Gareth Edwards Just Confirmed The ‘Rogue One’ Opening Sequence

Gareth Edwards, director of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, was tasked with making arguably the most unique Star Wars movie yet, which has left many fans wondering what to expect from the opening sequence. Will there be a crawl? Will there be lightsabers?

In an interview with My TFI, Rogue One director Gareth Edwards confirmed some of these questions, first by explaining that there will not be an opening text crawl for the first time ever in a Star Wars movie (though no official word yet on lightsaber battles).

“There is no opening crawl. But there is a prologue at the beginning of the film that takes place 15 years before the action of the film and that is how the action is exposed. Our film comes from the text of episode IV if we give the text, it would be endless. We really had to differentiate Rogue One from the rest of the saga.”

In other words, Rogue One takes place within the text crawl of Episode IV, so it’s kind of interesting, then, that there’s also a prologue for this anthology prequel, perhaps to set up the Erso storyline somewhat revealed in the trailers.

Edwards went on to explain the reasoning for removing the infamous text crawl for Rogue One:

“…the more I thought about it the more it was normal not to have this text. The temptation as a director is to take the most character from other Star Wars to put them in his film. The film should last 10 hours. We have to make choices. We must cut, it is a universe too rich.”

This might mean that other anthology films, like the planned “young Han Solo” movie, will forego an opening text crawl as well, further separating movies like Rogue One from the episodic “saga” films continued by The Force Awakens.

Source: My TFI