Star Wars history: Why did George Lucas start with Episode 4?

“Children, count to ten.”

“Four, five, six – one, two, three – ten.”

These words were uttered by comedian and actor Eddie Izzard over two decades ago. The confusion that the Star Wars saga’s episodic releases have caused is itself a part of Star Wars.

If you were to ask the man himself, George Lucas, he could say it all makes perfect sense. Buy why? Why not just release the films in the right order? Why confuse audiences with non linear storytelling. Why start with Episode IV?

The truth is, he didn’t. This may seem like a shock but when Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was released in 1977, it was simply known as Star Wars. The film enjoyed many rereleases in subsequent years but it wasn’t until 1981 that the title sequence was changed to read Episode IV and the new under title.

This of course comes after the release of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 which came with the Episode V under title right out of the gate. This is where the confusion started, and it only got worse from there.

But you may still be wondering… why Episode IV? When asked this, Lucas has stated that it was for “technical and storytelling reasons.” Lucas is famously flippant for his remarks on what Star Wars was originally intended to be. He has claimed on multiple occasions that there was meant to be six, nine or even twelve films in his grand saga. Was he changing his mind or purposefully keeping us in the dark? We may never know.

What we do know is that Lucas very much wanted the galaxy far, far away to feel like a lived-in world. Unlike the shiny chrome of other sci-fi films of the 1970’s, he wanted his world to feel like it has existed for countless ages. What better way to do this than throw audiences right into the middle of a story that was already in the process of unfolding?

Years later fans would flock to theatres to see Episode I: The Phantom Menace and the conversation around the strange numeration of the films came back to life. The use of the term “Episode I” was also used heavily in marketing as it was with the other prequels, making The Phantom Menace one of the few films to carry the numeral “one” as part of the title. Ironically Star Wars would pull this off again many years later with the release of Rogue One.

Although the sequel trilogy carried the titles of episodes VII, VIII and IX there was significantly less use of these numbers in the marketing, owing to Disney’s desire to give the franchise a “soft reboot” of sorts and also possibly to avoid (even further) confusion.

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