George Lucas defends Greedo shooting Han Solo first

George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars franchise, recently shed light on his decision to change the order of shots fired between smuggler Han Solo and bounty hunter Greedo in their deadly encounter within the original 1977 Star Wars film.

In a new interview with The Washington Post, Lucas steadfastly defends his decision. Lucas believes that Han Solo shouldn’t have shot first because he’s supposed to be a classic John Wayne-style white hat cowboy, not “a cold-blooded killer”. And when you’re John Wayne, you don’t shoot people [first] – you let them have the first shot. “It’s a mythological reality that we hope our society pays attention to”, Lucas said.

But in the digitally remastered version 20 years later, Lucas shows Greedo firing first by a split second. “You just say, ‘Why do I need to do this?'”

With that, Lucas explained and defended his edit in the 1997 special edition of Star Wars. In totally unrelated news, George Lucas hasn’t been on the Internet since 2000. It also touches on Lucas’ thoughts on not being involved with The Force Awakens, a film that he says strays from his original vision for Star Wars. Considering how vocal haters and the “you ruined my childhood” brigade can be on social media, the last thing a busy filmmaker needs is non-stop tweets saying “Han shot first, dammit!” and “Were you drunk when you created Jar Jar?”

He likened his separation, which took place when he sold Lucasfilm Ltd.to Disney three years ago, to “a divorce”, noting that Disney “decided they didn’t like” the stories he had come up with for a new trilogy. “You’re either the dictator or you’re not”.

For his part, Harrison Ford made his stance on the whole debate clear in a 2014 Reddit AMA when he responded: “I don’t know and I don’t care”.

But when is George Lucas actually going to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens?

“When you look at Star Wars and Empire, they are very different lightsaber battles, but for me they felt more powerful because they were not quite as slick”. The first of the oft-derided Star Wars prequel movies, The Phantom Menace, was released in 1999, so that was probably indeed a good time to bail out. I’d make myself miserable.