Smuggler Han Solo is cornered by bounty hunter Greedo in a bar and forced at gunpoint to sit. While they talk about money Solo owes, Solo readies his gun under the table. Greedo tells him he has been "waiting for a long time" to capture Solo. Solo replies, "Yes, I'll bet you have." The conclusion varies depending on the version of the film. In the original version, the film cuts to a closeup of Greedo's face, followed quickly by flash sparks, a cloud of smoke, and the sound of a blaster firing. This is followed by a shot of Greedo from behind, slumping over the table. In the 1997 Special Edition, Greedo shoots first at Solo and misses, and Solo returns fire, killing Greedo. For the 2004 DVD release, the shots are fired at nearly the same time and Solo dodges Greedo's shot. For the 2011 Blu-ray release, the scene of Solo and Greedo firing at each other was shortened by several frames. The scene was changed again for the version of the film released on Disney+ on November 12, 2019. In this version, using a close-up of footage already used a few seconds before, Greedo says a line transcribed by fans as "maclunkey" or "ma klounkee" before shooting Han. The line may be a threat spoken in Huttese, as it is used that way by Sebulba in The Phantom Menace. Additionally, the reverse shot of Greedo being shot was removed, and new effects were used. The changes were made by Lucas before Disney acquired the franchise in 2012. According to Paul Blake, the scene was created as a result of Lucas having to cut a special effects-heavy scene introducing Jabba the Hutt due to budget and schedule concerns. The original version of the Greedo scene has grown to be considered iconic, while the Jabba scene, which was restored for the Special Edition and later releases, is regarded as superfluous.
Criticism
The change is one of the most controversial of many alterations made in the 1997 Special Edition of Star Wars. Many fans argued that it alters Han's initially morally ambiguous character, making his later transition from anti-hero to hero less meaningful. According to Variety, "Fans lost their minds. It was an affront, the neutering of a badass." Fans have created fan edits of the original Star Wars films to reverse Lucas' changes, especially the scene with Solo and Greedo. In a 2004 interview, Lucas responded to the criticism, saying, "To me, doesn't really exist anymore.... I'm sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be." He acknowledged the controversy by wearing a "Han shot first" T-shirt on the set of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In a 2012 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lucas said: One draft of the original script makes no mention of Greedo shooting at all, only Solo. In 2015, a replica of an early script for Star Wars was discovered in the archives of the University of New Brunswick library. In the script, dated March 15, 1976, Han shoots first. In a 2015 interview, Lucas said:
Han Solo was going to marry Leia, and you look back and say, "Should he be a cold-blooded killer?" Because I was thinking mythologically—should he be a cowboy, should he be John Wayne? And I said, "Yeah, he should be John Wayne." And when you're John Wayne, you don't shoot people —you let them have the first shot. It's a mythological reality that we hope our society pays attention to.
Paul Blake, who played Greedo, said in a 2016 interview: "Of course, it said it all in the original script, we played in the scene in English and at the end of the scene, it reads, 'Han shoots the alien.' It's all it says and that's what happened. It was very painful." Blake felt that Greedo shooting at and missing Solo at very short range made him appear inept, and that Greedo has more glory if he is "just blown away". One legal expert argued that Greedo's behavior constituted a direct threat and would warrant preemptive action in self-defense in the United States. In 2014, when asked in a Reddit AMA, actor Harrison Ford, who plays Han, replied: "I don't know and I don't care." On the 2019 addition of a new line of dialogue, Blake said: In the 2018 film , Han Solo shoots antagonist Tobias Beckett mid-sentence, killing him. Writers Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan confirmed that this was a deliberate reference, and that the Soloshooting script specifies: "There can be no question that Han shoots first."
