Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

This line is the opening crawl text of the original Star Wars film (released in 1977; later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope). It appears at the very beginning, setting the political-military situation in medias res: the Rebel Alliance has achieved an initial success against the Galactic Empire and is operating from a concealed base. The crawl functions as a modern pastiche of the serial-adventure recaps that influenced George Lucas (e.g., Flash Gordon), quickly orienting audiences before the story drops into immediate action with the pursuit of the Rebel ship carrying stolen plans for the Death Star.

The sentence establishes a stark moral and narrative polarity—“Rebel” versus “evil” Empire—while also emphasizing asymmetry: the Rebels must strike “from a hidden base,” implying guerrilla tactics against an overwhelming authoritarian power. “First victory” signals that the conflict is larger than what we are about to see; it promises escalation and frames the coming events as part of a broader war. As a piece of world-building, the line compresses exposition into a mythic register, presenting the Rebels as underdogs and the Empire as a monolithic threat, priming viewers to read the story as a classic struggle between freedom and tyranny.