George Lucas suggests Greedo was never supposed to shoot first. But, according to this book by, er, George Lucas, he was...
By now, you might have read the story we posted earlier, reporting that George Lucas has finally addressed the issue of who was supposed to shoot first in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The area of contention, as many of you are oh-so-familiar with, is whether Han Solo shot first, or Greedo.
In a new interview at The Hollywood Reporter, George Lucas suggests that the original plan was for Greedo to shoot first all along, saying that “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.”
However, Star Wars fans have not been convinced by his words (whether they're bothered if Greedo shot first or not). And, it seems, Mr Lucas might just be rewriting history a little.
With thanks to Den Of Geek reader Chris Lunt, who you can find on Twitter here, we have the text of George Lucas’ 1976 book (published in 1978 in the version we have here), Star Wars: From The Adventures Of Luke Skywalker.
It says it's written by a Mr George Lucas, although it was, in his defence, revealed to have been ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster, presumably under Lucas' supervision, though. As you'll see from the text we're about to show you, it leaves no ambiguity.
You can see the cover up there, and here’s the copyright page so you can verify the dates.
So then: here’s the crucial passage.
May we draw your attention particularly to:
“Light and noise filled the little corner of the cantina, and when it had faded, all that remained of the unctuous alien was a smoking, slimy spot on the stone floor.
Solo brought his hand and the smoking weapon it held out from beneath the table, drawing bemused stares from several of the cantina’s patrons and chuckling sounds from its more knowledgeable ones. They had known the creature had committed its fatal mistake in allowing Solo the chance to get his hands under cover”.
Note that it does not read:
"Greedo suddenly fired a shot, and in a move of pure self defence, the heroic Solo, as a last resort given that peace negotiations had failed, reluctanlty fired back, quietly sobbing as he did so. Why had it come to this? Why? Why?".
Hmmm. No matter what angle we read that from, it looks to us that only one person fired first. Shoot first, Greedo did not.
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