The Last Jedi Director Rian Johnson Comments On Opening Crawl

One thing that comes to mind when you think of Star Wars are the crawls that open the film, typically three paragraphs that sum up the state of the Star Wars universe and bring us up to speed on what to expect for the story in the latest film. Harkening back to the movie serials that inspired the series, the opening crawl is a tradition that, apart from Rogue One, has been in every Star Wars movie that hit theaters.

MTV News gave Rian Johnson a chance to talk about the opening crawl for his new movie, Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi. When word got out that the start of The Last Jedi would begin at the moment The Force Awakens ended, fans were a little concerned we would not see an opening crawl. Rian had this to say.

“Even if it picks up right where the last one left off, there’s still a lot of unanswered questions about what the state of everything is,” he told MTV’s Josh Horowitz at Star Wars Celebration. “We were able to fill three paragraphs.”

This is a situation where at first you think “No kidding. Of course they’re going to have an opening crawl for the film.” Yet thinking about it, the idea that we get three paragraphs worth of material to discuss for a movie that’s set minutes after the previous one ended could lead some to reasonably speculate that the film would begin without a crawl. The big question we want answered in the film is the state of the galaxy after the First Order had some fun playing with their Starkiller weapon. Add to that the remaining questions of Rey and her parentage, what’s happening with Finn, and the dour Luke Skywalker, and you have enough material that will fill in viewers as to the state of things