A long time ago, in a film set very far away, two actors moved some guns. When the scene was shown in theaters, the character Han Solo shot bounty hunter Greedo and killed him. Many years later, Star Wars director George Lucas updated his classic saga to include Greedo firing at Han before Han shoots him. Fans revolted. They got tattoos that read “Han Shot First.” Now, Lucas is updating his story to say that Greedo ALWAYS shot first. Read on, if you dare.
On the eve of Phantom Menace returning to theaters in 3D, Lucas spoke with the Hollywood Reporter about controversies surrounding his saga.
Asked how he felt about how fanatical people can get over his work Lucas said. “It’s not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie.”
True enough, but then the director continued. “The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t,” he said. “It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.”
Breathe.
His explanation/reasoning is that he hasn’t changed nearly as much of his original story as other people have their’s. “If you look at Blade Runner, it’s been cut sixteen ways from Sunday and there are all kinds of different versions of it. Star Wars, there’s basically one version — it just keeps getting improved a little bit as we move forward,” he said. “All art is technology and it improves every year. Whether it’s on the stage or in music or in painting, there are technological answers that happen, and because movies are so technological, the advances become more obvious.”
We don’t really need to argue, we have empirical evidence. I’ll just leave you with the wonderfully logical and wise words from Rob Bricken at Topless Robot, “Greedo never fires at all, and thus cannot possibly be first in a race he didn’t enter.”
(via Topless Robot)
