Fan Edits
“Invade now? Would such action be legal?”
Roughly, a Fan Edit is a version of a movie that has been altered by a “fan” instead of an individual selected by the owners of the film. In some form, this has been going on for years (film students often re-cut official releases for practice; conservative groups still sell copies of videos in which they’ve cut expletives and nudity, although the major player was shut down). But the term is most often used to refer to the output of a recent movement, sparked by Star Wars fans’ justifiable disappointment in The Phantom Menace, and their attempt to make it better. I’ll examine the history, and legal, ethical, and artistic concerns of the movement in a later essay. Here, I’ll list reviews.
Since Fan Edits are most often created to fix a perceived mistake in a studio release, my reviews will first address the unaltered picture, noting specifically what went wrong, before looking at all of the relevant edits (well, all that I’ve seen; I doubt I can ever get to all versions of The Phantom Menace).