Hello again. It's the way I heard it. Episode number 215. This one is called Han shot first.

The Han, in question, of course, is the one and only Han Solo, brought to life by Harrison Ford,

and a little movie you may have seen called Star Wars. The title of this episode refers to the now infamous scene in Star Wars that took place in the Moss Isley Cantina on the planet Tatooine,

where a bounty hunter named Grito announces his intention to abduct Han Solo and bring him to a gangster called Jabba the Hut who plans to kill him.

Now, in the original scene, Han Solo is seated in a booth across from his kidnapper with a weapon

pointed at his chest when he learns of the kidnapper's intentions. Preferring not to be abducted and murdered,

Han takes action, surreptitiously removing a blaster that he had cleverly concealed in his boot,

and then shooting the bounty hunter from underneath the table, killing him instantly.

In the original scene, Han

shot first, and everybody knew it. Two decades later, though, the director of the film,

George Lucas, re-edited that scene in a way that showed Grito, the bounty hunter, firing first

and missing.

George Lucas did this, he said, to better justify Han Solo's decision to use deadly force.

Now, this struck a lot of people as kind of absurd.

Because in a gunfight, there is no line between drawing first and firing first. Both moves are equally aggressive.

If a man or a woman or an alien bounty hunter, for that matter, points a weapon at you and demands that you leave with them against your will, then you have every right to shoot them

from beneath the table, assuming you had

the foresight to tuck a blaster into your boot and the courage to use it. But here's the point.

In 1977, George Lucas saw Han Solo's decision to shoot first as an act of self-defense, consistent

with the actions of a hero.

Twenty years later, he did not.

And so, George Lucas changed the scene, and with it, the history of that film.

...