"Star Wars" or "A New Hope" or "Episode IV" or "The Original One" or "Star Wars 1977" and why?

I prefer "A New Hope".  There, I've come out and said it.  Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in full or ANH in short.  I suspect many of you will stick by simply "Star Wars" and I can respect that.  But for myself, I think referring to "Star Wars" without any qualifiers always leads the listener to wonder what exactly someone means when you say it.  And saying "The First One" always makes people guess from context whether you mean A New Hope or The Phantom Menace.

My theory is that the rest of the Star Wars fanbase, those snot-nosed, Prequel lovin', baby-seal-clubbin' losers prefer "A New Hope" as well, and we in the OTT community try to put as much distance between us and them as possible and that is how many of us have arrived at "Star Wars."  But, I'm following Nanner's example and being an uncomformist (am I doing that right?) and I'm just going to stick with "A New Hope" from now on.

It was the Episode subtitle on the 1978 re-release and all of the home video releases.  Not that that necessarily changes your answers, but the subtitle was around for all but one year of the 33 year history of "that movie."  It's not like George invented it for the Special Editions or for the Prequels.

xhonzi said:

It was the Episode subtitle on the 1978 re-release and all of the home video releases.  Not that that necessarily changes your answers, but the subtitle was around for all but one year of the 33 year history of "that movie."  It's not like George invented it for the Special Editions or for the Prequels.

 

 It was actually added on the 1981 re-release

msycamore said:

xhonzi said:

It was the Episode subtitle on the 1978 re-release and all of the home video releases.  Not that that necessarily changes your answers, but the subtitle was around for all but one year of the 33 year history of "that movie."  It's not like George invented it for the Special Editions or for the Prequels.

 

 It was actually added on the 1981 re-release

 Are you sure?  Either way- 1978 or 1981... it's been around for a while.

It's Star Wars for those who know what I'm talking about. A New Hope to the nubs who don't have a clue.

usually it depends on context

for example when i say: Like Lightsabers from Star Wars i mean The Star Wars Saga 

I call it "Meh" because that is what a moderator at theforce.net once called it. If true Star Wars fans think it is meh, then who am I to argue?

BTW, in that same thread, someone posted a hysterical satirical defense of Star Wars. His defense took the form of a faux critique. Among the many highlights of this post, the poster asked, in regard to the Obi-Wan/Vader lightsaber duel, "Where is the twirling??". Shockingly, the post was deleted. I would love to read that post again, but my searches on the Wayback Machine have yielded nothing. But make no mistake, it was the post of the decade.

TV's Frink said:

Yeah but what do you mean when you say The Star Wars Saga?

:P

 every star wars movie in existance (TCW doesnt count)

The movie that won all those Academy Awards, including being nominated for Best Picture, was called "Star Wars".  How many times in history has a movie garnered a slew of Academy Awards, and then years later it's name changed? That's just plain wierd.

"The Godfather" didn't change names just because some half-baked saga sprouted up afterwards.

When I was little I used to correct my dad when he just called it Star Wars... haha. I usually just say that myself now, though.

I refer to it by a combination of everything listed on this thread.  Sometimes its "Star Wars.  The first one.  The real first one."  I call it "A New Hope" when I'm feeling saga-ist, and ANH whenever we talk about it here.  Occasionally I call it "Episode IV", but that's rare, while the Prequels are normally called by their Episode numbers and Empire and Jedi are referred to as "Empire" and "Jedi".

As a kid, I never really put together that "A New Hope" was supposed to be the subtitle of "Star Wars".  I always went by what was on the box.