Despite years of fan complaints, George Lucas continues to insist that making Greedo shoot first in Star Wars was the right call.
In the original 1977 version of the movie, there's a scene where an alien named Greedo is threatening Han Solo, and Han shoots to defend himself. In the special edition, the main version which is now on all the DVD and blu-ray releases, this was digitally altered so that Greedo shoots first and Han fires back slightly after.
That's always been a highly controversial move, but Lucas recently told The Washington Post that he will go to his grave defending it because Han shooting first was against the principles of Star Wars.
“Han Solo was going to marry Leia, and you look back and say, ‘Should he be a cold-blooded killer?’” Lucas said. “Because I was thinking mythologically — should he be a cowboy, should he be John Wayne? And I said, ‘Yeah, he should be John Wayne.’ And when you’re John Wayne, you don’t shoot people [first] — you let them have the first shot.”
The argument against that is that Greedo was already verbally threatening Han, and so his shot was a defensive one anyway. Even The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams has spoken out against Lucas' change, and when asked if Han shot first, Abrams simply responded, "Hell yes."