A few questions about the Star Wars opening crawl movie title fonts. . . .

Hey there my fellow Star Wars geeks, I'm finding conflicting reports online about the opening crawl movie title fonts--such as A NEW HOPE, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, ATTACK OF THE CLONES, etc.--and I am hoping you guys can shed some light on this matter for me.

Some reports say that all the movie titles are in the same font, Univers Ultra Condensed Light--except for, THE FORCE AWAKENS, which used, News Gothic, the same font which is used for the Episode Number and the text in the body of all of the films' crawls. There are even some articles out there of people complaining that JJ made this change for no reason.

But then there are other reports, that the reason JJ made the change, is because when ESB came out in '80, and SW was reissued for the first time with the episode number and A NEW HOPE title in '81, that the font for the episode number, the title, and the body text was made to be all the same, News Gothic. And that only later was the title font on ANH and ESB changed to Univers Ultra Condensed Light, to match the Univers font which was introduced with ROTJ, and continued to be used for all the prequel movies. So JJ was actually returning to the crawl title roots when he chose to use News Gothic instead of Univers.

Can anyone provide the real scoop on this?

Thanks!

The Wook

The "other reports" are incorrect.

Treadwell said:

The "other reports" are incorrect.

Click to expand...

TW, thanks for the reply. But are you sure? This, taken directly from Wikipedia, says that ANH, ESB, and TFA were all in News Gothic:

"Two typefaces are used in the text, both in yellow: News Gothic for the episode number and main body of the text, and Univers Ultra Condensed Light for the title of the film.[2] Three subtle exceptions were made to Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and The Force Awakens,[3] as the titles of the films were presented in News Gothic."

The crawls for ESB and ROTJ were never changed. Not even after all the SE shenanegans.
The ANH crawl changed in layout in '81 but not in fonts.

Thats the biggest problem about Wikipedia....anybody can go and add stuff pretty much. Hard to know whats true and not sometimes.

Treadwell said:

The crawls for ESB and ROTJ were never changed. Not even after all the SE shenanegans.
The ANH crawl changed in layout in '81 but not in fonts.

Click to expand...

Okay, so then are you saying that the titles in the crawls for A NEW HOPE, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, RETURN OF THE JEDI, THE PHANTOM MENACE, ATTACK OF THE CLONES, and REVENGE OF THE SITH are and always have been Univers Ultra Condensed Light? And that the only exception is THE FORCE AWAKENS, which is in the font called, News Gothic?

Sorry, I just want to make sure I understand exactly what you're saying here.

Thanks.

The Wook

I haven't studied the font names. I only know that the claim that the OT crawls were made with one set of fonts and then changed at some point to new fonts is not true.

Treadwell said:

I haven't studied the font names. I only know that the claim that the OT crawls were made with one set of fonts and then changed at some point to new fonts is not true.

Click to expand...

Even the film titles in the crawls? Because that's specifically what I'm inquiring about.

Yes...

Treadwell said:

Yes...

Click to expand...

Okay, thanks, pal, for the high-SWIQ intel.

Damned Wikipedia! lol

The Wook