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Star Wars vs. A New Hope - Which do you say and why? — Page 6

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This is really a question that’s dependent on what particular crowd is being addressed.

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Even though I know what in means when someone says it, that doesn’t mean I don’t find it really annoying. When someone calls the first movie SW, it makes them look like someone stubbornly stuck in the past who is against any and all change, regardless if it’s an improvement. It sounds as stupid as arguing that the shift from black and white to color was a bad idea. A post on Jedi Council Forums says it best in that it should be called A New Hope for the same reason we call it World War 1 and not the Great War as it was originally known.

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Its not exactly being stuck in the past when all video releases of the first film up until 2000 bore the Star Wars title. No A New Hope aside from the side views of the 1995 VHS. Not to mention the New Hope title was already in the crawl from 1981 up until now so you can’t throw this into the ‘fans who hate the Special Edition changes’ criteria. You could also say Star Wars: A New Hope since I’ve seen it advertised on a few occasions as such.

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To casual/non fans, I’ve found myself saying “The Original Star Wars” to differentiate the film from the franchise. It always sounded weird to call it “A New Hope,” even though the crawl seems incomplete to me without it (probably since it was already added when I first saw it as a child).

“Searching for Bobby Tables…”

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StrafeSawdoffe said:

To casual/non fans, I’ve found myself saying “The Original Star Wars” to differentiate the film from the franchise. It always sounded weird to call it “A New Hope,” even though the crawl seems incomplete to me without it (probably since it was already added when I first saw it as a child).

To me it sounds weird to call it “Star Wars”. The movie should have its own name to distinguish itself from the franchise as a whole.

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Anakin Starkiller said:

StrafeSawdoffe said:

To casual/non fans, I’ve found myself saying “The Original Star Wars” to differentiate the film from the franchise. It always sounded weird to call it “A New Hope,” even though the crawl seems incomplete to me without it (probably since it was already added when I first saw it as a child).

To me it sounds weird to call it “Star Wars”.

Yeah but that’s it’s name. It was called that upon release. It’s not our fault it was changed later.

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Anakin Starkiller said:

To me it sounds weird to call it “Star Wars”. The movie should have its own name to distinguish itself from the franchise as a whole.

It does…

Star Wars’ sequel is The Empire Strikes Back whose sequel is Return of the Jedi etc.

TV’s Frink said:

I would put this in my sig if I weren’t so lazy.

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Star Wars.

Occasionally in the context of talking about the Star Wars saga as a whole… the '77 Star Wars.

A little patience goes a long way on this old-school Rebel base. If you are having issues finding what you are looking for, these will be of some help…

Welcome to the OriginalTrilogy.com | Introduce yourself in here | Useful info within : About : Help : Site Rules : Fan Project Rules : Announcements
How do I do this?’ on the OriginalTrilogy.com; some info & answers + FAQs - includes info on how to search for projects and threads on the OT•com

A Project Index for Star Wars Preservations (Harmy’s Despecialized & 4K77/80/83 etc) : A Project Index for Star Wars Fan Edits (adywan & Hal 9000 etc)

… and take your time to look around this site before posting - to get a feel for this place. Don’t just lazily make yet another thread asking for projects.

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I mean, if I say “Star Trek”, people know I’m probably talking about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, and not anything else. Most people get what you mean when you call the original film “Star Wars” for much the same reason.

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CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

StrafeSawdoffe said:

The movie should have its own name to distinguish itself from the franchise as a whole.

It does…

Star Wars’ sequel is The Empire Strikes Back whose sequel is Return of the Jedi etc.

You screwed your quote. It’s me who said that, not Strafe. TBF, I’m struggling here too to quote within a quote. What’s up with Markdown today?

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I call it Star Wars because in 1977 when I saw it, that’s what it was. Throughout the 80’s that all anybody called it. I even remember thinking it was “wrong” and that it should be called “An New Hope”, but calling it that just felt weird. I only remember one person who called it A New Hope in the 80’s.

