The movie Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Star Wars 9) begins with the famous text that slowly drifts away. A passage of this text refers to something that only those who were at the Star Wars event in Fortnite experienced.
What is this reference? The “Opening Crawl” in Star Wars is now legendary. A writing appears slowly, drifting backwards, embedding the events of the film into the larger context of the Star Wars universe. Bombastic space music roars – this is how Star Wars films must begin.
Currently, Star Wars 9 is in theaters and also begins with such an “Opening Crawl.” The first sentence reads (freely translated):
„The dead speak. The galaxy has received a mysterious transmission, a vengeance threat in the eerie voice of the late EMPEROR PALPATINE.”
From the Opening Crawl of Star Wars 9
Palpatine was, as a reminder, the Emperor of the original trilogy, whom Vader ultimately throws into the reactor of the Death Star. In the prequel trilogy, Palpatine was a seemingly nice senator who harbored dark plans.
Vengeance threat was heard in Fortnite
This is the joke: This “vengeance threat” from Palpatine was not heard in the last Star Wars film or anywhere else in the cinematic universe, but in Fortnite of all places.
There, Palpatine’s voice ended the charming event where J.J. Abrams essentially gave lightsabers to Fortnite players. Here you can see and hear what Palpatine said in the clip:
Palpatine declares that the work of generations is complete. The great error is corrected. The day of victory is near, the day of vengeance, the day of the Sith.
Actually, only a relatively banal scene from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was shown at the Fortnite event, but this transmission from Palpatine made the event feel much more important for the Star Wars canon than it seemed a week ago.
This is remarkable: As the US site Polygon says, it is unusual for a plot point important enough to open Star Wars 9 to be thrown out in Fortnite like this.
At Polygon, they suspect: Director J.J. Abrams had the actor Ian McDiarmid record the passage long ago but later found no place to incorporate the lines into Star Wars.
When Abrams was then asked if he had anything cool for Fortnite, he dug out this line.
More about the Star Wars event in Fortnite and the exclusive scene can be seen here:
