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No crawl in Rogue One is 'a foolish mistake', says Star Wars crawl creator

Crawl... creator decries lack of crawl in Rogue One - Credit: Lucasfilm
Crawl… creator decries lack of crawl in Rogue One – Credit: Lucasfilm

As you may have heard, the iconic ‘crawl’ from the opening titles of the ‘Star Wars’ movies – the text that scrolls upwards and details the story so far – is missing from ‘Rogue One’.

Producer Kathleen Kennedy hinted back in the summer that the movie, not being one of the ‘saga’ movies, might not have one, an indeed when it premiered last week, there was no crawl to be seen.

But the move, has been strongly condemned by none other than Dan Perri, the man who created the title roll for ‘Star Wars’ back in 1977.

“Frankly, it is a huge mistake,” he told The Hollywood Reporter, in no uncertain terms.

“Because the image is so iconic and it’s so important to tens of millions, hundreds of millions of fans.

“I couldn’t imagine it starting without that. It’s foolish.”

(Credit: Lucasfilm)
(Credit: Lucasfilm)

Foolish perhaps, as the crawl is indeed intrinsically linked to the Star Wars movies, but then again, it appears Perri isn’t that enamoured by the Force anyhow.

He’s not seen a Star Wars movie since the very first one, and clearly isn’t camping out in his Ben Kenobi outfit waiting to see ‘Rogue One’.

“There are too many things to do and there are too many film out there to see,” he added.

His antipathy may be down to his fractious-sounding relationship with George Lucas, who would persistently keep him waiting for hours, and then reject his ideas, while he was working on the project.

“I had no idea what he was doing, so it was just this stupid space film. I didn’t think anything of it,” Perri went on.

(Credit: Disney)
(Credit: Disney)

“Everything I showed him, he didn’t like. So I was constantly going out there with new ideas, and he would tell me to look at certain films. The BuckRogers films and all the serials from the 30s that he was using for inspiration.

“The day I delivered it, it was such a relief to drive away from there knowing, ‘Wow, it’s done finally.’

“He had so many things on his mind, he was so busy. He took a few minutes to look at it and he went right back to whatever other problems he had that day.

“When I think back on it, it wasn’t fun. It was a difficult project, but I’m happy with the results.”

Perri is something of a legend in the film titles business, having designed the openings for films like ‘Taxi Driver’, ‘Raging Bull’ and ‘Airplane!’.

‘Rogue One’, featuring no crawl, is out now across the UK.

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