CT Another SE change that causes problems: Vader & the Emperor's altered dialogue in TESB.

Correct. This is what I've said for a while now, Han did intend to shoot first, but as it is rethought now, Greedo just happens to get off a shot first and Han finishes him.

 

Han pre-1997 is a bad ass. Han post-1997 is a bad ass and a lucky son of a bitch. Yet, one more reason the original version of that scene is superior.

 

& Greedo, a professional bounty hunter is reduced to a bumbling incompetent fool. He has several minutes to calmly aim his blaster at a still target just a few feet away & this is his shot:





Which by extension makes Jabba look weak & diminished for hiring such imbeciles. The OOT including RotJ depicts Jabba overall as a top level gangster who is feared by all. The SE changes undermine that. In addition to this look at the inserted scene with cartoon Jabba added. Setting aside how awful he looks, they come up with the cheap gag of Han deliberately standing on his tail. Sure I guess some (probably 5 years olds) may get a giggle out of this, but it makes a joke out of the character. Jabba previously was the Vito Corleone of the Saga. A figure not to be crossed & always to be respected. We heard about him during ANH & TESB & his reputation as a deadly fearsome criminal boss grew & grew until we finally got to meet him. Sure enough he was ruthless & powerful, even to the point of being immune to Force manipulation. Compare that with his introduction now, where he's played as a joke. Imagine someone being heavied by Vito in the Godfather for owing a debt & during the meeting he pinches Vito's cheeks & ruffles his hair. Ridiculous.

 

Nope, Lucas has said that Greedo was MEANT to fire first.
That they tried to film the scene with Greedo shooting first but that the effects didn't work so they had to settle for this.
So, according to Lucas, the scene was made with the intent that Greedo shoots first and Han shoots back.
And the reason why is that Han is meant to be one of the good guys and good guys don't shoot first.
So, again according to Lucas, those comments are not the reason, he says that Greedo was always meant to fire first.

Of course this is just what Lucas said after he made this change in 1997 and after he had gotten some criticism about it. So it very much sounds like Lucas is trying to to deflect that criticism by arguing that he was restoring the scene to what it was supposed to be.
But was Greedo ever meant to first first?
The evidence doesn't bear that out, the script never mentions it, the producer denies it, the actor in the Greedo costume denies it.

So it is likely that younger Lucas never intended for Greedo to ever fire his gun.
But later he changed his mind and changed the scene and made up this story to justify it.

Exactly, Greedo should not have missed a stationary target sitting a few feet from him.
But he did and this is one reason why this change does not work.
And probably why the original intent was that Greedo doesn't get to fire, because he wouldn't have missed.

Another reason is the Jabba dialogue.
Jabba ask Han why "he fried poor Greedo".
So clearly Jabba knew what went down in the cantina but if Greedo got off a shot then his question is stupid.
He knows that Greedo tried to shoot Han so why does he bother to ask?
Did he think that Han should not react when people are shooting at him?

Take that up with Lucas, it is he that argues that Han does not fire until he is aware that Greedo has fired on him.
And in the 1997 version, there is a longer delay between Greedo shooting and Han shooting back.
Meaning that Han IS responding to Greedo shooting at him.

The newer version makes that unlikely but then it goes against what Lucas said about Han Solo being John Wayne.
If him shooting Greedo was not in response to Greedo shooting at him and was instead just because he realized that Greedo intended him harm.
Then Han would have shoot Greedo anyway and Greedo getting off a shot does not matter.
So then Han sort of did shoot first but, again, Lucas said he shouldn't do that.

And he shoots first against several imperials on the DS as well.
All this shows is that Lucas given reason for the change, the;

Makes no sense.

Lucas changed it because HE felt that Han was too callous and he wanted to make him more of a good guy.
But when people objected, he invented this reason, which doesn't make logical sense.
Nor does it make sense for Lucas to say that Han was "a cold-blooded killer" when in the original, Greedo had a gun and was threatening his life. So it was self-defense.

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No I think the reason is that Lucas wanted it changed to make Han more of a good guy rather than the more shady person he was originally. He either forgot or didn't care about all the other instances where Han shoots first.
Lucas mentioned Han being John Wayne but I know that Lucas was also a big fan of Sergio Leone so I think it likely that Han was intended more like a Clint Eastwood character from those films.
But as he grew older, Lucas changed his mind and decided to change the film.
Not unlike Spielberg taking out guns and replacing them with walkie-talkies in ET.

Why he changed the scene again is, as I've said, probably as response to the criticism and so now they appear to shoot at the same time.
But when he first changed the scene it was to have Greedo shoot first and Han react to that and shoot back.
Again, ‘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.

