Star Wars opening crawl

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An example of the famous Star Wars roll-up. This one is from The Empire Strikes Back.

A comparison of how the opening for A New Hope has been altered to include 'Episode IV'.

The Star Wars opening crawl is the famous opening to Star Wars.

Each of the six Star Wars films begins with nearly identical openings, in which the text "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." is displayed, followed by the Star Wars logo over a field of stars against a black background. A subsequent slow zoom-out reveals the film's episode number and subtitle (in all-capital letters), followed by a three-paragraph summary of the events which describes the situation immediately prior to the events of the film. Some words or names are in all-capital letters to stress their importance to the story (such as "DEATH STAR" in A New Hope, "GALACTIC EMPIRE" in Return of the Jedi, and "ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC" in Attack of the Clones). There are no words emphasized by all-caps in any of the odd-numbered movies. The text is in simple, yellow, sans-serif type, and it is pitched at a sharp angle. The text scrolls upward into the distance, toward a horizon located just below the top of the screen. In a trademark of the film series, each title crawl ends with a four-dot ellipsis except for Episode VI which ends with a three-dot ellipsis.

Two typefaces were used in the crawl: News Gothic bold for the main body of the crawl and Episode number, and Univers light ultra condensed for the title of the film.

Recent editions of Apple Computer's iMovie software feature a similar title effect called "Far, Far Away" in reference to Star Wars. Recent Editions of Windows Movie Maker also include a text effect in reference to Star Wars.

The roll-up (alternatively called the "crawl") is a homage to Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s and 1940s, which Star Wars creator George Lucas enjoyed as a child.^[1] It is also for this reason that many of the subtitles of the six films have a "pulpy" sound to them or are reminiscent of the Gordon serials.

In the widescreen (or letterbox) versions of the Star Wars films, each line of the opening crawl text appears directly in its entirety from the bottom of the screen. In the fullscreen (or pan and scan) versions, the sides of each line of opening crawl text are visible only after that line reaches the center of the screen.

Though each crawl is roughly similar, the individual films contain some differences in their presentation. For instance, in Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the camera angle tilts upwards after the text finishes, rather than downwards as seen in all of the five other films.

1 Origin
2 Parodies
3 Episode IV Opening Crawl
4 Notes and references
5 External links

[edit] Origin

George Lucas in an interview in 2005 described how the final phrasing of the roll-up in Star Wars came about. "The crawl is such a hard thing because you have to be careful that you're not using too many words that people don't understand. It's like a poem. I showed the very first crawl to a bunch of friends of mine in the 1970s. It went on for six paragraphs with four sentences each. Brian De Palma was there, and he threw his hands up in the air and said, 'George, you're out of your mind! Let me sit down and write this for you.' He helped me chop it down into the form that exists today."^[2]

Lucas has openly admitted that the opening crawl is inspired by the same opening crawl that can be seen at the beginning of each episode of the original Buck Rogers film serial that inspired Lucas to write much of the Star Wars saga.^[1]

According to Dennis Muren (who worked on all six films), on the audio commentary track of the DVD release of the original Star Wars, the roll-ups on the "original trilogy" films: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, were accomplished with physical models laid out on the floor. Muren says the models were approximately two feet wide and six feet long. The crawl effect was accomplished with the camera moving longitudinally along the model. It was, says Muren, difficult and time-consuming to achieve a smooth scrolling effect.

With the advent of computer-generated graphics, the "prequel trilogy" films: The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, the roll-ups' effect was achieved much more quickly. However, because nobody had taken notes on how the original ones were accomplished, the design team had to rewatch and piece together the elements to make the new opening crawl.

The 2004 DVD special edition versions of the original trilogy were later updated with computer-generated roll-ups as part of their restoration and enhancement.

[edit] Parodies

The Mel Brooks film Spaceballs opens with a similar, but much more humorous crawl, with gags such as "unbeknownst to her, but knownst ^[sic] to us". At the end, in small letters, it reads "If you can read this, you don't need glasses".
The sneak peak of the unfinished game Space Quest VII: return to Roman Numerals had a similar crawl with a voiceover. The difference was that this one was being typed out as it was being spoken.
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me opens with a similar crawl. It is accompanied by a voiceover.

Airplane II: The Sequel begins with a crawl of the text of an erotic story that is "broken" like glass by a space shuttle flying through it.

The Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Movie uses a crawl to set up the clips of the shorts featured. The crawl reads "A long long long long long...time ago, in a galaxy far, far, far, far, far...away."

Those who attended Nintendo's online Camp Hyrule 2006 were greeted with an introductory opening crawl sequence.

The Red Dwarf episodes Backwards and Dimension Jump both feature similar, humorous crawls, the former scrolling too fast to be read without freeze-frame.

[edit] Episode IV Opening Crawl

When originally released in 1977, the first film was simply titled Star Wars, as Lucas was not certain if he would follow the film with a sequel. Following The Empire Strikes Back, the film was re-released in 1981 with the subtitle 'Episode IV: A New Hope'. The original version, without the subtitle, was not released until the 2006 limited edition DVDs. The opening crawl was re-created to not include the now familiar subtitle specially for the 2006 DVD.