Star Wars: Rogue One - 16 Major Details Lucasfilm Just Revealed

16. There Probably Won't Be An Opening Crawl

It's been the biggest, most pernickety question about the standalone Star Wars films ever since they were announced; will they have an opening crawl? It's a series staple, yes, but it's also intrinsically linked into the idea of episodes; many games used to include one, but The Clone Wars animated movie (the last "spin-off") jumped straight into the action.

So what's the craic? Well, Kathleen Kennedy says it's currently undecided (which I find hard to believe - how do you have the opening of a film not sorted six months before release), but suggests the film definitely seems to be leaning towards a cold open:

"The crawl and some of those elements live so specifically within the ‘saga’ films that we are having a lot of discussion about what will define the [stand-alone] Star Wars Stories separate and apart from the saga films. So we’re right in the middle of talking about that.”

So basically the same motivation that we'd all been expecting. What's most interesting from that, though, is the struggle to define what exactly The Star Wars Story enterprise "is"; a stand-alone is by its nature separate, but there's tropes and tricks to be considered. It's going to be an interesting ride.