Star Wars opening crawl

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The three components of the opening sequence: the phrase "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away", the Star Wars logo and the opening crawl, from the beginning of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Each film in the Star Wars series opens with a crawl (also known as a roll-up) of text which provides an explanation of the backstory and context of the film. The crawl has become associated with the films and has frequently been parodied.

The opening of each film begins with the text "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...." in cyan, followed by the Star Wars logo over a field of stars. The logo then moves away from the camera and subsequently, the crawl begins. Scrolling from the bottom of the screen towards a vanishing point at the horizontal center and above the vertical centre of the screen in a perspective projection. When the crawl has nearly reached the vanishing point, the crawl is faded out, and the camera pans down through space to a ship or planet^[1] (except in Episode II, where the camera pans up).

The crawl begins with film's episode number and subtitle (except in the original release of Episode IV – see below) followed by a three-paragraph summary of the events immediately prior to the events of the film. Each title crawl ends with a four-dot ellipsis except for Episode VI which has a three-dot ellipsis.

Two typefaces are used in the crawls, both in yellow: News Gothic bold for the episode number and main body of the crawl, and Univers light ultra condensed for the title of the film. Several words are in all-capital letters to stress their importance: "DEATH STAR" in A New Hope, "GALACTIC EMPIRE" in Return of the Jedi, and "ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC" in Attack of the Clones). Each line of the crawl spans the width of the screen when it enters from the bottom. In the fullscreen pan and scan versions of the films, the full lines of text are cut off on the sides until they have scrolled further onto the screen.

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

[edit] Origin

Lucas has stated that the opening crawl was inspired by the opening crawls used at the beginning of each episode of the original Flash Gordon film serial, which was the inspiration for Lucas to write much of the Star Wars saga.^[2]

In a 2005 interview, George Lucas described how the final phrasing of the text for A New Hope 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...". De Palma helped to edit the text into the form used in the film.^[3]

According to Dennis Muren, who worked on all six films, crawls on the "original trilogy" films were accomplished by filming physical models laid out on the floor. The models were approximately two feet wide and six feet long. The crawl effect was accomplished by the camera moving longitudinally along the model. It was difficult and time-consuming to achieve a smooth scrolling effect.^[1]^[4]

With the advent of computer-generated graphics, the crawls for the "prequel trilogy" films were achieved much more quickly.^[1] 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.^{[citation needed]} The 2004 DVD special edition versions of the original trilogy were later updated with computer-generated crawls as part of their restoration and enhancement.

[edit] Parodies

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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 science fiction-comedy television show Red Dwarf used an opening crawl in episodes Backwards and Dimension Jump. Both feature similar, humorous crawls, the former scrolling too fast to be read without freeze-frame.

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 universe far, far, far, far, far...away...whew!" The film Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise opens with a crawl in homage to Star Wars.

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

The Simpsons episode Co-Dependent's Day contains a crawl for a Star Wars spoof called Cosmic Wars which makes fun of the political and bureaucratic quarrels in The Phantom Menace.

Family Guy's Star Wars parody, "Blue Harvest", opens with the phrase "A long time ago, yet somehow in the future...". It then gives plot spoilers in its version of the opening crawl, then digresses slightly to talk about Angelina Jolie and her relationship with her brother before ending with "Princess Leia was coming back from buying space groceries when this happened..."

The That '70s Show episode "A New Hope" opened with a similar crawl, complete with the show's logo replacing the "Star Wars" one.

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.

[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.