Lucasfilm changed Star Wars’ Han vs. Greedo scene again for Disney Plus

Almost all of the Star Wars movies, including Episodes I through VII of the Skywalker saga, are now available to stream on Disney Plus. The good news is that those films, from Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope through The Force Awakens, are available to stream in 4K resolution and with Dolby Vision HDR and Atmos sound, should your streaming setup support such technology. And, hey, the original 20th Century Fox opening fanfare is there! That’s great.

The bad news, from a certain point of view, is that, as expected, Disney Plus is only streaming the Special Editions of George Lucas’ original trilogy with all the post-theatrical release changes that entails.

In fact, there’s apparently a new change to the original Star Wars: Han Solo’s deadly confrontation with the bounty hunter Greedo in the Mos Eisley cantina is, yet again, slightly different. The 4K transfer of A New Hope now shows Greedo saying an extra bit of dialogue, which is strangely not subtitled, and now Han and Greedo fire at each other almost simultaneously. Also, the shot of an awkward dummy of Greedo has been removed entirely.

Here’s how the Greedo scene played out in the 1997 Special Edition re-release of A New Hope:

And here’s how the revised 2004 Special Edition compares to the original version of Star Wars — basically, Han and Greedo shoot at each other at nearly the same time:

In the version of A New Hope on Disney Plus, Han and Greedo sync their shots (and Han still does that awkward neck shift to coolly avoid Greedo’s blaster fire). Here’s a still of that moment from the Disney Plus cut:

Lucasfilm/Disney

All the other changes you know and revile — the computer-generated “Jedi Rocks” performance by Sy Snootles and the Max Rebo Band, Darth Vader’s goofball “NOOOOoooo!” scream from Return of the Jedi, and the cut-and-pasted rock formation that R2-D2 hides behind in A New Hope — are all right here on Disney Plus.

Of course, there are alternatives, if you deeply care about the supposed purity of the original Star Wars trilogy. But for now, Disney Plus is a good, if not ideal, place to see a Star War.

Update: Disney says the Greedo scene was altered by George Lucas prior to the company’s acquisition of Lucasfilm and the Star Wars property in 2012.