Although George Lucas has let go of "Star Wars" (in exchange for a mountain of money), he still clings to certain beliefs about the saga -- namely, Jar Jar Binks is a good character, and Greedo shot first.

To the dismay of countless fans, the filmmaker has insisted that Han Solo never shot first in 1977's "Star Wars," and the controversial change in the 1997 re-release merely cleared up confusion caused the original's reliance on close-ups in the Mos Eisley cantina scene. In a new interview with The Washington Post, Lucas steadfastly defends his decision.

“Han Solo was going to marry Leia, and you look back and say, ‘Should he be a cold-blooded killer?’ ” he 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. It’s a mythological reality that we hope our society pays attention to.”

That explanation is certainly better than his 2012 answer, which basically amounted to "confused fans wanted Han to be 'a cold-blooded killer.'" It probably won't make die-hards any happier, but they're free to rage online all they want: Lucas says he's avoided the Internet for the past 15 years. So, rage away.