It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the Death Star, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Those lines are from the opening crawl of the original Star Wars film released in 1977, before it spawned a decade-spanning mega-franchise and before it had even picked up the “Episode IV” tag that implied that we were picking up in the middle of the story. The opening crawl of any Star Wars movie is quickie table-setting, a sort of lazy but efficient way to establish some stakes so it can drop us into the action.