Star Wars: Rogue One's Lack of an Opening Crawl a "Huge Mistake," Designer Says

The newest Star Wars movie, Rogue One, does not feature one of the franchise's most iconic elements: the opening crawl. Now, the person who designed this now-famous sequence for the 1977 original Star Wars has come forward to criticize Rogue One for leaving it out.

"Frankly, it is a huge mistake, because the image is so iconic and it's so important to tens of millions, hundreds of millions of fans," Dan Perri told The Hollywood Reporter."I couldn't imagine it starting without that. It's foolish."

Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy explained before Rogue One's release that the studio was taking a different approach to the film, in part because it is a "story" movie and not a mainline entry. This is part of the reason why the crawl was left out. She also suggested that upcoming spinoffs, including 2018's young Han Solo film, will also not include the crawl.

Perri told THR that he has not seen any Star Wars movie after the original in part because, "There are too many things to do and there are too many films out there to see."

The full interview is very fascinating. Perri also talks about how he worked on the opening crawl for a long time before George Lucas eventually approved it at the last minute.

"I had no idea what he was doing, so it was just this stupid space film. I didn't think anything of it," he explained. "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.

"He accepted it and they cut it in. By then, it was only maybe a month before the release," Perri added. "The day I delivered it, it was such a relief to drive away from there knowing, 'Wow, it's done finally.'"

All of the mainline Star Wars films have opened with a crawl; the 2008 animated movie Star Wars: The Clone Wars did not.

Rogue One opened in theaters on December 16 and made a lot of money, though not as much as The Force Awakens. For more, check out GameSpot's Rogue One review.