Han Shot First!

Happy Star Wars Day! May the Fourth Be With You!

The most heated debate in the Star Wars galaxy isn't about the Force, midichlorians, or why anyone thought sand was a romantic topic of conversation. No, it’s simpler, dumber, and infinitely more important: Who shot first—Han or Greedo?

I firmly believe Han Shot First!

Not only do I believe it—I know it. Because I’ve seen the original Star Wars: A New Hope. In 1977, when the world first met Han Solo, he was sitting across from Greedo in a seedy cantina, being casually threatened with death. Greedo tells him he’s going to kill him, and Han? Han doesn’t wait. He calmly fries the guy mid-sentence. Smooth, ruthless, and 100% in character. And then... he walks out like it was a Tuesday. A king.

But then George Lucas decided to fix it. In the 1997 Special Edition, he edited the scene so that Greedo fires first—and misses—giving Han a free pass to shoot back. Why? To make Han seem less “cold-blooded.” Because apparently, galactic smuggling with Wookiee co-pilots and unpaid debts to gangsters isn’t edgy enough anymore.

That edit ruined everything.

Suddenly, Han isn’t the smart, sharp anti-hero we loved. He’s some guy who waits until he's shot at. Even Greedo, who’s sitting four feet away, can’t land a hit. It turns the whole encounter into a clumsy misunderstanding instead of a decisive action. And it gets worse.

In 2004, they changed it again. This time, they both shoot at the same time. Because compromise, I guess? A nice, politically neutral “everyone’s to blame” moment. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, in 2011’s Blu-ray release, the timing was tweaked down to the millisecond. You’d need a lightsaber and a stopwatch to tell what’s going on.

And then Disney+ came along and said, “You know what this scene needs? A random new line of alien dialogue.”

Enter: “Maclunkey.”

Greedo, in the 2019 version, now shouts this bizarre word before getting shot. What does it mean? No one knows. It’s not translated. It’s not explained. It sounds like the name of a small-town plumbing business. “Call Maclunkey & Sons—we’ll unclog your hyperdrive.” And then, boom. Dead Greedo. It adds nothing, and it feels like a fever dream.

These edits are hilarious, yes, but also deeply annoying. Because they strip Han of what made him iconic. In the original film, he’s not a hero. He’s a scoundrel. A loner. He doesn’t wait to be shot at—he ends threats before they become corpses. That’s not “cold-blooded,” that’s genre-savvy. He's in a bar full of thugs. He’s got a bounty on his head. He’s outnumbered and outgunned. He does what anyone with a brain and a blaster would do.

And that made his arc matter. Because when Han comes back to help Luke at the end of the film, it’s a huge deal. He’s not some golden boy with a heart of gold. He’s a guy who’s slowly learning to care about something other than himself. By sanding off the edges and turning him into a reflexive good guy from the start, the story loses its bite. Han starts out good, ends up good. Boring.

Also: can we talk about how bad the CGI looks? Every time they update the scene, Han does this awkward neck twitch to dodge Greedo’s shot. It’s like someone animated him using early 2000s dance mat software. Greedo, meanwhile, is apparently the worst bounty hunter in the galaxy. How do you miss at that range? His blaster should’ve come with a blindfold and a prayer.

You know it’s bad when fans start fixing it themselves. The Despecialized Edition, a fan-made restoration, recreated the original theatrical cut—unedited, un-“Maclunkey’d”—using old prints, LaserDiscs, and digital wizardry. Why? Because people wanted to watch the movie they actually loved, not the one that got poked, prodded, and re-written twenty years after the fact.

Even the Solo movie got the memo. Toward the end, young Han pulls the same move: shoots a rival mid-threat, no hesitation. A clear nod to the original cantina moment. The filmmakers knew what made Han Han. The fans knew. The actors knew. Pretty sure Chewie knew. Everyone except the guy who created him.

Now, to be clear, I love George Lucas. But at some point, you’ve got to stop revising your high school essay and just let it live. Han Solo became an icon because he was dangerous, unpredictable, and undeniably cool. Turning him into someone who needs a signed affidavit before defending himself just makes the galaxy a lot less interesting.

So today let’s take a moment for the original Han Solo. Not the airbrushed, over-edited version. The one who sat cool as ice in a wretched hive of scum and villainy and decided he wasn’t in the mood for negotiations.

Han shot first. That’s not just canon—it’s common sense.