Two-Minute ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Opening Crawl Leaked Online? [Spoilers]


Star Wars fans long wait for the much-anticipated seventh installment in its almost 40-years of life as a franchise, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is almost over. This coming Thursday, December 17 is the release date for first of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, as reported by IMDb.

If you are attempting to remain spoiler-free for the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, please, don’t read any further.

The following video purports to show an opening two-minute scroll from the new film. However, there are reasons to doubt its legitimacy; including spelling and grammatical errors. It will probably be Thursday before we know for sure.

The video begins with the Star Wars theme played over the top of the Disney opening production credits. The Lucasfilm logo is shown on a black background, and “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” appears.

Then, over a field of stars, the Star Wars logo appears, fading from large to small and the scroll begins.

“Episode VII”

“THE FORCE AWAKENS”

“Years have past since the fall of the Galactic Empire and many enjoyed a time of hope for the restored Republic. The last of the Imperial loyalists have since been long pushed back to the Outer Rim territories.”

“But chased across the galaxy by the Republic, the last remnants of the Galactic Empire have started to rejoin as the First Order.”

Note that in the first line “past” is misspelled and that there is a syntax error with “Imperial loyalists have since been long pushed,” which probably suggests that this is a fake. This crawl is much shorter than past Star Wars crawls have been too, as reported by the Star Wars Wikia.

Leaked opening two minutes from 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'?
Fans camp-out for tickets in anticipation of Thursday’s release of the latest Star Wars film. [Photo by David McNew/Getty Images]
Most previous Star Wars crawls also introduced specific characters; the crawl in the above video does not mention any characters by name. Audiences were greeted with the name Princess Leia, for example, in the 1977 crawl beginning A New Hope, and at that point, no one had any idea who she was.

Sasha Wood with iO Trendz discusses the purported Star Wars: The Force Awakes leak footage.

“Maybe this is just a draft,” Sasha Wood speculated with regard to the leaked Star Wars footage. “Still, this crawl is breaking the Internet.”

The end of the supposed Force Awakens footage contains scenes that are available in officially released trailers, as well as Jar Jar Binks saying “exsqueeze me.” Kathleen Kennedy, the producer of The Force Awakens, has definitively confirmed that Jar Jar Binks is not in the film, according to the Guardian, which casts an even longer shadow on the supposedly leaked footage. Fans were reportedly uploading Jar Jar Binks-filled videos to YouTube as a joke and the purported leaked Star War: The Force Awakens footage may simply be more of that.

Leak of 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' footage?
A promotional poster for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is visible behind a man working to prepare Hollywood Boulevard for the premiere on Thursday. [Photo by David McNew/Getty Images]
In other Star Wars spoiler news, a photo of an action figure of the character only known as Rey, featuring a lightsaber, confirming that she is Jedi and has joined the Rebel movement, was posted online. A writer with Star Wars Action News found one of the Rey dolls at his local Walmart. So impressed with his find, he took photos and posted them on the website.

The photos were quickly shared, and people who did not want to learn that Rey had a lightsaber had part of the plot unintentionally spoiled. Several fans were said to denounce the move, not wanting to be given information about the The Force Awakens until after seeing the movie. Some fan sites are imposing no-spoiler-talk rules until January 1, 2016, reports the International Business Times.

'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' hits theaters on Thursday, December 17.
Hollywood Boulevard prepares for the launch of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. [Photo by David McNew/Getty Images]
The website and social media users who shared the photos were said to be served with Digital Millennium Copyright Act take-down notices from Lucasfilm and the original posts have since been taken down. It may be telling that YouTube has allowed the supposed leaked Star Wars: The Force Awakens footage to stay up, since, almost certainly, Lucasfilm would have demanded it be taken down if it were genuine.

[Photo by David McNew/Getty Images]

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