I first saw Star Wars in January 1978 in Cardiff with four fellow students. Aside from being completely blown away by what we’d just seen, all five of us came out talking about the same thing that had confused us from the very start of the crawl — the fact that it already said “Episode IV – A New Hope.”
As most fans know, the original 1977 U.S. release didn’t include this title, so I’ve always assumed the crawl must have been updated for the UK release.
The sticking point is that this doesn’t match the widely accepted timeline, which claims “Episode IV – A New Hope” wasn’t added until after The Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980/81.
Whenever I bring up my memory in other threads, I get a lot of pushback — some polite, some… less so — from people saying that is not what happened, and I must be misremembering. But I’ve spoken with several fans my age who independently recall the same thing. And to avoid accidentally influencing their recollection, I never preload the idea. I just ask them to describe exactly what they remember seeing after the 20th Century Fox logo and then “A long time ago…”. They recreate that moment, and without any prompting, they mention the “Episode IV” title appearing in the crawl.
To be clear, none of us were thinking about a planned nine-film saga back then — it was simply the jolt of feeling like we were entering the story at Episode IV, and that we’d somehow missed three earlier films. One person even told me he missed the rest of the crawl because he spent the time asking his dad why they hadn’t gone to see “the first one.”
So I’d really love to hear from anyone who saw that earliest UK release of Star Wars (December 1977 into 1978). Did your screening have “Episode IV” in the crawl? Or not? Either way, it would be great to compare memories.
Thanks!
As most fans know, the original 1977 U.S. release didn’t include this title, so I’ve always assumed the crawl must have been updated for the UK release.
The sticking point is that this doesn’t match the widely accepted timeline, which claims “Episode IV – A New Hope” wasn’t added until after The Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980/81.
Whenever I bring up my memory in other threads, I get a lot of pushback — some polite, some… less so — from people saying that is not what happened, and I must be misremembering. But I’ve spoken with several fans my age who independently recall the same thing. And to avoid accidentally influencing their recollection, I never preload the idea. I just ask them to describe exactly what they remember seeing after the 20th Century Fox logo and then “A long time ago…”. They recreate that moment, and without any prompting, they mention the “Episode IV” title appearing in the crawl.
To be clear, none of us were thinking about a planned nine-film saga back then — it was simply the jolt of feeling like we were entering the story at Episode IV, and that we’d somehow missed three earlier films. One person even told me he missed the rest of the crawl because he spent the time asking his dad why they hadn’t gone to see “the first one.”
So I’d really love to hear from anyone who saw that earliest UK release of Star Wars (December 1977 into 1978). Did your screening have “Episode IV” in the crawl? Or not? Either way, it would be great to compare memories.
Thanks!
