I give the side-eye to people who call it “A New Hope” or “Episode IV.”
Wasn’t it always called “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope?”
I never got to see it originally in the 70’s due to not being born yet, but I had seen it long before the special edition changes made in the '97 release. It was always something even my dad, who did see the original release, joked about. “Where is episodes 1 through 3?”
Nope. It was originally just Star Wars.
George Lucas (who lies all the time) claims he always planned for it to be Episode IV, but that introduction was only added when it was re-released before after The Empire Strikes Back came out… and when people initially saw it, they laughed.
Edit: Got the chronology wrong
Maybe, maybe not - but I do remember the review of “Return of the Jedi” in my teenage magazine from 1983/84, where indeed they quoted Lucas as saying that there would be 9 movies in total. I think there was even mention of 3 prequels, but it’s been 40 years so… I might be wrong on that.
The best star wars was when George didn’t have total control, the first movie was saved in the editing room
Well I’ll be damned. TIL!
Although even if he did plan it to be “episode IV…” WHY START AT 4?! lol
Partly because it fit in with the whole idea of being a modern Flash Gordon serial, where you drop in partway through the story. I think it worked pretty well, personally.
Because he outlined the story from the events of Phantom Menace all the way to Return of the Jedi before the first movie even went into production.
Then he decided to tell the second part of the story first, THEN realized the script was too long for even that and split it into three movies.
He wasn’t sure he’d be able to commit the whole story to film, so he thought the introduction of Vader’s son and the destruction of the super weapon was the most important part and was able to stand up on its own.
When he realized he could actually finish the second act of the story, he surprised the viewing audience by calling Empire Strikes Back “Episode V” and retroactively calling Star Wars “Episode IV A New Hope”.
Am I misremembering? I saw it when it came out and I thought the film had a title card that said Episode IV and everybody in the theater laughed at that. Sometimes different cuts of a movie get released in different areas.
1981: In April, Star Wars was re-released, with the addition of the subtitles “Episode IV” and “A New Hope” added to the opening crawl.[13]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releases#Release_history
Nope. Not until many years later. Hell it was only ONE movie until it took over the world and people could not get enough of it, so everyone and their dog begged Lucas to make more.
Then ya boi’s all “oh it was always going to be a trilogy” yeah yeah okay George. “And it was always meant to have three prequels which would” George, shutup a minute - firstly there’s no such word as prequel, so - anyway.
Look, you mashed up Metropolis and Dune on a whim and got solid gold, why not leave it alone? Money. Right. Of course. Ah well.
Not MY Star Wars:
As far as I’m concerned, that was a scene with a different Jabba, a big Irish guy in a fur coat. But it wasn’t in the movie, so it doesn’t matter.
Agreed, but then if you watch the movies in chronological order, which I think is what the expectation is at this point, absolutely none of the buildup in any of the original trilogy matters.
Precisely. If Lucas didn’t bother to retain that actor/character for ROTJ, then it never happened.
I agree. That said, this fan did a ‘fix’ of the version with Jabba in a pretty ingenious way.
I believe you are being what RPG circles call a “grognard”
Han doesn’t shoot first. Han is the only one who shoots. In the original Greedo never fires a shot.
