Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-48285-20161205164344/@comment-26871067-20170212075455

Jaadowgg wrote: I've never seen such debates (mainly because I don't seek them out and because I don't seek them out, I didn't know they existed) so I may seem a litle silly for saying this but, how does the title crawl suggest in any way that it is our universe? Clearly, it says "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." Again, just stating what seems obvious to me.

Also, can I just say that this: " Maybe they call themselves gorknar and think we're assholes for calling them a word besides their name for their species." was the funniest thing I've seen all day? (Considering that the day just started for me half an hour ago and I've been bookmarking certain comics from a site that lets you read them online during all that time, that's not really saying much.) I actually didn't know that it was such an intense debate either, not until I googled "does Star Wars take place in our universe" like an hour ago to see what the general opinion was.

Everything about that opener, actually. "A long, long time ago" - long ago from what? Some unstated point in the fictional universe? No, gotta be compared to the audience's "now". Many people interpreted it as an indication that the series takes place in our universe - just not our galaxy or planet. A galaxy isn't the same thing as a universe, after all - there are many galaxies in our universe. "Far, far away" - far away from what? The only thing that makes sense is "far away from Earth, where the viewer is". Both "long ago" and "far away" are adjectives. By stating that this galaxy is far away, it's logically far from Earth. By stating that it's a long time ago, it's logically long before present day.

If you say "China is far away", the listener knows that you mean China is far away from said listener. If you say "a long time ago", the listener knows you mean "compared to now". Without an explicit frame of reference, the understanding is that you are the frame of reference. So "a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away", is, based on the way English works, logically interpreted as "in the distant past (of our reality), somewhere far from Earth".

"A long, long time ago" is a standard opener, particularly for fairytales, and it is generally taken to mean it's a Real Story that Really Happened, it just took place... a long, long time ago. What reason is there to use it unless there are other stories that are the "present" of said universe and the opener is to state a distinction from those other stories?

Star Wars didn't start off having these other stories that the original triology could be happening before. With a new trilogy in production, you could say "it's a long, long time ago compared to the new trilogy", but that'd be a retcon explanation for the line. I don't remember if the opening crawl for Episode VII had that starter, but I don't think it did. If it was the starter for the prequels it'd be excusable.

Of course, the fact that it is a standard story opener means it may just be seen as a way to start a story without considering that implication. The meaning just sort of washes over you because yeah, that's just the way stories start, right. Like "it was a dark and rainy night". The "far, far away" still raises the question of "far from what?" though. I do think this is the real answer - that it's just become a part of pop culture to start a story this way (and that it sounds dramatic), so the implications are accidental. Because like... again, it's just wildly improbably that functionally identical humans could exist in the distant past of our universe.