The movies say it was in a galaxy far, far away though
I already explained it in my initial post. Imagine that you are a member of an alien civilization that lives outside the Milky Way in a distant future from our present. Then for you, the events that happened in the Milky Way will have happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The Star Wars story is told by an extra-galactic civilization that lives in the distant future, so for them the events that happen in the Milky Way are events that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The initial intro is written from their point of view, not from the point of view of the present human species.