Star Wars: Greedo Actor Doesn’t Know What “Maclunkey” Means Either

For some Star Wars fans, the release of Disney+ meant an opportunity to revisit a number of movies in the series, only for audiences to discover that Star Wars: A New Hope had undergone another edit to the iconic scene between Han Solo and Greedo, with the actor who played the Rodian just as baffled by the update as the rest of us. In the original version of the film, Solo kills Greedo without warning, while the most recent edit sees the two firing at the same time, with Greedo uttering a phrase that sounds like “maclunkey” before firing.

“It confused me incredibly, but I’ve never understood anything about the movies anyway, particularly that,” actor Paul Blake shared with Empire. “I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t hear a word at all.”

While Blake might have performed the physicality of the character, Larry Ward provided the character with his voice. Blake noted that, even though he personally never uttered the phrase, it also didn’t appear in the script.

“It certainly wasn’t in the dialogue,” Blake admitted. “I’ve got the script here still, but I haven’t looked at it for about 20 years – it’s somewhere up in my attic. I now will actually go through it, I’m sure it doesn’t say ‘maclunkey’, even though my memory as a 70-year-old is appalling. It was just the simple phrases as you see in the movie.”

He added, “Greedo wasn’t even a Rodian when we filmed it, he was just called ‘The Alien’. George was forced to stick in that scene when he cut all the stuff with Declan [Mulholland], who played the original Jabba The Hutt. My little bit in English was just a simple, straightforward cowboy scene. ‘Going somewhere? Give me the money. If you don’t give me the money, I’ll shoot you. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.’ That’s about it, as far as I can remember. I certainly don’t remember the word ‘Maclunkey’. Are you sure that’s not the noise he made when his very brittle green head hit the table? Or he was saying ‘ouch’ in Rodian just before he fired?”

The first edit to the scene came with the release of the Special Edition of the original trilogy, which added a blaster shot from Greedo, to which Solo retaliated. When the film landed Blu-ray, the scene was altered again so that the characters fired at the same time.

“I think it’s just because there’s a big hole in the movie there,” the actor shared when asked why he thinks the scene keeps getting tweaked. “That scene where Greedo dies, I’m there in the next scene. George’s explanation for that was very funny, ‘Well, all Rodians looks the same.’ What, they wear the same clothes? ‘Oh yes.’ George has a great sense of humour, so maybe that’s got something to do with it. But also, I think he’s pressurized a lot by people and wants to do the right thing by both the fans and the story. But God knows, your guess is as good as mine.”

Star Wars: A New Hope is streaming now on Disney+.

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