The Opening Crawl revealed on OS!

After reading LOE, this opening crawl is right on.

The book definitely sets up the WAR! part of ROTS.

Btw, If you haven't read LOE, and what some more background info heading into ROTS, I highly recommend it.



Episode III ---

 

i am nervous...the opeing crawl was one of the preliminary spoilers...

it means THEY MIGHT BE TRUE

NOOOOOO!

 

THEY?

 

i'm talking about preliminary spoilers tha i happened to inadvertatly see; in general

 

OK...I think there's a bit of plagiarism going on here. I just popped in the movie 'Hero' and it has a subtitled 'opening crawl' of sorts.

HERO: "In any war there are heroes on both sides..."

ROTS: "There are heroes on both sides."

That's actually pretty bad, to have both films essentially starting with the same line delivered visually as a piece of text.

 

What's the big deal? Two movies that have nothing to do with eachother have a similar phrase in their opening texts. My god, I hope that President Bush will have Lucas executed for the insolence.



Plagiarism - pfft
/LM

 

Yeah, you're right. He should call the main character Spiderman and make it a movie about an unsinkable ship that hits an iceberg and call it Lord of the Rings while he's at it. Nothing wrong with that.

It's a word for word theft. Not even paraphrased.

 

The phrase "heroes on both sides" isn't exactly unique to Hero.

Incidentally, it also appears in Lucas' intro to the paperback of Shatterpoint, published in April 2004, before the US release of Hero. Now maybe you could argue he stole it from the Chinese version (2002), but it would have been in Cantonese or Mandarin, so it wouldn't have had that particular phrasing.

 

Agreed that neither film invented the phrase, but a disturbing coincidence that two films about emperors and wars and superhuman sword fighters opening in the US less than a year apart pretty much start with the same line.

Hero was released here some time last year, which is probably when Lucas was putting the crawl together. If we assume he saw the film at some point, he may have either intentionally or inadvertantly copied it.

 

I pointed this out on the 2nd page of this thread awhile ago, but I'll say it again:

So I was watching the beginning of the Chinese film "Hero" and there's text at the beginning explaining about a particular war, and it's very similar in content to the ROTS crawl (but, of course, far more eloquent). And the last line of it is:

"In any war there are heros on both sides."

Lucas isn't just making this stuff up... it's a common and universal statment about the ambiguity of war. And there's certainly ambiguity in the Clone Wars, since the Republic will turn into the Empire.


I'll add to that... these are both films that are mythologically based, so I'm not suprised that the opening lines are so similiar, even though they're myths are from different cultures (and the GFFA is an combination of our earth cultures). All myths are based on universal themes. One of them is war. And in war there are always heros on both sides.

This is a coincedence only.

 

It's a mighty big coincidence...the exact same words used in the exact same manner to introduce a special effects based fantasy movie revolving around an emperor trying to consolidate power and being opposed by sword wielding supermen/woman...

(sorry I missed your earlier post...I looked for reference to Hero but missed your comments...)

 

Dude, it's strictly a coincedence. I suspect if you really investigated the idea that "war has heros on both sides" you'd find hundreds of references. storm, I often get the feeling that you're trying to find things to dislike.

 

No, I just call it like I see it. For example, I can't say enough good things about Labyrinth of Evil or Dark Rendezvous. I think you'll find my posts here about 50/50 bash/gush, which indicates that I just speak honestly about how I interpret what I'm seeing.

Additionally, one of the things that sometimes turns me off to these boards is that it often seems that only glowing praise is allowed and encouraged, lest you get buried under an avalanche of defensive replies. We should question the quality of the work in the Star Wars universe. It should not get a free pass. If everyone just says "wow this is great" about everything then there's really not much to say to each other. Debate and disagreement is what makes posting interesting.

I find flaws in the films because there are flaws in the films.

 

how can you find flaws in a film that hasnt been released yet. how about you wait until you SEE the movie before you bash or gush for it.

