CT Something I noticed about the original Han/Greedo scene

So, this is a shot from the original version of the infamous Greedo scene, just about a millisecond after Han tosses off his one-liner:



If the flash is from Han's blaster firing underneath the table, why is there a totally disconnected flash on the wall above and to the right of Han's head in the frame, right where Greedo's shot hits in the revised versions? I'm pretty sure the flashes must have been added in post-production, because I don't think they could have set off charges like that right next to Harrison Ford. Right? So why did they put a flash up there? It doesn't make any physical sense, unless another light source--like, say, a blaster bolt--had just hit the wall there.

I'm genuinely curious. I'm pretty sure this can't be what I'm thinking it is, because that seems a bit far-fetched. But it's kind of interesting and I was wondering what the explanation could be for what is probably just an amusing coincidence.

 

Interesting. It would lend credence to the whole Greedo was meant to shoot first defense from Lucas, unless it was some flaw in the film print. This is the 1994 THX version?

 

Ho. Ly. Shortcakes

So there's a chance Greedo DID shoot first and they just had to clear that up? I actually thought that was always sarcasm from George. Damn

 

I got it from this Youtube video (I cropped out everything except the original version in the upper left):



I'd imagine it's accurate, but if someone would like to confirm that would be cool.

It could be a flaw in the film print, I suppose, but if so, it's a rather convenient flaw. It looks to me like a special effect showing Greedo shooting at the exact same time as Han, achieved through some fudging in close-ups during the editorial process. Just like...Lucas....said....

I'm only half-serious, admittedly. But still. What if?

 

This is rather fascinating. I would love to see this mystery solved.

 

Its just the overexposure of the frame for the effect. If Greedo really did fire, why was there a need to have Han weave his head with some terrible CGI "magic"?

 

Because thanks to the CGI magic, it just looks like Greedo couldn't hit a barn from inside, as opposed to not even being able to SEE the inside of the barn when he's looking straight at it

 

Because Lucas had to use a wide shot that wasn't orginally intended for that purpose, and in that wide shot Greedo's blaster is pointed directly at Han's head.

What do you mean by overexposure? I don't think that's an in-camera flash. Unless I'm mistaken, it was probably added in post-production. Also, isn't it weird that there's absolutely no illumination in between the part of the flash that's underneath Han and the part of it that's next to his head? I don't think light behaves like that, even in an overexposure scenario.

 

It still looks fug.

 

It looked awkward when it was originally changed, sure. But in the latest, final version, the cut is so quick I really don't believe you would even notice any CGI jerkiness if you weren't specifically looking for it.

And as an interesting note, Lucas actually has Greedo's blaster bolt veer off slightly so it doesn't hit exactly where the blaster is pointed. But that's because there was no way for Han's head to be digitally altered to move far enough so that Greedo's bolt would miss him. Han moves his neck about as far as is possible without him also moving his body, but the way Greedo's blaster is pointed, he would still get shot. At the very least, his hair would be visibly singed off in the shot. So, Lucas had two choices. He could digitally change the orientation of Greedo's blaster so that it isn't even pointing at Han, or he could fudge the trajectory of the blaster bolt's path a little bit. He chose the latter option. And the cut is now so quick, all you can really tell is that Han dodged his head out of the way, and Greedo missed. Most people wouldn't notice anything else except those two basic pieces of visual information. Unless you obsessively studied that clip a thousand times like we all have over the years, the impression you would have is that Han dodged out of the way of Greedo's shot.

It's the same common technique that's used in fight scenes in a lot of movies--like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, for just one example I saw again recently. Someone swings a sword at another person's head, and that other person ducks out of the way so that it doesn't hit them. But if you play the scene over again in slow-motion, you'll notice that the sword was being swung so high above the other person's head that it never would have hit them anyway! In those cases, it's usually for the safety of the performers. However, you usually don't notice this when you're watching the scene, because the movement is so quick.

 

To answer the OP,

No Greedo did not fire a shot originally for several reasons.
1) In the scene, there is a metallic thing on the wall behind Han and there is one shiny part of it that is apparently reflecting light from somewhere else. The "Greedo blast" is right where this bright spot is. So it is likely just a reflection of light from some other source.
2) Take a look at Han's hand. The "Greedo blast" is right behind his left hand. If Greedo was really meant to fire, his shot would have hit Han's hand and if that was the idea then they would have told Harrison to NOT movie his hand around like that.
3) Most if not all the blasts also cause some sparks or minor explosions when they hit walls. And Lucas was talking about how the squibs didn't work when they tried to film the scene when Greedo supposedly fired first. But the impact would be inches away from Harrison's head. And having a small explosion go off that close to an actors head, that is kind of dangerous and seems a bit unlikely.
4) The rough version of this scene have Greedo tell Han to come outside so it seems that he didn't plan to shoot him right there. They redid a lot of this scene as the original Greedo mask was not good and the puppet you see blasted for a frame or two, don't look that good either. There is no evidence that Greedo ever fired a shot in that version.
The rough version is closer to the script which says;

5) The dialogue in the Jabba scene makes no sense if Greedo did actually shoot at Han.
Jabba questions why Han "fried poor Greedo." IF Greedo did take a shot at Han, what was he supposed to do, sit there and die? And from the script we have this.

