The opening crawl of The Force Awakens contained a lie… but the truth was so much better

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Kick-started the Star Wars Sequel trilogy, but the movie actually started with a simple lie that is very easy to miss. Every episode Star Wars The film begins with an opening crawl, with knowledge that is necessary to understand the plot of the film. Some of the yellow, scrolling opening crawls contain more information than others, depending on the time gap between it and the previous film.

Logically, this means that the first film in each trilogy has the opening crawl with the most new information. Not surprisingly, therefore, The Force Awakenstook place 30 years later Return of the JediHas the opening crawl with the most new information of them all. The creep tells us Luke Skywalker has disappeared, the First Order has risen, and that Leia is leading the resistance with the support of the New Republic. The last point, however, is a lie.

The Resistance is incorrectly described in the Force Awakens opening crawl

The relationship between the New Republic and the Resistance is complicated

The opening crawl for The Force Awakens Establishes the resistance, led by Leia, and includes a single reference to the New Republic. The line says that the New Republic supports the Resistance, something that is canonically untrue. In reality, the Resistance’s connection to the New Republic is a much more complicated situation than the line leads audiences to believe.

The New Republic did not really support the resistance

The resistance is made up of ex-New Republic personnel

The New Republic didn’t really support the Resistance – at least, not in any meaningful way. In fact, the whole reason that the Resistance was in a separate capacity to the New Republic defense fleet was because of core disagreements between the groups. The Resistance was founded by Senator Leia Organa to combat the rising tide of the First Order, which she thought the New Republic was blind to.

Upon the revelation that Darth Vader was her father, Leia was removed from the New Republic political scene, and was forced to work more outside the government. The stretch happened during her arguments that there was some kind of shadowy organization rising in the galaxy, which was the First Order. After these events, many in the New Republic dismissed Leia as a warmonger, trying to militarize the New Republic much like her father was so involved with the Galactic Empire’s military.

Thus, claiming that the resistance is supported by the New Republic is simply not true. They received some resources from the government, but were nowhere near an official part of it, and operated completely apart from it, although there were some resistance sympathizers in the New Republic government and defense fleet. If the Resistance really had the full support of the New Republic, it wouldn’t even need to exist.

The real story of the Resistance is much more interesting than the film lets on

The First Order’s secession and the Cold War

The canon Star Wars History, mostly told in books and comics, actually tells a much more interesting story for the resistance. The Resistance was founded by Leia in 28 ABY, and only about one year later, in 29 ABY, the First Order’s base of planets in the New Republic was formally separated. This established a formal division of First Order space and New Republic space, leading to a tense Cold War between the two.

Espionage, covert missions and more took place across the galaxy as powerful players vied for control. The First Order was now formally established and continued to expand by building up its military, while the New Republic was too lazy and bogged down in bureaucracy to do anything about it. This left the Resistance as the only organization opposed to the First Order, not supported by the New Republic, but working in opposition to it.

The story was told in only a few specific places in Star Wars Canon. The animated series Star Wars: Resistance And these Poe Dameron Comic series, starring Charles Sole, takes place during the Cold War, but apart from this and a few other smaller stories, the era remains largely untouched for the time. A new, larger story set at this time could indeed tell a fascinating political story Star Wars Story, but thanks to some strange phrases in The Force Awakens‘ Opening crawl, many audiences don’t even know about it.