Star Wars Episode IV Didn’t Always Say ‘A New Hope’ in the Crawl

Today, on the early opening of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, I had to come home early to watch my boys because our daycare called in sick. So while I did work from home and tried to keep my two and four-year-olds from blowing up the house, I decided to watch the original Star Wars trilogy before seeing the new movie tonight.

I bought the three oldest movies in the franchise a few years back. They were a limited edition that were available individually. This was great for me because I don't care for the "prequels" at all and really don't care to pay money for them.

Each of these DVDs came with two discs. One disc contained the remastered and butchered version that was released in the late 1990's. The other disc in each package had the original theatrical version as it was when released in 1977 (Star Wars), 1980 (Empire Strikes Back), or 1983 (Return of the Jedi).

Today I decided I wanted to watch the original Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope where Han Solo shoots Greedo first like the heroic scoundrel he is. As I watched the opening crawl after the Star Wars logo flies away, I noticed something shocking. Something I had never seen before. The big subtitle "A New Hope" and "Episode IV" was missing! It wasn't there at all! I backed up the video and paused it and couldn't believe my eyes. I was watching Star Wars, not Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

I remembered seeing the movie on VHS in the early 1980s and even then it said "Episode IV" and "A New Hope." That always baffled me as a kid until the prequels were announced, but I had never seen a Star Wars crawl without an episode number and title. Off to Google I went to figure out what the hell was going on.

The subtitle for Star Wars was added to the opening crawl when it was re-released in theaters in the U.S. on April 10, 1981. This newer theatrical version was the one I saw on VHS rentals as a kid in the 80's. The original 1977 theatrical version I saw today, with the subtitle missing, wasn't released on home video until the 2006 Limited Edition DVDs came out.