Benjamin Clayborne
Auror
I'm totally going to poke at this one, and I hope it doesn't land me in hot water! Every episode of Star Wars begins with a scripted prologue! I wonder if Lucas had a bunch of producers barking at him to remove it? Anyway, no one seems to have ever complained about these prologues. A lot of films have these. I think Willow has one, too.
The Star Wars opening crawls are no longer than about 100 words. That's pretty tiny, and the amount of information conveyed is minimal. They don't convey the whole history of the Republic and Empire, as I said. My point wasn't that Star Wars doesn't have a prologue; it's that its prologue doesn't try to explain everything that ever happened. It gives the bare essentials so that when you see the Tantive IV and Vader's Star Destroyer show up, you already know who they are and why they're being chased.