Q&As About 'Star Wars' History: When did the Original Trilogy of Star Wars movies adopt the Episode IV, V and VI subtitles? Was this met with confusion at the time?
On May 19, 1980, fans saw the first use of the numbered episode/subtitle format in a Star Wars Saga film. By then, Lucasfilm had already decided to rename the original 1977 Star Wars film as Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope, but the new title would not be seen on screen until 1981. © 1980 Lucasfilm Ltd. On Quora, Henry Hunter recently asked: When did the Original Trilogy of Star Wars movies adopt the Episode IV, V and VI subtitles? Was this met with confusion at the time? My reply: In November 1979, Ballantine Books published the original edition of The Art of Star Wars. In Part One: The Script, readers discovered the new Episode number and subtitle scheme for the first time. I remember buying this book a few weeks after seeing The Empire Strikes Back. Oddly enough, even though I went to bookstores as often as I could as a teenager, I did not see any copies of Titelman's book in stores until the Summer of 1980. © 1979 Ballantine Books and Lucasfilm Ltd...