Star Wars raked in $3B in 2011 and Han never shot first: George Lucas in The Hollywood Reporter

The Phantom Menace is coming upon us yet again, and the press has been piling up. We’ll have more of a roundup tomorrow, but for this afternoon let’s start off with The Hollywood Reporter’s feature on Star Wars George Lucas. In it, we learn the franchise raked in $3 billion in licensing revenue last year. (That’s a lot of lightsabers – in the accompanying photo gallery, they say the franchise has raked in $20B in licensed goods alone.) Overall though, the feature doesn’t hold much for informed fans – merchandising rights, The Clone Wars, etc. So what’s really making waves among the geeky internet is a Q&A sidebar, where Lucas talks reaction to his Star Wars tweaks (“…when I make the slightest change, everybody thinks it’s the end of the world.”) and Han not shooting first:

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.

He also talks about CGI Yoda, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo and SOPA, but you know what’s getting passed around the internet for the rest of the evening…

9 Replies to “Star Wars raked in $3B in 2011 and Han never shot first: George Lucas in The Hollywood Reporter

  1. Like, I’ve not cared much for what George says, or ever listened, but this one is too hard to ignore. George is no longer part of Star Wars, in my opinion.

  2. George IS Star Wars. That is like saying that Tolkien had no business writing the Lord of the Rings the way he did, because some fan thinks that they know better than him, or they know better than Rowling, or Jordan, or Martin. Lets stop the silliness here.

  3. I agree with Peter. He may make some poor decisions, but Lucas created this great universe that we get obsessive about. He has the right to say what’s real in it.

  4. And we have the right to ignore it. And him. “I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first.” No George, you didn’t. You put in a lousy CG effect to make kids too young to remember the original think that Greedo is the one that is shooting first. Not the same thing. Plus you re-released the theatrical versions on DVD anyway (okay, the quality was lousy, too, but still…), so we all know what the original looked like.
    Talk about dotingness…

  5. *headdesk* *looks around*

    Who thought Han shot first and did NOT think of him as a bloodthirsty killer from the get go?

    Honestly as a kid I never thought about it- Greedo had the gun on him and making threats. And Greedo was a bounty hunter.

    Still wouldn’t a better recon been to insert a line or something to the effect that where Han shot Greedo it wouldn’t kill him but give Han the room to escape? The credits tossed to go to Greedo’s immediate care and pay off the barkeep?

  6. I wouldn’t care so much that he changed it if he’d just admit that he changed it. Now he’s just flat out lying.

  7. Saw SW when I was 7 in 1977, been a total SW geek ever since, but will never understand some fan obsessions

  8. “Who thought Han shot first and did NOT think of him as a bloodthirsty killer from the get go?

    Honestly as a kid I never thought about it- Greedo had the gun on him and making threats. And Greedo was a bounty hunter. ” –eliz

    I’m in the same camp. I really only saw Han as smarter than Greedo. It’s not like Han killed him for no reason – he was saving his own skin from a guy holding him up at gunpoint. Han was cunning enough to know that Greedo wasn’t paying attention to what Han was doing under the table.

  9. “Han was cunning enough to know that Greedo wasn’t paying attention to what Han was doing under the table.”

    Indeed, and the novelization of the movie states this emphatically- the bar patrons agree that Greedo’s biggest mistake was letting the Corellian get his hands under cover.

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