‘Star Wars’ Opening Crawl Creator Insists ‘Rogue One’ Omission Was A ‘Huge Mistake’: Here’s How Fans Are Responding


Rogue One has now blasted into cinemas to the tune of $388.1 million in just one week, a total that’s expected to rise exponentially over the holiday season. It’s also been met with stunning reviews, amassing a score of 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and fans seem to be ecstatic with the results.

However, there was one omission to Rogue One that left Star Wars fans furious: its lack of an opening crawl. Most furious was Dan Perri, the movie title designer who actually created the original opening crawl for Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope back in 1977.

[Image via Lucasfilm]

Dan Perri was rather furious with the decision not to include an opening crawl in Rogue One, according to Heat Vision (via the Hollywood Reporter).

“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.”

Fans have known for quite a while now that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story wouldn’t feature an opening crawl. This admission was made by director Gareth Edwards to Entertainment Tonight back in July, as he explained that since Rogue One was its own standalone film, they wanted to try and differentiate it from the Skywalker saga.

Gareth Edwards noted, “The idea is this film is supposed to be different than the saga films…the whole crawl of it all — it’s funny people are fascinated on that… This film is born out of a crawl. The thing that inspired this movie was a crawl and what was written in that. There’s this feeling that if we did a crawl, then it’ll create another movie. And so the honest answer is you’ll have to wait and see.”

Of course, Rogue One’s genesis is because of a single line from A New Hope’s opening crawl, which read, “During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.”

John Knoll, who was the visual effects supervisor on the Star Wars prequel trilogy, actually pitched the idea that manifested into Rogue One in the early 2000s.

However, the project only got into full development when Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012. This provoked John Knoll to pitch the film again, and before long Gary Whitta was writing its script, which was then added to by Chris Weitz.

The omission of an opening crawl in Rogue One has now provoked many fans to intervene on the film’s behalf and create their own versions. This trend, which has quickly developed online, was started by Andrew Shackley, who after using GitHub to create his own Rogue One opening crawl, took to Reddit to share it.

[Image by 20th Century Fox]

Andrew Shackley’s opening crawl reads, “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…”

Andrew Shackley was even quizzed by the Hollywood Reporter as to why he felt the need to create the crawl.

And he had a pretty good reason, too, as he explained, “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.”

Andrew Shackley has kick-started quite a trend, too, because different versions of the opening crawl have since been popping up online across YouTube.

[Featured Image by Lucasfilm]

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