Star Wars: Rogue One Originally Had an Opening Crawl

A lot has been made of Star Wars: Rogue One's lack of an opening crawl. Now, director Gareth Edwards has revealed that the iconic opening sequence was in the first screenplay for the sci-fi spinoff.

Around six months before filming began, Edwards attended a meeting where the idea to drop the crawl was discussed, he told Empire. The thinking was that only "saga" films would start with an opening crawl. "And if I'm honest, there was an initial kind of like, 'Whaaaa? I want the crawl!'" Edwards said.

Rogue One doesn't have an opening crawl, but the film's opening sequence does the job of setting up the story, Edwards said.

"The opening sequence is kind of the crawl of our movie," he said. "It's like the setup. And our film is also born out of a crawl--the reason we exist is because of a previous crawl, so it feels like this infinite loop that will never end. It's a small thing to give up to get to do Star Wars."

The person who came up with the idea for the opening crawl for the 1977 original Star Wars recently spoke out to criticize Rogue One for leaving it out.

Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has suggested that other anthology Star Wars movies, including 2018's untitled Han Solo film, also will not have an opening crawl.

Also in Empire's interview, Edwards revealed that an earlier version of Rogue One contained the franchise's famous "wipes," which the filmmaker said are "the cheesiest thing in the world." Additionally, Edwards invited The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson to watch the filming of Rogue One's Darth Vader scene. Jackson replied to Edwards' email invitation right away and showed up on set at Pinewood Studios just 30 minutes later.

Read the full Empire interview here.

Rogue One hit theaters on December 16 and has been the No. 1 movie at the US box office every week since. It ended 2016 as the second highest-grossing US movie, behind only Finding Dory.