STAR WARS: EPISODE IV - A NEW HOPE
The 20th Century Fox fanfare fades and a hush overcomes the cinema as a title card fills the screen: "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."
Inspired by the Flash Gordon movie serials starring Buster Crabbe, the simplistic beginning to the Star Wars films is without doubt one of the most memorable openings in movie history, as the yellow Star Wars logo fills the screen - accompanied by John Williams' soaring musical theme - before a three-paragraph roll-up sets the stage for the latest installment of George Lucas' epic space opera.
While the original 1977 release of Star Wars came without the subtitle 'A New Hope', the 1981 cinematic re-release saw the addition of "EPISODE IV - A NEW HOPE", with subsequent chapters all following the same format. Originally produced by filming a two-feet by six-feet physical model of the text, the opening crawls for the prequel films were developed using computer-generated imagery, with the original trilogy versions later updated to CGI for the DVD release of the Special Editions in 2004.
Although the opening crawl from any of the six films could have featured here, I've decided to go with Episode IV as a) it's got the best text, and b) it's nowhere near as wordy as the prequels...
The opening crawl...
And as a bonus - the original 1977 opening crawl...
Proceed to the next memorable Star Wars moment here.
Gary Collinson
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