Readers of AICN, Vanity Fair, Access Hollywood and TF.N within the last few days may have encountered the rumoured opening scrolling text for the new Star Wars movie. (No, I will not post it here in its entirety for fear of spoiling it completely; go to AICN to see it.) To quickly summarize my reaction, let's just say that it is unlike the other opening crawls in the Classic Trilogy.

If you recall, the opening crawls in the Classic Trilogy included names of characters, planets and even the occasional weapon of mass destruction. All we see in the rumoured crawl for TPM is the planet Naboo, the Old Republic referred to in the Classic Trilogy, and some Trade Federation which sounds like a malicious and evil version of the Federal Trade Commision.

The original movies mentioned planets such as Tatooine and Hoth, characters such as Princess Leia, Darth Vader and Jabba the Hutt, and -- in uppercase -- the DEATH STAR. I do hope that this rumour is not entirely true, but not entirely false either. It has the right mood, but not enough of a Star Wars feel and definitely not enough punch to give the impression of a grand opening chapter to an epic saga.

My personal opinion is that TPM will turn out best if it is more like the Classic Trilogy and less like a 1990s film. Of course, I will gladly welcome the CG effects and digital work which would not have been possible twenty years ago, but to achieve best results the movie should stick to the original motif of a "space opera," not an action movie.

Remember that Harry Knowles, the movie buff who runs AICN, claimed months ago to have read the script to Episode I. My personal opinion is that this is all a load of Wookie-feed, for lack of a better word. If he had indeed read the script, then knowing Harry the Spoiler King, he would have leaked EVERYTHING, not just the fact that Ewan MacGregor kicks off the movie with "I've got a bad feeling about this." Also remember that George Lucas and Rick McCallum continually rewrite scenes and order re-shoots to their liking, and that there is a tremendous amount of editing going on at ILM.

There's also a claim that Lucas was the one who leaked the information to Vanity Fair, who leaked it to Access Hollywood, who leaked it to AICN who was desperate to be the first to publish it even though Harry says he wanted to keep it pure. Looks like TF.N picked up the ball, and now the crawl goes public. Personally, I seriously doubt that the highly secretive Lucas leaked information to the media. Everyone in the Prequel countdown world knows that Rick McCallum is the publicity man.

In fact, George Lucas has essentially said three things about Episode I during the entire project: 1) I'm writing Episode I, 2) We're doing all this cool new digital stuff for Episode I, 3) The Phantom Menace is the new title, 4) The fan reaction to the November 20 trailer was beyond expectations. Rick McCallum does everything else -- the press conferences, the publicity reports, even the fan magazine interviews.

On the upside of the supposed opening crawl, there is no mention of Anakin Skywalker. I find it especially fitting; the ANH crawl had no mention of Luke, as he was introduced later; the ESB crawl had no mention of Lando Calrissian, who became more important than I thought he should have; and the ROTJ crawl had no mention of the Emperor, who was quite a major character in that episode.