darklordoftech said:

ray_afraid said:

Yeah, it's been known as EPISODE IV for as long as it's been known as A NEW HOPE.
There was nothing in 1977 to suggest that STAR WARS was a sequel to anything, but that changed in 1980...

In 1981-1998, it did say Episode IV in the crawl, but nobody thought "I missed I-III. Back to the video store to look for I."

As someone who took his younger cousin to the triple bill showing of the OT and showed older people the films on video I beg to differ.

I introduced a Russian couple to the films with TPM and they really wanted to see episode 2 and 3 (which hadn't been made yet) for some reason only to be confused by me leaping to Episode 4.

They liked Batman Forever too which confused me at the time.