Structure
The opening of each film begins with the scrolling text, "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...." in blue, followed by the Star Wars logo over a field of stars. The logo then moves away from the camera and subsequently, the text begins with film's episode number and subtitle (with the exception of original release of Star Wars – see below) followed by a three-paragraph summary of the events immediately prior to the incidents of the film. The text scrolls up and away from the bottom of the screen towards a vanishing point above the center of the screen in a perspective projection. Each piece of scrolling text ends with a four-dot ellipsis, except for Return of the Jedi which has a three-dot ellipsis. When the text has nearly reached the vanishing point it is faded out and the camera tilts down through space to a ship or planet. Episode II: Attack of the Clones is the only film where the camera tilts up after the text.
Two typefaces are used in the text, both in yellow: News Gothic for the episode number and main body of the text, and Univers for the title of the film. Several words are in all-capital letters to stress their importance: "DEATH STAR" in A New Hope, "GALACTIC EMPIRE" in Return of the Jedi, and "ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC" in Attack of the Clones. Each line of the text spans the width of the screen when it enters from the bottom. In the "fullscreen" (4:3 aspect ratio for standard-definition television) versions of the films, the full lines of text are cut off on the sides until they have scrolled further onto the screen. As a result, by the time the full lines are visible, the text is much smaller and harder to read. In addition, the viewer also has less time to read it.
The animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars is the only theatrically released Star Wars film that does not feature an opening crawl, but instead features a narration of the past events over several clips.
Read more about this topic: Star Wars Opening Crawl
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“Women over fifty already form one of the largest groups in the population structure of the western world. As long as they like themselves, they will not be an oppressed minority. In order to like themselves they must reject trivialization by others of who and what they are. A grown woman should not have to masquerade as a girl in order to remain in the land of the living.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Man is more disposed to domination than freedom; and a structure of dominion not only gladdens the eye of the master who rears and protects it, but even its servants are uplifted by the thought that they are members of a whole, which rises high above the life and strength of single generations.”
—Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835)
“The question is still asked of women: “How do you propose to answer the need for child care?” That is an obvious attempt to structure conflict in the old terms. The questions are rather: “If we as a human community want children, how does the total society propose to provide for them?””
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)