this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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Well, I mean, that’s the heart of this whole discussion exactly what is the definition of a retcon?
I mean in Star Wars one of the big moments of episode four when it was just Star Wars was that Darth Vader killed Luke’s father.
That was later changed to became when Luke’s father became Darth Luke’s dad died. I mean, that’s a pretty significant alteration of the original story.
But again Luke's father dying didn't happen in episode 4. At that point it was just a story Luke was told. Turns out Luke was lied to. That's completely reasonable.
That's not an alteration of the original, the original (but isn't The Empire Strikes Back a part of the original anyway?) was simply Kenobi's retelling of what happened, not a narratively "objective" instance. Vader telling the story in a different way does not create any fundamental contradiction with the previous narrative.
Anyway, the original SW trilogy is much too homogenously constructed to warrant this sort of criticism in general. It's like saying Sophocles "retconned" Oedipus' story by revealing he had killed his father. A more problematic point would be e.g. the introduction of midichlorians in the prequels, which didn't unambiguously contradict the original trilogy but it sharply differed in spirit from it and had undesirable implications (genetic superiority of the Jedis).
No. One thing that Lucas very firmly illustrated is that he never had a grand vision of an over all storyline. He made it up as he went along.
That doesn't matter too much. He certainly had the intent to build the story beyond the first movie, and, putting aside these external circumstances and focusing on the movie itself, the 1st movie does not form a coherent complete narrative yet, in isolation it barely works.
Compare it with other film trilogies: clearly SW OT is more similar to LOTR and Matrix than to Godfather and Jurassic Park. In the latter cases it makes sense to speak of the original, not so much in the former.