This will sound crazy but I just had the most bizarre flashback whilst watching TESB last night. I remembered (after 40 years!) that when I first saw TESB in the theatre and ‘Star Wars’ flashed up on the screen, I thought there had been a mistake and the cinema had accidentally loaded the first film into the projector. Of course the ‘Episode V’ thing followed and all was well.
It’s ironic given that we’ve been discussing the confusion of not having episode titles post-TESB but for me, however briefly, it was the episode title thing that threw me. Did anyone else have this experience?
I had the reverse experience. Star Wars didn’t throw me, but “Episode V” had me thinking I was watching the wrong movie, until “The Empire Strikes Back” came onscreen and all was well. Eventually I just retconned the weirdly high episode number into my Star Wars world and figured Episodes II through IV were left intentionally blank for fans to imagine things that happened between Star Wars and Empire. I didn’t realize Star Wars had been retitled Episode IV until I saw it on home video, long after seeing Empire.