10 Facts Everyone Always Gets Wrong About Star Wars

9. The Names Of The Episodes

The Misconception: Beating the rest of Hollywood to it by a couple of decades, Star Wars enabled itself to make sequels without having to come up with increasingly hokey names (see Beneath, Escape From, Conquest Of and Battle For The Planet Of The Apes). The Episode structure is one of the series' defining traits, essential to its homaging of the Flash Gordon serials. And before we got the prequels that was a major source of confusion for those not familiar with the series; why did it start halfway through? Ah, the simpler days.

The Truth: Most film fans will know that A New Hope was originally just released as Star Wars (Fox thought audiences wouldn't get why there wasn't an Episode I, II and III), with its crawl only updated when it was rereleased in 1980 (and thus too much of a hit to matter). But to highlight that distracts from the fact that the names of the other Original Trilogy films were also changed. When they were first released Episode V and VI were known as just The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi respectively - no mention of Star Wars or an episode title.

Their crawls had the usual rigmarole, but all marketing and merchandise just used the subtitle (look at the vintage posters). Even when the films were re-released for the Special Editions they were marketed under their subtitles - it's only in recent years that Star Wars Episode IV, V and IV has become a mainstay for the originals.