Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars. This makes today the 40th anniversary of many of the first critics' reviews of the original Star Wars. Apparently, somebody at the Dallas Morning News took the occasion of the anniversary of the film to go back and give the paper's original review a look. What they found required an official correction 40 years after the fact. They made a noticeable error that's only just been discovered. They misspelled a word.
Our review of the original Star Wars, which appeared in The Dallas Morning News on May 26, 1977, incorrectly referred to Chewbacca as a 'Wookie.' The correct spelling, of course, is 'Wookiee.' We regret the error and apologize to the seven-foot-tall hairy alien biped community.
The Dallas Morning News actually reprinted their original review yesterday as part of the 40th-anniversary celebration of Star Wars. One has to wonder if it was somebody reading the review yesterday who noticed the error and brought it to the paper's attention, requiring the correction.
To be fair, the misspelling of Wookiee is a far from uncommon error. We're sure lots of people have made it. I'm now wondering if I need to go back and look at things I've written here as it may very well be a typo I've made. In addition, the word was only ever said in the film. While I haven't reviewed all the subtitles, I don't believe the word is ever written down, as such, the reviewer had to make his best guess as to how it was spelled. It's not like they had the internet where this sort of information was regularly posted to news websites far in advance of a film's release.
However, since the error was discovered, it's nice to see that the newspaper didn't let a little thing like four decades of time stop them from doing the right thing and correcting their mistake. It's important for the overall journalistic integrity that these things be dealt with regardless of when they are found.
However, looking over the review it needs to be pointed out that there's actually a second error. The same paragraph that uses the misspelling of Wookiee also refers to Chewbacca as being 8-feet tall. As the correction here points out, Chewie's actual height is closer to seven feet. Peter Mayhew, the actor who plays Chewbacca is 7' 3" tall. According to StarWars.com, Chewbacca 2.28 meters tall, which translates to about 7' 6".
It all just goes to show how big Star Wars has become that people are even still interested in the review of the film four decades after it was released. We're guessing that lots of people misspelled midichlorians back in the day, and nobody will ever notice that because who's going to go back and read those reviews?
