Q&As About 'Star Wars': What is the name of the first Star Wars movie of the Original Trilogy?

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1977 poster promoting Star Wars. © 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation

On Quora, Marielle Jenna asks:

 What is the name of the first Star Wars movie of the Original Trilogy?

 My reply:
Officially, the name of the first Star Wars movie of the Original Trilogy is Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope.
Originally, though, 20th Century Fox released writer-director George Lucas’s now-iconic space fantasy adventure on May 25, 1977 as Star Wars.
The studio, which financed, marketed, and released the film (indeed, owning the rights in perpetuity, although that’s now a moot point since The Walt Disney Company now owns Fox and Lucasfilm) allegedly refused to allow Lucas to include the Episode IV: A New Hope subtitle in the main titles sequence. Per Lucas’s account in the director’s commentary, Fox executives feared that audiences would be put off by seeing an “Episode IV” subtitle at a time when no other Star Wars movies had been produced. In spite of Lucas’s pitch that the idea was to give viewers a taste of the 1930s serials experience (“Oh, you missed Episode III? That was last week!”), Fox dug in its heels and said “No. You can’t put the subtitle in.”
Contrary to fan anecdotes that they swear they saw the Episode IV subtitle as early as 1977 or the 1979 “two-weeks-only” re-release, Lucasfilm was not allowed to add the subtitle until the 1981 re-release, by which time Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back had come and gone. The decision to re-title the film was made in the interim period between the first two films, but it was not made public till November of 1979, when Lucas’s script for “Star Wars” was published in Carol Titelman’s The Art of Star Wars.
© 1979 Ballantine Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. 
I do not remember if the press made a big deal of Titelman’s book in 1979. Considering that I did not know the book existed until the summer of 1980 and that none of my friends - some of whom were more ardent fans than I was - ever mentioned the Episode IV issue, probably not.
Interestingly, even though most fans from the 1977 Generation know intellectually that the film was rebranded as Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope, most of us refer it simply as Star Wars, even though the latter term now refers to the entire franchise.
To sum up:
The original title of Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope was Star Wars.
It was known as Star Wars both by fans and the two companies responsible for its production and release (20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm) until November 1979.
It was re-titled (in-house) as Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope sometime before November of 1979 and released in theaters with its new name in the Summer ’81 re-release.

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