We Don’t Care What You Say, George: Han Shot First!

Who shot first in Star Wars? George Lucas says his infamous tweak clarifies the situation.
Image: Lucasfilm

George Lucas needs to stop screwing around withStar Wars fans’ memories. It’s terrible enough — worse than terrible enough, honestly — that, nearly 35 years withStar Wars (not-yet-Episode IV) premiered, he is subdue making significant changes to the original trilogy. But now he’s insisting that we’ve been seeing it incorrect since the very beginning.

Yes, Lucas is really claiming that he only changed the appearance, not what really happened, in the Han-shoots-Greedo vista in Mos Eisley in the (real) first film. Everybody knows that, until the “Special Edition” hit theaters in 1997, Han shot Greedo before Greedo may possibly shoot him, and Greedo got off a wild shot as he died. Except according to Lucas, that’s not what happened. In a recent interview withThe Hollywood Reporter, Lucas says:

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 [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he really isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I place a small wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but all wanted to reflect that Han shot first, because they wanted to reflect that he really just gunned him down.

This is — and I’m using this term only because this is meant to be a family-friendly blog — garbage. No Star Wars fan anywhere, ever, has plotting of or wanted Han Solo to be a “cold-blooded killer.” A cold-blooded killer would kill someone he knew or at least plotting to be unarmed, when that person is not a threat to them. In the Han-Greedo confrontation, that describes Greedo, not Han. Greedo is holding a gun on Han throughout their conversation, and makes it perfectly clear he’s plotting to shoot Han right then and there. Han simply gets the drop on Greedo and kills him before he’s able to carry out his plot. Who — other than Lucas, evidently — would consider that “cold-blooded?”

Then there’s the fact that it simply makes no sense at all that Greedo may possibly have shot first. Greedo is supposed to be a qualified gift hunter. How long do you reflect the career, and life, of a gift hunter in theStar Wars universe would be if he may possibly really miss a stationary butt 3 feet in front of him that he’s been aiming at for several minutes? In the original version, he misses with his dying shot because — here’s the thing — he’s dying at the time, and that can really throw off your aim. There is simply no reasonable explanation for Greedo missing before Han shoots him — heck, Jar Jar may possibly make that shot!

So seriously, George, if you can’t exercise enough self-control to stop yourself from changing your movies — even with the fact that you’re the only one who thinks you’ve made them better — at least have the decency not to insult our intelligence by trying to make us reflect we didn’t see what we know we saw.