So Lucas means that Han is getting out his gun and getting ready to blast Greedo but he is holding his fire because he wants Greedo to have the first shot.
Rather moronic for Han to think this if you ask me.

Bye.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Han Solo as the John Wayne type character? In ANH? I don't see it.
Maybe by ROTJ or TFA. But not ANH.

 

More Ricky Nelson!

 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/george-lucas-star-wars-interview-288523

Lucas: Well, it’s not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie. 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 actually isn’t. 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.

It’s the same thing with Yoda. We tried to do Yoda in CGI in Episode I, but we just couldn’t get it done in time. We couldn’t get the technology to work, so we had to use the puppet, but the puppet really wasn’t as good as the CGI. So when we did the reissue, we had to put the CGI back in, which was what it was meant to be.

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. … 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.

 

Yeah, bcs there was soo much confusion George

What Lucas describes there is a bunch of BS. Completely refuted by the actor playing Greedo & Kurtz. Also George if you went in in '97 & "cleaned up the confusion", why did you go back & alter it even more later? Lucas is the only one who seemed confused about this.

 

Man, I hate this revisionist BS. Just admit you changed your mind two decades later. Nobody's arguing Han's a cold blooded killer. Anybody who's holding you at gun point, and telling you, that it's the idea to go over your dead body, and that he's looking forward to it, is not going to ask you out on a date. There also was no confusion in the original scene. Greedo was threatening Han, and was obviously about to shoot him, when Han refused to cooperate. So, Han shot him, while Greedo was reveling in the moment. It was a perfect scene that would have fit in a Clint Eastwood western. However, as has been made abundently clear with other alterations such as Vader's added nooooooo in ROTJ, the new millenium Lucas doesn't do subtle, and so he dumbed down the Han/Greedo scene with a terrible looking CGI effect, and then created this myth on how it was everyone else who didn't understand the scene's original context, and so he had to set the record straight. Well, just to get the record straight George, shooting a guy who's threatening your life, and is about to kill you, does not make you a cold blooded killer! I mean, how many people did Han shoot throughout the OT? Dozens? If he had waited for each of those villains to shoot first, he would have been Swiss cheese by the end of the trilogy...

 

There never was any confusion.

Greedo had a gun pointed at Solo the whole scene. Made some threats, then indicated that Solo would be losing his ship and his life. Meanwhile Solo is stealthily upholstering his blaster to defend himself. Han blows Greedo away while he's too busy taunting him about his imminent death.

And it didn't make Han a cold blooded killer. So if the audience needed Han to be a cold blooded killer, he would have needed to change the dialogue to avoid any confusion about Greedo simply wanting to talk to Solo and accompany him to a business meeting with Jabba, rather than give him lines where he tells Solo how much he has anticipated the day he would kill him.

I think Lucas had a brainwave and somehow concluded that people had somehow confused Solo with the Angel Eyes character played by Lee Van Cleef in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. In the scene that Lucas is copying/hommaging from that film, Van Cleef plays the Greedo role in the conversation. And after he gets what he needs out of the conversation, and after the victim has paid him to leave him be, he shoots his unarmed victim through the table they are sharing, in cold blood. In other words, Van Cleef didn't turn the tables on someone with the upper hand and intent to kill.

Anyone watching the two films and equating the Solo and the Angel Eyes characters simply because a bit of familiar action, but with completely different intent and context, really shouldn't be catered to at the expense of people who pay attention to all aspects of a scene and a film.

Of course only people who've seen TGTB&TU would equate them on those terms. Anyone who spontaneously concludes that Han is cold blooded killer from the order in which the laser blasts are fired, at the exclusion of every other shot and line of dialogue that is used in the film must really have difficulty appreciating more than 10% of the aspects of the movies that are discussed on these boards. And we're fans. What kind of fan ignores everything except which order the characters fire in for what amounts to an execution that turns into a duel where the would be executioner gets their comeuppance?

 

I don't ever recall pre-1997 Han being referred to as a cold blooded killer. Did I miss that backlash against Han shooting Greedo first?

 

strong am I with the EU when gone i am the last of the cannon will you be

 

I must admit that I liked this altered dialogue between Sidious and Vader upon my initial viewing in 2004. However, other than the line about the "young Rebel who destroyed the Death Star," I think that McDiarmid should have merely recorded the original dialogue and Vader's should have been left intact.

 

Watched the de-specialized edition of ANH last night with somone who'd never seen SW before. So pleased this is possible.