Out in the untamed wilds of the internet, among the movie fans of the world there is a new trend that is starting to take form, a trend that allows literally anyone, to take the power of movie making away from the director and allow them to create their own personal take on a movie. This is refered to as a "FanEdit", and though I do applaude the creativitiy that this brings about, I sometimes have to question the needing of such things. Its not that I don't agree with the idea, it seems to be kind of a neat and interesting new digital art form, its just that, well, its like Hamlet, when done correctly, by the right people, its brilliant, moving and makes you feel like you've just watched something great, but, in the wrong hands, it becomes a mess.
For those of you who don't know what a FanEdit is, its this, when someone takes a video editing program and one or more of the following; removes scenes, adds in deleted scenes, changes the order of scenes, delete audio, change audio, replace songs or delete them, even mixing a movie and its sequil, or in some cases two sequils together to make one movie, and altering the image in some way, things of that nature. Some people take this to an extream and actually delete whole characters from movies, Star Wars Episode One with out Jar Jar Binks at all comes to mind as a case of this happening. Now, on paper things of this nature does sound pretty sweet, but when you think of the fact that literally ANYONE in the modern world can get ahold of the equipment to make these, it deminishes the idea of it being a new legitimate digital artform, because, as it part and parcell for the internet, there will always be those fanatics who will feel its their duty to "fix" a movie and their personal belief of how it should be, is how it should have been from the start. Case in point; "Transformers: Resparked" which has the distinct honor of not only being the reason I decided to write this article, but also the definitive proof that no matter how hard the rest of us transformers fans fight to prove we are not insufferable whiny, bitchy, more insane then star wars or star trek fans, the insane fanboys will always do something that sets our hard work back 5 years at a time.
Don't get me wrong, when a FanEdit is done for pure artistic concept or an idea, it can become a beautiful thing, an edit called "The Matrix: DeZionized" which removed all of the parts of the two movies that happened outside of The Matrix itself and combining the scenes of both movies together making one that happened completely in The Matrix and on the Nebacanizer made a completely different and all together better movie, given that critics (myself included) and fans alike stated both movies detached from the concept of the first movie by having more and more happen outside of the Matrix itself seeing the Zion scenes as mostly filler given the fact very little of the key story happens in Zion and the mech fight in the final movie (though awesome to watch) was kind of tacked in and took up so much time the ending was rushed to fit in the alotted time they had planned for the movie. Another case of it working well is "The Crow: De-Colorized", which took the original version of The Crow and made it black and white, with color only being used for only one or two critical scenes for impact, this made the movie more like the original James O'Barr comic book which used the same concept, it really made it tragically beautiful (to borrow a term from a friend). This doesn't only adhere to movies either, someone created a movie out of the first half of the series Prison Break, and made it a movie akin to The Great Escape or other classic prison escape movies, instead of the horrible mess its become now three years into the show's run. There are other cases too that one could use in a case that FanEdits are a new form of fan expression and artistic creation, but there are also the down sides..
The afore mentioned Transformers: Resparked for instance, the person who made this believed the 2007 record setting blockbuster Transformers needed to have all of the comedy and all but afew of the human scenes (meaning most of the cast is completely deleted) and almost all of the scenes with Frenzy (who stole so many scenes from the bigger bots) needed to be removed to make a "more pure and true" take on the movie itself. See, this is where the problem lies, this person, and the two who felt the need to post their agreement with his deleting of most of the fun of the movie over at fanedit.org, fail to see one thing, Transformers was NOT made just for us fans, it was made for everyone, it was made so even if you have never seen a transformers cartoon or read a comic, or knew anything of the history, you could enjoy it, by taking out all the comedy aspects, most of which contained some form of reference to the original cartoon or a line linked to one of the characters tossed in as sort of comedic easter eggs for us life long fans, jokes that only we would get, how they can discourage this in the movie but harold it as a god send in the cartoons and comic books and even in the recoloring of the toys to a degree, I have no idea. Having recently watched Resparked, I can tell you all that is left is a boring generic movie with giant robots blowing up things, this is not to say a movie with just giant war mechs blowing each other up isn't a good idea, its just been done so many times before that it loses its meaning. I've heard word down the highway of another version soon to becoming called "The G1 Edition" which is to have some how digitally altered audio to mimic the voices of the original characters, I don't get how thats good idea when Prime is voiced by the same man that voiced him in the old show, but thats a side point.
There are many other cases of the Fanboys (I.E: Insanely Fanatical Fans) changing movies in other fields to makes their personal beliefs too, there are over 80 FanEdits of the Star Wars movies out there, and afew of the Star Trek movies, infact one of the first FanEdits was "Star Trek: Generations; The Kirkless Edition" which literally deletes William Shatner from the movie after they show the accident Starfleet believes he died as part of, there for there is no discovery of his being alive, no scenes with him and picard, no seemingly glossed over death scene, no Picard buring him on the planet, and no reference to encountering him by Picard back on the Enterprise. Now I will admit, Star Trek Generations had its downsides; the somewhat rushed and vague plot, using Gynan as a plot device by means of her "never mentioning" she was onboard the Enterprise B, the fact Kirk never questioned how he ended up in The Nexus, and his seemly glossed over and completely dismissing of the character's death scene, to name afew, but still, to claim the movie was good with out him in it at all? Thats abit far fetched given how important to the story he is, it just makes the scene of him on the Enterprise B at the begining seem tacked on and an even more useless and degrading ending to the character. There are really thousands of cases of people doing what really shouldn't be done to movies being done, but please, if you are interested don't let me downing some while praising others govern your personal viewing ideas, as always everyone is allowed their own ideas and beliefs on the matter.
I guess what I'm getting too with all of this is, that though its an interestng and new concept in film, I doubt it will ever become the next big thing in the no man's land that is the internet to become a credible form of artistic expression that will be hijacked through out the world, there won't be any dvds of these cuts, but if you're looking for something different, maybe a new invisioning of a movie you've known for many years, give a FanEdit a try, you can find them at www.fanedit.org or by doing a google search, or even doing a torrent or emule search too, they're out there, not as well sourced as one would like, but, you'll get it done.
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Laz
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