The famously stubborn George Lucas gave in to Star Wars fans five times, from shrinking Jar Jar to deleting Luke's scream
The Holiday Special, the Special Edition scream, Han and Greedo, midi-chlorians and Jar Jar Binks: when the creator of Star Wars listened.
For all its galactic scale, Star Wars is basically the original lightning rod for fan outrage. Long before Disney swept in wielding chequebooks and corporate synergy, the only name regularly on the chopping block was George Lucas himself. The fella managed to make the franchise both a cultural behemoth and a relentless target for nitpicking, thanks to a mix of shrewd business moves and, let’s be honest, some questionable creative choices along the way. What’s curious, though, is that for a bloke famous for sticking to his guns, Lucas actually did yield to fan uproar from time to time. Not often – but often enough to notice. So let’s talk through the five most glaring examples where Lucas had a listen and quietly changed course.
Burying Holiday Shame
First up: the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special. It’s 1978. The world has only had the first Star Wars film, and the sequel is still ages away. Then, someone thinks it would be a smashing idea to do a cheesy variety show on telly, but centralise it around Chewbacca’s family and a pile of musical guests. The result? Utter chaos. Wookiees grunting with no subtitles, endless detours, and barely any sign of the actual leads. It crashed and burned so hard Lucas essentially embargoed it from official release – the only way to watch for decades was grainy bootlegs. Lucas himself once quipped he’d destroy every tape if he could, which tells you just how appalled even he was. If you’ve never seen this, consider yourself lucky.
The Star Wars Holiday Special has never had an official re-release, and you can only really find it through illicit recordings or the occasional YouTube upload.
Screaming at Cloud City
The 1997 Special Editions were Lucas’s chance to tinker with his old films, mostly to questionable effect. One now-deleted tweak was in The Empire Strikes Back: after Darth Vader delivers his whole fatherly bombshell, Luke jumps to his uncertain fate down the shaft. In the ‘97 cut, suddenly Luke’s plummet is soundtracked with an out-of-nowhere scream – which, if you know, was actually just the Emperor’s death yelp pulled from Return of the Jedi. The point of the scene was Luke making a brave**,** deliberate choice; the scream killed that vibe fast. Fans made such a racket about it that, by the time of the DVDs and later Blu-rays, Lucas covertly snipped the scream altogether.
Han vs. Greedo: The Never-Ending Argument
No topic gets an older Star Wars fan animated quicker than the whole ‘Han shot first’ debate. The original A New Hope had Han Solo outright assassinate Greedo in the cantina, establishing him as a bit ruthless. Lucas later decided that was ‘too cold’, so in the 1997 edit, Greedo fires at Han first – and misses from barely across the table. Cue howls from fans everywhere. Lucas nearly, but not quite, backtracked: with every subsequent re-release, he’s fiddled with the timing so they now shoot almost simultaneously, trying to render the moral question irrelevant. It’s never satisfied anybody, but he did at least try to meet fans halfway, even if the actual scene is still awkward as anything.
- In 2004, the DVD release shortened the timing even further, so the shots are basically on top of each other.
Midi-chlorians: Quickly Forgotten
Right, The Force. It used to be mystique and prophecy, not midichlorian counts and cellular biology. But in The Phantom Menace (1999), Lucas introduced midi-chlorians, essentially microorganisms in your blood letting you commune with the Force. Not really the magical, spiritual stuff everyone signed up for. The fan reaction was politely: ‘No thanks, George.’ Lucas must have actually listened, because after The Phantom Menace, nobody talked about midi-chlorians ever again. The sequels and prequels just act like it never happened – which is probably for the best.
The Jar Jar Retreat
Few missteps united audiences quite like Jar Jar Binks. Planned as comic relief for the kids, Jar Jar ended up as the punchline of early internet hate, so much so that entire websites cropped up hoping for his demise. Lucas started with Jar Jar as a main player in The Phantom Menace, but as backlash kept rolling in, the poor Gungan’s screen time shrivelled up fast. By Attack of the Clones he’s little more than set dressing, and by Revenge of the Sith, he gets just a wordless walk-on. Lucas may never have admitted outright defeat, but it was as close to a surrender as Star Wars ever saw.