Asaki said:
I don't know why the 80s crawl bothers so many people. I know it's about preservation, but every time I see it without the "New Hope", it always looks so naked to me (and both crawls are proper theatrical crawls, anyway). Different strokes, I suppose.

The 1977 movie that changed everything was called "Star Wars". That's the movie and the original theatrical concept. It wasn't until 3 years later that "episode 4" got tacked on and we were told that the movie was really just a piece of a saga. I remember the first time I saw that Ep.IV and I thought, wtf? To many of us that spent those 3 years immersed in "Star Wars" and were so changed by it, it wasn't just episode 4 of a series... it was and will always be "Star Wars", the event of its decade! (Watergate notwithstanding)