 

[color=663300]I know I've been gone for a while, and a bit out of the loop but I see something wrong with the opening crawl. Wouldn't it say, the sith lord "Darth Tyrannus" instead of Count Dooku? I mean, we've never referred to Darth Vader as the evil sith lord, Anakin Skywalker.

just my .02[/color]

 

Well, most people who have watched AOTC could tell you who Count Dooku is, but I bet it's not the same for Darth Tyrannus. If the opening crawl said Darth Tyrannus instead of Dooku, it would just confuse average viewers into thinking that there was another Sith Lord around besides Dooku and Sidious.

 

[color=663300]I disagree. I don't think it would be any more confusing than mentioning General Grievous. Knowbody knows who this guy is, and the general public would catch on quick that Dooku is Tyrannus. Also, he was called Tyrannus by Sidious at the end of AOTC. That seems to me to be all the connection we need.

It just seems like a awkward choice of wording seeing how Count Dooku isn't the Sith Lord, 'Darth Tyrannus' is.

[/color]

 

I think stormcloud has gone crazy from the wait for ROTS.

 

I'm going crazy.

 

hi everyone,

as far as dooku being named dooku in the crawl and not tyrannus, i think it makes sense. Look at the rest of the crawl... it keeps you in the dark about certain things. For example, it says that palpatine was kidnapped by GG. is that really what happened? probably not. i suspect (i don't know, since i've stayed away from spoilers), that it's a ploy to get something else to happen, since GG and palpatine are in cahoots. This is what we, as the audience, know. But the crawl doesn't tell us this, because it would be boring, but, more importantly, because the crawl wants to put us in a certain position. it wants to put us in a position to believe that GG and palpatine are on different sides. It's basically putting us in the position of the average citizen of the GFFA, or, i suspect, the Jedi. For the same reason, i think that dooku is identified as count dooku, like the jedi know him, rather than as darth tyranus, as only a handful of people know him (we only know that darth sidious and jango knew him by that name). As a result, i think that the decision to call him count dooku in the crawl makes perfect sense, stylistically.

As far as what stormcloud said about plagarism, i agree generally that it probably wasn't plagarism, especially given that GL included the phrase in the intro to that book before the english version of the film was released. However, i do agree with stormie that it's an odd coincidence. Moreover, i don't think that he was bashing a film he hasn't seen, i think he's pointing something out about the relationship between a film he has seen (hero, which was awesome) and a crawl he's also seen, so i think that comment was unfounded.

andy

 

Dooku is known to everyone as Count Dooku. The only one who called him Tyranus in AOTC was Sidious. Everyone else will no doubt continue calling him Dooku, since noone really knows that he has an alias.
Furthermore, Darth Tyranus is just that - an alias. He hasn't stopped calling himself Count Dooku just because he has joined the Sith. The same goes for Palpatine. Later on, he's known to everyone as Emperor Palpatine, not Emperor Sidious. Which one is his real name, though, I can't tell you.
It's different with Anakin. He changes his name to Darth Vader because he doesn't see himself as Anakin Skywalker anymore. After that, noone calls him Anakin.

Besides, Count Dooku sounds a lot cooler than Darth Tyranus



Dooku's the man
/LM

 

calling him Darth Tyranus in the ROTS crawl wouldn't be any more confusing then him being called Count Dooku in the AOTC crawl.

 

Yes it would, since he is now an established character. Most people remember who Count Dooku is, but if you would say "Darth Tyranus" to them, they would probably go "Who?"



ekjbgfkqwyrbloiwe
/LM

 

nah
hahahaa

 

storm has a good point - it's hard to believe it's a coincidence, but then, in Hollywood, so many similar products are released that it's hard to believe people aren't plagiarizing.

But it's hard to believe Lucas would take a line from Hero.

Either way, just like the theatrical poster, I don't really care about the crawl at all, other than that I enjoy seeing the yellow words crawl up the screen because it means I'm watching SW.