I don’t think people started calling it A New Hope regularly until after The Phantom Menace, and I think it happened then because the advertising put so much more emphasis on “Star Wars” than on “Phantom Menace” that people finally started thinking of “Star Wars” as the name of the series. Before that, if a person want to describe the whole series I think they said “Star Wars Saga”, after that they could just say “Star Wars” for the whole thing.

But for me, it’s too late to change. I may call it A New Hope sometimes for clarity, but I have to force myself to do it. If I just speak naturally, I’ll call it Star Wars every time.

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Star Wars

With this name started everything

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question, than fool can learn from a wise answer. -Bruce Lee-

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I first saw Star Wars in 1994 with the THX VHS rereleases which said Episode IV A New Hope. The case (with the Faces covers) just said Star Wars, though. I remember that always bugging me the OTHER way. All the movies had the same Star Wars intro logo (not one named after each movie) and then Episode X - Blah Blah Blah in the opening crawl. I understand why when Star Wars came out that it was just called “Star Wars” and that’s how the more old-timer fans remember it, but once the other movies came out, it was clear it needed a subtitle of its own. Now that downside to this was that “A New Hope” never got any fancy title style of its own like ESB and ROTJ did. It was usually just small text on or underneath the main Star Wars logo. So it wasn’t as “official” as the titles of Ep5 and Ep6. That’s the problem. But I also understand not retrofitting Star Wars with a new logo, that might tick off people even more.

Anyway, that’s how I’ve always felt about it. It feels wrong to just refer to ANH as “Star Wars” considering the entire rest of the series. What bugs me about the new sequel trilogy is that none of them have special logos of their own. It’s just the Star Wars logo (in multiple colours now, it looks like) with small text for each subtitle. Kind of wish they’d make custom logos for each subtitle like ESB and ROTJ. Even the prequels had a style to the subtitles as their own logo, even if they were all pretty much the same looking. It was more than small text.

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MusicallyInspired said:

It feels wrong to just refer to ANH as “Star Wars” considering the entire rest of the series.

Yeah but you first saw it in 1994. When I first saw it the entire rest of the series was not actually a thing.

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I know, I said as much. I’m just sharing my perspective. I’ll also go ahead and clarify that it feels wrong for ME to just refer to ANH as “Star Wars”. I’m not saying anyone is wrong for disagreeing and not following suit.

Also, it was 1995, not 1994. My bad. The faces box set didn’t come out until 1995 and that’s what we had. I was mistaken. Minor note, but I wanted to correct myself.

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I alternate just so I’m angering a different group of people every time I mention it.

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yhwx said:

I alternate just so I’m angering a different group of people every time I mention it.

Lol.

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How about everybody calls it whatever they want because no one cares and it doesn’t matter. The most you’ll ever have to do is clarify a little bit if someone doesn’t get it.

The Person in Question

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The fact is you could take away the Episode subtitles and the entire saga would lose nothing.

“A New Hope” is easily the worst title for a film (maybe ever?). You can type this shit, but who wants to refer to their favorite movie as “A. New. Hope.”?

It’s Star Wars and it will always be Star Wars. It has sequels and prequels but it will always be the first one.

Even in terms of the eventual 9-part saga as a whole, I will refer to Star Wars as IV but probably never “A New Hope” because it’s just…terrible. Imagine if VI was “There Is Another”.

In fact, if you say you just watched Star Wars to someone there should really be no confusion. No one would say that title by itself referring to any other part of the saga.

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Every time I see this thread I think of this song…of course it’s about a school shooting, so it’s not related. But that’s their fault, not mine.

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I kind of relate this issue to Star Trek. The original show was just called Star Trek, however when someone mentions “Star Trek” EVERYONE asks which one they’re talking about. That’s why it was given the name “The Original Series”. Which is a terrible name on its own and it would obviously never have been called that when it first came out, but it helps immensely when you need to be specific. That’s why I’m always referring to “Star Wars Episode 4” as ANH.