When first released in 1977, this movie was simply titled "Star Wars", as it was intended to be a stand-alone movie. The sequels were not considered until after it became wildly successful. The name of this movie was changed to "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope" in 1981 to fit in better with the names of the other movies. The later print was the first one to be released on mass market video (an earlier Betamax release did not have the subtitle), and all video, LaserDisc, DVD, and Blu-ray releases have featured the subtitles. The theatrical cut DVDs, released in September 2006, were the first time that the original opening crawl, without subtitle, had been released on home video. The reason George Lucas created the title card "Episode IV" in the first movie was as an homage to 1940's Saturday afternoon "cliffhanger" serials, like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. He also used the "text crawl" the same way each of those series opened up new chapters. He did not, at the time, have Episodes I, II, and III already planned. In fact, at one point, Twentieth Century Fox wanted the "Episode IV" title removed so as not to confuse moviegoers. There are some prints of the movie that do not have that title card.

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