Who shot first? Han? Greedo? Who cares. MACLUNKEY!
Disney+ launched this morning, and with it comes a mostly inexplicable change to one of cinema’s most debated scenes — the encounter between Han and Greedo at the Mos Eisley cantina. For reasons unknown to anyone but George Lucas right now, a super brief but newly inserted clip has Greedo shout what the internet has decided is “MACLUNKEY!” before taking his failed shot at Han.
The change was first noted by StarWarsVisComp, a wonderful Twitter account that tears apart the countless different editions of Star Wars and highlights their endless (and sometimes quite subtle!) differences.
Before you go and get too mad at Disney for changing things for the sake of changing things: apparently this edit came from George Lucas — the uncontested champion of post-release cinematic change himself — with the new clip purportedly being inserted years ago during a 4K restoration that didn’t see the light of day until now.
Comparison clips have already started hitting YouTube:
And yes, for the curious: the “Maclunkey” line really is in the Disney+ release. If you’ve got Disney+, you can find it at around the 50:52 mark in “A New Hope.”
So what’s a Maclunkey? No one knows. As Uproxx points out, the rest of the dialog throughout the conversation is captioned. But Maclunkey? That’s left to the viewer’s interpretation.
Until we get further explanation, I like to think that it’s the Rodian/Huttese equivalent of “Eh, screw it.” Found a stain on your shirt 10 minutes after getting to work? Maclunkey. Gonna take a cheap shot at the baddest smuggler in the galaxy without bothering to, you know, aim? Maclunkey. Edited a new bit of alien dialog into your classic film but forgot to come up with a translation before it shipped? Maclunkey!
