-Wes Anderson, Attorney
A bit belated, but I finally caught a screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Unbeknownst to me, the film was missing a part of the Star Wars experience many fans hold dear. And it’s all about branding.
Note: No spoilers of the film itself follow here, unless you consider a discussion of the pre-opening titles a “spoiler” unto itself. A further note: I do not hold myself in any way to be a competent Star Wars nerd, so please excuse any missteps or general unfamiliarity with the lore surrounding the films.
When most people think of the Star Wars opening titles, they probably think of the John Williams score’s opening flourish and a giant yellow STAR WARS outlining flashing on the screen before zooming into space to make way for the iconic scrolling text to introduce the film’s story. But many fans also immediately think of what precedes all of that – the 20th Century Fox “spotlights” logo and its associated fanfare.
It turns out that prior to the release of the first Star Wars film in 1977, 20th Century Fox had abandoned the logo and fanfare in the opening titles for films it distributed. But George Lucas loved it so much he insisted that it precede the Star Wars opening titles. It’s said that John Williams went so far as to record the soundtrack’s opening titles in the same key as the Fox fanfare, so as to truly integrate 20th Century Fox’s branding into the fabric of Star Wars. The Fox fanfare was reborn.
This all changed in 2013, after Disney purchased Lucasfilm and the rights to the Star Wars franchise. When releasing the library of Star Wars films in digital download format, Disney removed the 20th Century Fox fanfare from the opening titles. A logical move, it would seem, but it irked many Star Wars fans who considered it an indispensable part of the films. Many worried that Disney’s first new Star Wars film, “The Force Awakens,” would feature an amalgam of Disney / J.J. Abrams branding that would clash with history, as conceptualized in this YouTube video.
Some even wondered if it would be possible for Disney to license the 20th Century Fox fanfare. While all things are possible in trademark licensing, this would likely be a step too far for 20th Century Fox, which now uses the fanfare and spotlights logo for all of its films.
Fortunately, these Disney-fication fears did not come to fruition – The Force Awakens begins silently, displaying only the Lucasfilm logo, before the iconic text “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” appears on screen, and the John Williams score takes over. The Disney logo never appears (at least I didn’t notice it, unless it snuck into the film’s closing credits). And yet, despite its visual absence, I was acutely aware that this movie had Disney’s fingerprints all over it.
In making branding decisions, sometimes less can be much, much more.
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