Yes the original release certainly did start with "Episode IV: A New Hope". I
can clearly remember the audience reaction, "huh? episode 4? what the heck?".
And then the interviews with Lucas talking about the starting with the middle
trilogy since it was the most interesting one.

Steve M.

Pete wrote:

> Paul Vanukoff wrote ... (regarding the titling of the first
> Star Wars movie)
>
> >Actually, according to the prologue, the first Star Wars movie has always
> >been titled "Episode IV: A New Hope." So really it was never retitled. :)
>
> --
>
>         After reading your post, I decided to do a little research.
> I couldn't refer to the actual movie, since my copy is the one with
> all the 1990's computer effects added to the original 1977 film.
> Then I remembered that I had a book published in 1979 (The Art of
> Star Wars) which has the complete text of the script for the movie.
> The book was published before all the enhancements and before the
> next two movies were filmed.  So the book is old enough to be
> used as a reliable reference.
>         The first five lines of the title page of the script says:
>
>  Star Wars
>  Episode IV
>  A New Hope
>  from the
>  Journal of the Wills
>  by George Lucas
>
>         Wow!
>         Interesting, and not what I had remembered.  This supports
> the idea that Lucas had intended from the beginning to make it a
> multi-part series.  He didn't just shoot off one movie and then
> decide to "invent" prequall movies after seeing the profits of the
> first movie.
>         But I still don't know that the original release of the
> movie actually printed "episode IV" in the beginning scrolly
> text intro.  I'de love to find a shot of the opening title from the
> "original" (1977) release of the movie.
>         And I wonder what the Journal of the Wills could be?
>
>         Err, umm, getting back on topic ... or at least to
> something remotely pov-ish ...
>  ...
>         In The Star Wars Sketchbook, I read that the surface
> details of the Death Star (except for those towers with the gun
> turrets on them) were assembled from multiple copies of only
> six shapes.  Sounds like a process that could be POV-able, eh?
> Six meshes, tiled using macros and some rand() calls ... kewel.
>
> Pete

Post a reply to this message