To Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope, Disney Officially Renames Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope Posted by Dustin on April 17, 2019 at 12:51 PM CST Gamebyte is reporting: We’ve come a long way since A New Hope, but now, the House of Mouse is renaming George Lucas’ epic space opera. The movie is now called Star Wars: A New Hope, fitting with Disney’s current naming of the movies since Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015. The move comes as Disney is setting up to launch their new streaming service called Disney Plus, and wanted some continuity across the Star Wars Saga. This isn't the first time this has happened. Read the full report here!
Yeah, they are not changing the name to "Episode IV: A New Hope" -- they are removing the "Episode IV" from it that George added during the special editions.
I'm suddenly reminded of a line from "1776". When Congress is demanding all sorts of revisions to the Declaration of Independence, John Adams quips, "They won't be satisfied until they remove one of the Fs from Jefferson's name." How's about we just leave it alone?
Wow. This may be one of the most garbage clickbait headlines I've seen related to Star Wars in at least four or five days. No, the title is not being changed. When you watch the movie on Disney+, the words "Episode IV" will still be in the opening crawl. The title is merely being displayed as "Star Wars: A New Hope" on the little icon you click, which is the exact same way the title has appeared in places such as iTunes since the movies were made available digitally in 2015, and the exact same way the title has been presented in every article on the official Star Wars website since The Force Awakens was announced as the title for Episode VII in 2014. This is nothing new, this is an arbitrary titling policy that has been in place for at least the past four years.
So it's rather like how the first Indy film was titled "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark" on packaging for a time?
I did notice they dropped the episode number in the Disney+ demo, this is keeping in line with the Disney movie naming conventions "star wars: (movie name)" also #s of installments in titles are becoming a wee bit passe. Of note, when you watch Last Jedi on Netflix the title text actually says "Star Wars - Episode VIII - the Last Jedi" which isn't how it was labeled in the marketing at all.
It goes back much farther. The actual Episode numbers got promoted less each prequel release even though it was on the trailers and posters. The least so for ROTS outside of those. The Episode I tag was really about letting the general audience know it was set in the past. Even the pre-sale BD's were about the titles more. 'Episode' was dropped but they still had roman numerals attached but those are out of style as Rocky and Wrestlemania have dropped them as well.
Precisely. If you go to filmratings.com you can actually see what the "official" title of a movie is as registered with the MPAA. The three movies of the original trilogy were re-submitted for rating in 2004, so they each have their full title (Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope, for example). Interestingly, while the Episode numbers are featured in the films themselves, they are NOT included in the MPAA titles for The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi.
I'd love to hear if focus group research has discovered that roman numerals have less legibility in our modern eon.
Not that I approve their marketing choice to ommit the Episode titles from the existing movies, but didn't this happen back in 2014/2015?
Yes, it's been that way since they released the digital collection. Some people just value clicks over research.
Although I dislike the removal of the Roman numerals, this has been the policy since the sale so although it's disappointing, it is unsurprising.
If you don't have episode numbers, you don't have to hold to the idea of a "saga" bounded by nine films.
Fortunately 4k steelbooks are the same size as blu ray steelbooks, so when the 4k edition comes out I will just keep my UK Trilogy steelbooks (probably the last video release to have the Roman numerals on the cover) and switch out the discs. Although the discs wont have the roman numerals which will suck.
