wars‘ iconic opening crawl for A New Hope, back when it was simply called Star Wars (the A New Hope addition wouldn’t come until the first re-release.) In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter (via Vulture), Perri threw a bit of shade at Lucasfilm for removing the text crawl from Rogue One‘s opening sequence, saying, “Frankly, it is a huge mistake, because the image is so iconic and it’s so important to tens of millions, hundreds of millions of fans. I couldn’t imagine it starting without that. It’s foolish.” Ouch.
Although he states that the opening crawl is vitally import to millions of Star Wars fans, in the interview it doesn’t seem that Perri himself could ever be considered one of those die hards. Perri claims that he hasn’t seen a single Star Wars film since the original in 1977. “There are too many things to do and there are too many films out there to see,” he said. When he spoke of his work on the original film, he added, “I had no idea what he was doing, so it was just this stupid space film. I didn’t think anything of it.” So while he might not like the lack of crawl for Rogue One, it doesn’t sound like he was planning on checking out the movie either way.
What did you think of the lack of a text crawl for Rogue One? Did it throw you, or did you just adjust? Let us know down in the comments below.
Images: Lucasfilm
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