Rian Johnson Hints At The Opening Crawl Of Star Wars: The Last Jedi

With the exception of Rogue One, the opening crawl has been a fixture of the Star Wars universe ever since the words “it is a period of civil war” preceded A New Hope back in ’77.

It’s a time-honored tradition of Lucasfilm’s galaxy far, far away, and that’s something that isn’t lost on writer-director Rian Johnson. Following up on The Brother’s Bloom and Looper – not to mention multiple episodes of AMC’s Breaking Bad – Johnson was appointed at the helm of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the latest chapter in the Skywalker saga that’s due to arrive in December of this year.

On the heels of last weekend’s D23 event in Anaheim, excitement for The Last Jedi is through the roof, and ardent fans have spent the past four days combing through the sequel’s poignant behind-the-scenes featurette in the search for potential story clues and other morsels of information. And though he naturally refrained from divulging too much, too soon, Rian Johnson spoke to the Los Angeles Times (via Screen Rant) about all things Star Wars and, in particular, the opening crawl of The Last Jedi.

As a matter of fact, Johnson turned in a one-word preview of said crawl, revealing that the word “decimated” will appear in the yellow text. Perhaps The Last Jedi‘s crawl will be projected in blood-red to coincide with the sequel’s title? We’ll find out soon enough.

Here, Rian Johnson touches base on the inherent pressures of drafting up a prologue to such an iconic franchise.

That was petri… Actually, you know, I just did it. I just started writing the draft. I wrote something, and it was terrible. And then I was watching one of the behind-the-scenes things and Lucas said, ‘It’s like writing a haiku.’ … I realized as I was refining it what he meant. We didn’t finish the opening crawl and totally lock it until a few weeks ago actually. Because you’re like, ‘Do we need this word, do we need that word, what if we shift.’ It’s like a poem, there’s very little room for error in trying to get it just right. Which is awesome, it’s really fun.

For the third December on the trot, Lucasfilm’s space opera is poised to dominate the festive period thanks to the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. But can it reach the dizzying box office heights of The Force Awakens ($2.06 billion)? Time will tell.