Via Starwars.com:

LEARN HOW A WWII CLASSIC INFLUENCED GEORGE LUCAS FROM STORYTELLING TO FILMMAKING TECHNIQUES.

Released in 1977, just a month after the original Star Wars film, Sir Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far was one of the most ambitious independently produced feature films ever made. Written by William Goldman (The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) it focused on the historic accounts of World War II’s “Operation: Market-Garden.”

It starts with a narrated newsreel-style opening to give context, which seems to be the World War II equivalent of the Star Wars opening crawl. We’re told that this is a desperate attack made by the Allied Forces against the Nazis in the final days of the war, hoping to end the war before Christmas 1944.

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