Thanks, Jack.
Well, part of what I’m going for in this crawl is a close relationship with the theatrical crawl. While it seems you’re right that the first two paragraphs of all three OT crawls are in past tense, there is no uniformity to the final paragraph: ANH’s final paragraph is in present tense, ESB’s is in past tense, and ROTJ’s is in future tense.
If you factor the prequels in, there is no rhyme or reason to when to break from past tense.
Considering that it’s like this in the theatrical, which is what I’m trying to stick to (in a weird way), I’m happy with it.