"He wasn't going to blast you." and "I think he thought he was." How does those lines make sense if Greedo did exactly that?

To sum up, Greedo didn't fire a shot. The script doesn't support the idea, Gary Kurtz doesn't support the idea, some tech guy that worked on ANH doesn't support the idea, the prop gun that the person in the Greedo suit had doesn't support the idea, later scenes in the film doesn't support the idea.
What we see is likely just a flash, a reflection of light, nothing more.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

The entire band behind Han is reflective. The only reason it's shinier in that spot is because there's a light somewhere off-camera pointing at that spot. Did that light suddenly increase its brightness a thousand times at the exact moment that big flash emanated from Han's blaster? Why would it do that?

And where did the flash come from? From looking at the dailies on Youtube, I see no evidence that the flashes were achieved in-camera. Unless someone can clarify otherwise, it looks to me like they were deliberately placed in post-production.

No, I don't think your explanation makes more sense than mine does. Not at the moment, anyway.

My contention is not that Greedo was meant to fire first when the scene was shot. My contention is that Lucas wrote the scene so that it would be made clear by Greedo's words that he intended to shoot Han then and there. But when he was cutting it together, he looked at the scene and determined that, when it played out onscreen, it didn't play visually quite like it was written. So he decided to fudge the shot so that you got the impression that there was actually a fair exchange of fire. But it didn't work very well, because it was too quick and confusing, and hardly anyone got the proper impression. Which is exactly why Lucas says he changed it.

When did he talk about squibs not going off?

Yes, and that line was cut and thus is irrelevant to how Lucas envisioned the scene playing out at the editorial stage. None of this stuff is news to me.

Jabba didn't know Greedo would try to kill Han.

That's irrelevant to what went on in the editorial stage. As I already said, Greedo didn't shoot in the original script. Doesn't mean he didn't shoot first in the movie. Things change during editorial all the time.

edit: And I genuinely don't get it. If they just overexposed everything in the shot to achieve the effect, thus inadvertently amplifying the glare off of the railing, why does the light fixture in the center of the table look practically unchanged from how it is normally? I'm not a photographer, but how does that make sense?

 

@The_Phantom_Calamari

Back in 97-98, when the SE had the changed version of the Greedo scene, people questioned Lucas about this.
And his story was that Greedo was ALWAYS meant to fire first and they tried to film it with Greedo shooting first but due to technical problems they couldn't quite do it. Lucas mentions that the squibs didn't go off correctly and other issues.
Gary Kurtz was asked about this and he denies that Greedo was ever meant to fire first or shoot at all. And from memory I saw an article where they interviewed one of the tech guys from ANH and he also says that Greedo was never meant to shoot. And the gun the Greedo actor had was just a prop. Guns that were supposed to fire had caps in the barrels to produce a flash so that the special effects people knew where to put the laser blast. But Greedo's gun was not one of these guns.

Except that is not what Lucas says happened. Lucas says that Greedo was ALWAYS mean to fire first and they tried to film it like that but it didn't quite work.
So that is why it doesn't make much sense for Lucas to let Harrison make gestures like that if he plans to put in a blast behind him. And if it was a late idea that Lucas came up with when cutting the movie, it still doesn't make much sense to have Greedo's blast be behind Han's hand, the one place where it could not be. He could have put the blast somewhere else. Also the dialogue was changed, from Greedo demanding that Han come outside so Greedo could shoot him there. That dialogue makes it abundantly clear that Greedo intends to shoot Han. So if clarity was important, why not keep that?

But Jabba clearly knows what happened and that Han shot Greedo. So IF Greedo had started the shootout, Jabba would be aware of it but then his lines makes no sense.

But again, Lucas claims that Greedo was always meant to fire first but the script says the opposite.
If Lucas is correct then some of the dialogue in the Jabba scene makes no sense.

It is not like the first film didn't have it's share of goofs and mistakes, like Obi-Wan's lightsabre etc.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/goofs?ref_=tt_ql_trv_2

This could just be that. And besides, how was people supposed to notice this when watching it in the cinema?
You can only see it by going frame by frame. Most in the audience would hardly notice this.
And if Lucas was so worried that people would get the wrong idea, this would hardly make it much clearer.
Much simpler to either have different dialogue for Greedo, like "Come out side and then I will kill you."
Or when filming, have the Greedo actor raise his gun and point it towards Han's head and say "Time to die."

Lastly and I have asked this question in another thread, what point is served by having Greedo be this lousy a shot?
He misses a stationary target less than two feet in front of him. Having him be this bad a shot stretches credulity and doesn't add anything to Han. It only makes Han seems like a really lucky *** as should be dead.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

It shows that Jabba hires incompetents from time to time. And considering the stunts Han pulls in the rest of the films, he is a lucky *******. What with flying through an asteroid filed and surviving being frozen in carbonite.

 

Yeah, I'm asking about where Lucas said this, because I've never heard that. But what Gary Kurtz says is irrelevant. He says a lot of things that have been proven to be false. I don't see how he's any more reliable than Lucas.

