A long time ago, in a movie studio far, far away, George Lucas could do no wrong.
After two world-changing movies, he even managed to shoehorn a tribe of teddy bears into his third installment, and few people complained. Return Of The Jedi still felt very much like a Star Wars movie, and tied up the Holy Trilogy nicely, even with its flaws.
Han Solo was a smuggler. Sure, he was handsome and charismatic, but he had to deal with some pretty nasty people in his line of work, like bounty hunters, Imperial Stormtroopers, and rich gangsters like Jabba The Hutt.
Indeed, when we are first introduced to Han in the first movie, he shows us exactly how he's managed to survive his perilous trade, when he shoots Greedo the bounty hunter before Greedo gets the opportunity to shoot him.
This dark side to Han's character was one of the aspects of the original Star Wars movie (which later came to be known as "A New Hope") that gave it the depth that set it apart from other movies of its genre.
But Lucas couldn't leave it alone. At some point in his life he lost perspective, got carried away by his own hype and decided "it's MY movie and I'll change it if I want, even though it has enjoyed two whole decades of success, lucrative merchandising and unparallelled fandom".
Lucas decided that the depth of character that fans loved was a misinterpretation of his (Lucas's) intent, and that an exchange of fire had always been there, but that bad editing had obscured this, and viewers had simply INVENTED the idea that Han had shot first because they wanted to believe he was a cold-blooded killer.
Lucas had felt that he was CORRECTING this mistake by making it obvious that Greedo the cold-blooded bounty hunter had shot first from point blank range and somehow missed, allowing Han to kill him first.
So, by Lucas's admission, Han WAS NOT the person we all knew and loved, who went through a transformation throughout the trilogy from anti-hero to hero, he was actually just a plain old hero all along, and all that character development we thought was there was merely the audience getting the wrong end of the stick.
In other words, had Lucas chosen better editing staff at the time, the Star Wars trilogy would have been a much shallower ordeal, and no doubt would have been less popular as a consequence.
And in fact, Lucas later showed exactly what he could do with staff who weren't inept, when he released the shallow, emotionless, one-dimensional eye-candy prequel trilogy.
The new three movies looked great and sounded great. The special effects were incredible, like those in every good sci-fi computer game advert should be.
But the movies lacked the depth of personality in the characters that made the original trilogy so appealing to so many. Even the Anakin/Vader arc, the transformation from Jedi to Sith that had so much promise as a backbone to the whole prequel story, failed to live up to expectations, as the actors employed for the part were neither believable as good guys or as bad guys, just as wooden actors.
If, like us, you believe Lucas should have just left our treasured memories alone, then this Han Shot First t-shirt is for you.
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