As we all know, the most fan blasted movie in George Lucas' Star Wars prequel trilogy is hitting theaters tomorrow in 3D. So ol Georgy boy is doing the rounds, promoting the movie, answering questions etc. In one particular interview with THR, he attempts to clear up the whole "who shot first" kerfuffle. If you are unaware what that is (how can you call yourself a geek?), basically in the original version of A New Hope Han Solo "appears" to shoot the bounty hunter Greedo in cold blood to escape capture. It's a fairly shocking moment that contributed to the notion of Solo as a good guy, but one that wasn't afraid to get downright ruthless when he had to. But in the special edition version released years later, Greedo clearly shoots first making Han's killing shot self defense, and basically neutering the man's bad-ass status. Here is what Lucas had to say about the whole situation..
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.
He could well be talking out of his ample posterior. It's possible this is nothing more than some attempt to make us fans seem like we are making a mountain out of a molehill. Both Lucas and Steven Spielberg have clearly made changes in their older movies in order to come across more "kid friendly" (guns become mobile phones in
E.T etc) and surely that is why Greedo was made to shoot first in
Star Wars. Or was it? Do you believe him? Here are both versions of the scene, decide for yourselves..