10 Worst Defences Directors Had For Bad Movie Moments
9. "Greedo Always Shot First" - Star Wars: A New Hope
By far George Lucas' most controversial change to the original Star Wars movies was the decision to have bounty hunter Greedo (Paul Blake) shoot first at Han Solo (Harrison Ford) before Han returns fire and kills him.
In the original theatrical release, Han simply shoots Greedo dead before he can do anything, making it clear to the audience that Han is ruthless and street-smart.
But for the 1997 Special Edition release, Lucas digitally edited the scene to have Greedo open fire first, inexplicably miss Han despite sitting mere feet away from him, and then have Han fire back, killing Greedo.
This fundamentally changed the context of the scene to have Han acting purely in self-defense, which many fans understandably hated.
Lucas has talked extensively about the "Han shot first" phenomenon, and in a 2012 interview with The Hollywood Reporter defended his changes with the bold claim that Greedo actually always shot first:
"The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn't. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down."
Way to straight-up try and gaslight your own fans, George. We've all seen the original scene where, without any shred of ambiguity whatsoever, Han shoots Greedo dead mid-conversation.