MULTIVERSEEmpire Strikes Back
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Three fries short of a happy meal
SatyrSack
Stargate: Universe S1E6 “Water”
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It was called Episode 5 before Starwars was episode 4!
What do you mean by that? I assume they had both been retroactively “renamed” at the same time.
A New Hope was retroactively renamed. The Empire Strikes Back was always called Star Wars Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back.
It just didn’t show in the marketing. The opening crawl had Episode V right from the beginning in 1980. “Star Wars” was renamed officially for the 3rd release in 1981.
A year after ESB released.
This is news to me! I was under the assumption that the original titles for the original trilogy films were simply “Star Wars”, “The Empire Strikes Back”, and “Return of the Jedi”, and that the whole “Episode #” concept was not applied until they started making the prequel trilogy. And that is generally true for how the films were marketed on posters and merchandise and whatnot. But, as you say, I see that the original opening crawl for “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi” did actually mention the episode number, indicating the plan for a later prequel trilogy even in 1980.
That’d make a lot of sense, but George wanted that to be Episode 5 even in the initial run in the 80s.