Lucas said it was always that way in the script? Where did he say that?

All Jabba knows is that Greedo is dead and Han is alive.

Where does Lucas claim that the script says Greedo fired first? From what I can tell, all he says is that he always intended for Greedo to have shot first in the movie. The finished movie. Not the script.

Yes, it wasn't very clear at all. Which is the exact reason Lucas says he changed it. He says he didn't have a shot of Greedo firing, so he did it all in closeups and tried to fudge it editorially. I know for a fact that Han's blaster wasn't a prop, and they apparently did film a shot of him explicitly firing at Greedo. But Lucas didn't use that shot. Why didn't he use the shot--which they apparently had--of Han's gun firing at Greedo? The only explanation I can see is because he wanted to fudge it so you couldn't really tell who shot first.

Because blasters are notoriously clumsy and random, and Greedo is a lousy bounty hunter who can't always properly compensate for that fact. But even he probably would have made the second shot.

 

This is clearly a conspiracy of epic proportions.

 

It goes all the way to the top! Seriously, though. I want to see a full quote about this squib issue. I did some Googling and I guess it was on some obscure behind-the-scenes CD-ROM called Star Wars: Making Magic, but I can only find a partial quote that doesn't mention squibs. And I don't exactly have that CD-ROM handy myself. But this is a Star Wars fan board. Someone must have it!

In the meantime, let's all analyze the Zapruder film frame by frame.

 

In no way has that scene ever been "confusing."

Not only have the shots themselves always been completely clear, but the construction of the entire scene preceding them and leading up to the big moment was crystal clear as well. This was straight out of a western, as it was always supposed to be. Greedo threatened him, and then Han put him down, right after his pre-shot ironic punchline. Just a flash, some smoke, and then Greedo falls over as Han is still calmly sitting there, not having even moved a muscle. He then walks casually over and flips the bartender some money, as if he's done this a few times before. The Man With No Name couldn't have done it any better. Crystal. Clear.

 

It isn't crystal clear at all. You don't even see Han fire his blaster. First you hear Greedo imply that he's about to shoot Han, then you hear Han toss off a quick one-liner, then a flash immediately envelops the screen and you can't really tell what's actually happened until it's all over and Greedo slumps over dead.

Your mind fills in the blanks the way you want it to go, because that's the way you've always interpreted it. It's actually edited in a very incoherent manner, probably intentionally. We cut directly from a shot of Han to a blinding flash of light. That's confusing. That would generally seem to imply that Han has been blasted by Greedo. But then we get a shot of a crappy-looking Greedo dummy that's so quick it's almost subliminal, and then there's an explosion. Then when the smoke clears, we can see that Han is fine and Greedo is dead. But it's actually not clear exactly what happened. The movie never shows us.

Maybe the initial flash was partially as a result of Greedo firing his blaster at Han and missing. The movie doesn't show Greedo shooting at Han, but it never shows Han shooting at Greedo, either. Your mind fills in the blanks because of the context of the scene and because of the editing. But from the context of the scene, we know that Greedo is mere moments away from shooting Han. We can't conclude who fired at whom and who didn't, because the editing is confusing. All we know is that Greedo got hit and Han didn't.

And there's an inexplicable flash on the wall by Han's head that couldn't have come from his own blaster. That much is clear, I think.

 

Han Solo is the Man With No Name?

 

lol, have you even seen the original scene? We see Han subtly pull his blaster from his holster as the conversation intensifies. A few seconds later after Greedo threatens his life, Han delivers a cocky one-liner (which Lucas edited in the SE, removing several frames to try and tone down Han's cocky expression), cue the blaster fire immediately after the punch-line, a little smoke, and Greedo falls over dead, as Han is sitting there calmly with his gun drawn and pointed at Greedo. Confusing? No, the entire scene is perfectly edited, leading up to the climax. Straight out of a western! And in fact it plays out exactly as it reads in the rough drafts and final shooting script.
Honestly, I'm amazed that anyone would try and argue otherwise.

Look, I'm a Lucas fan too, but he really screwed up this scene, among others. It looks ridiculous in it's current "official" form, and I just want to enjoy the theatrical versions that I grew up with and that started this whole crazy pop-culture phenomenon in the first place. He had every right to make changes, but I just wish he had made the original versions, that so many fans fell in love with, available as well. The OT are my favorite movies, but the blu-ray versions are simply unwatchable for me. I don't understand why certain fans are so against the UOT being released...

 

I don't see any difference in the cockiness of Han's expression between the two versions. I think you're imagining things.

And nope, it's edited in a fairly confusing way. We know Han is planning to shoot Greedo. Duh. But we also know that Greedo is planning to shoot Han. In fact, he's just about to do it, which is why Han makes his move at that moment. Why couldn't Greedo have gotten a quick shot off? Was he courteously waiting to see if Han might have had more to say? His finger was on the trigger, for God's sake.

And what's up with that flash on the wall next to Han's head? It's weird, is what it is.

 

It's Han's shadow.



Sorry about the messy drawing...