'Star Wars' Questions: Who fired first in the Mos Eisley cantina?
In the original 1977 version of Star Wars , Han shoots first; Greedo seems to have an itchy trigger finger and has just told our favorite Corellian smuggler that he’s been looking forward to killing him for a long time. Han doesn’t want to end up as a smoking corpse on the Mos Eisley cantina floor, so he shoots the Rodian bounty hunter from under the table. Not exactly sportsmanlike, I admit, but for Han, it was a matter of survival. In the 1997 Special Edition re-release of Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope, George Lucas tweaked this scene because, as much as fans love the original scene, he felt uncomfortable with how cold-blooded Solo seems. So, per Lucas's request, Special Edition editor T.M. Christopher fiddled with the shot so that Greedo fires a fraction of a second before Han does. The “they shoot at the same time” bit has been fiddled with for timing issues at least twice. Once for the 2004 DVD release, then in 2011 for the Blu-ray edition. As ...