It has been nearly 40 years since the original "Star Wars" had us witnessing Han Solo shooting Greedo point blank in the Mos Eisley Cantina and branding him as someone no alien race should mess around with but the debate as to who really shot first after the 1997 makeover continues to this day. Everyone who watched the original claim Han shot first but George Lucas, along with the people who have only seen the edited version insist that Greedo shot first.
Finally, in an interview published on Nov. 30, Lucas confesses why the change was made in the 1997 special edition. Yes, confesses, which means that Lucas admits Han definitely shot first in the original but that he made the conscious decision to change that encounter.
Lucas said the decision to make Greedo shoot first was made because the scene painted a Han Solo who is a cold-blooded killer and it really bothered him because he was supposed to marry Princess Leia.
"I was thinking mythologically - should he be a cowboy, should he be John Wayne? And I said, 'Yeah, he should be John Wayne.' And when you're John Wayne, you don't shoot people [first] - you let them have the first shot" he said.
This is a huge deal considering he insisted in a 2012 interview that people were just confused because of how the production edited the scene in the original.
"What I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people... 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," he said.
Now the truth is out. For Lucas, how else could Han be worthy of the princess if he's the type of person who takes the first shot? Then again, it wasn't a "shoot now, ask questions later" scenario for Han. Greedo already told him that there is a price on his head and that he will take Han whether he likes it or not, dead or alive.
Surely even if Han shot first, it could be seen as self-defense or his survival instinct kicking in. After all, Greedo already expressed his intentions and already threatened his life and this is maybe where the backlash is coming from. Lucas seems to think that Han should be worthy of the princess from the beginning but some would argue of the possibility that maybe Han wasn't worthy in the beginning but he becomes worthy as he proves himself time and again throughout the story.
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