An Important Moment In The Last Jedi Wasn't Finished Until The Very Last Second
It's been nearly four years since we've seen a new "Star Wars" film. Whether or not you are cool with that, it's given us time to reflect on the last trilogy. We watched Rey (Daisy Ridley) discover her Force powers, and Finn (John Boyega) go from being a Stormtrooper to an integral part of the Rebellion. We saw Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) rediscover his humanity, and we caught up on the lives of Leia (Carrie Fisher), Luke (Mark Hamill), and Han (Harrison Ford). Those elements are huge parts of the franchise, but there is another part that is one of the most recognizable things about "Star Wars" and was a big consideration in writer/director Rian Johnson's process with "Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi."
Johnson spoke to Collider back in 2018 after the release of the film, and he revealed that aspect was the last thing he worked on, and explained why it wasn't finished until the very last minute.
That aspect? The opening crawl of the film. Johnson called it "petrifying" and said that he wrote a version of it right away despite it not being finished until the end. He mentioned that he'd heard creator George Lucas talk about the crawl as "like a poem, sort of," but Johnson clarified that he wasn't exactly writing rhyming couplets like Shakespeare.
'It was the very last piece of writing in the movie that we were working on'
Having hunkered down and written the text for an opening crawl, Johnson said he finally understood Lucas' meaning. "That made a lot of sense to me, having gone through this," he explained. "Not because you're, like, getting poetic with it or whatever, but because every single word matters."
It makes sense that the opening crawl would be a source of anxiety, given the importance of those words. It's the first thing you see in most "Star Wars" films, and it sets the tone for what we're about to experience. It's also likely the first thing you ever saw in terms of "Star Wars." That's a lot of pressure. Johnson said:
"It was the very last piece of writing in the movie that we were working on. Literally like a few days before we had to give the movie up and say okay, we can't touch it anymore, I was in there with the guys ... we had our temp version of it in our graphics program, and we were tweaking the grammar and tweaking words in it ... there's no room for error in terms of it just flowing, you know, feeling right."
Whatever you think of the film (I'll weigh in and say it's my favorite of the final trilogy), the care that went into those first words of the script is clear. There is something about that yellow text on a black background that makes the heart lift, no matter what comes after.
"Star Wars: The Last Jedi" is currently streaming on Disney+.