The concept of Han Solo shooting Greedo in the cantina in Star Wars is one of the most contentious elements of the entire franchise. George Lucas has altered history and changed the scene so Greedo shoots first in every available version of the film, despite the fact that anyone who actually saw the original theatrical release can tell you otherwise. Here's Lucas talking about it from 2012:

The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.

Whatever, man. We all know how it happened originally. That moment is an essential part of Solo's roguish character, and hearing all of this nonsense from Lucas, maybe some fans are thinking that he meant for Greedo to fire first, but just filmed the sequence poorly or confusingly the first time around. Now there's reportedly proof that this isn't the case, and that Han was intended to shoot first from the very beginning.

A pre-filming draft of the script, dated March 15th, 1976 (a year before the film's debut), was just discovered in the University of New Brunswick's library by librarian Kristian Brown. In the script, Luke is still referred to as Luke Starkiller and the title is Saga I, but most importantly, Brown says that Han pulled the trigger first.

"I'll tell you one thing, right now. Based on the script, I can tell you 100 per cent, Han shot first."

So what do you think? Does this settle the controversy once and for all?

Via: CBC, H/T The Playlist