Amazing fan edit of ANH

[Galvatron]

The list of changes is incredible.

http://fanedit.org/wpTF/?p=495

[BountyHunterSAx]

The list is indeed extensive, but by and large it seems to be nitpicks that you wouldn't have noticed if you'd just been watching Star Wars the way most viewers do - to enjoy the plot, and the action scenes.

-AHMAD

[Stark]

People with no standards are always easy to please. Some of the changes are fannish silliness, though, like Chewie getting a medal.

XANATOS

[18-Till-I-Die]

I'm sorry but since when were there "fan edits"? Isn't that illegal, i mean, like bootlegging or something?

Putting aside for a moment more than four-fifths of that list is utterly irelevent to weather or not the movie works or the continuity works, unless you're insanely nitpicky. I mean i'm sure most normal people never even noticed half that stuff, no offense, but it's just a little obsessive. What did they do go over every frame on a computer to see where a laser fired or didnt fire or whatever?

[nightmare]

I'm sorry but since when were there "fan edits"? Isn't that illegal, i mean, like bootlegging or something?

Definitely.

Putting aside for a moment more than four-fifths of that list is utterly irelevent to weather or not the movie works or the continuity works, unless you're insanely nitpicky. I mean i'm sure most normal people never even noticed half that stuff, no offense, but it's just a little obsessive. What did they do go over every frame on a computer to see where a laser fired or didnt fire or whatever?

A little obsessive? Anyway, I'm going to check it out in order to have a valid opinion.

[Stark]

Putting aside for a moment more than four-fifths of that list is utterly irelevent to weather or not the movie works or the continuity works, unless you're insanely nitpicky. I mean i'm sure most normal people never even noticed half that stuff, no offense, but it's just a little obsessive. What did they do go over every frame on a computer to see where a laser fired or didnt fire or whatever?

Shit yeah. Some stuff is fair enough (re-keying colours, fixing some editing, etc), but some of it is just obsessive fannish stuff (like Chewie's medal lol). It's fucking wierd, especially considering it must have taken a significant amount of time.

[Lord_Xerxes]

I'd be intrested in taking a look at the finnished product if the links to d/l it even worked, or if I know fuck all about bit torrent.

After watching the trailer on youtube though, I have to say that some of it definetly looks good. The lightsaber rotoscoping looks great, and some of the rotoscoping in EP IV was just plain bad, and it always bothered me that they never fixed it. The really, really tealish/almost white look of Luke's saber onboard the falcon always bothered me, and some of the shots in the duel between Vader/Kenobi really looked bad. At certain angles it looked like Kenobi's blade was faltered/had nearly gone out. I believe one particular shot was looking straight down on the tip of the blade and all you can really see is a tiny blue circle with the handle and he kinda twists his wrists to parry and it just looks like all that's left of it is a thin spark. That always annoyed me.

[Dooey Jo]

I see they finally fixed the missing planet from the Death Star shots.




Apart from the obvious colour and lightsabre issues that the 2004 version really should have fixed, this seems pretty silly. In fact, it makes me want to do my own list:

1. Inserted missing shots of millions of voices crying out in terror as Alderaan is about to explode.
2. Added shot of Bail Organa looking up to the sky as the Death Star blast hits.
3. Changed the seat Bail Organa was sitting on in that shot into a comfy chair. It was previously a toilet.
4. Directly after the explosion, added a scene with Tarkin laughing evilly at Leia.
5. In the "Look, sir, droids" scene, a shadow of what is clearly a giraffe has been replaced. It is now three Jawas standing on top of each other, holding a boom mic.
6. The starfield when the Tantive IV (has now been correctly renamed "Tentative Name IV") is hit, is now moving to match the speed of the ship in the previous shot, even though this would imply that the ship is rotating, as the stars are really far away.
7. The light direction on the Tentative Name IV has been altered to correctly accommodate the implied rotation in the aforementioned shot.
8. The proboscis dude that follows Obi and Luke in Mos Eisley has been replaced by a CG character with two trunks that actually moves.
9. The false character "Artoo" has been replaced by a small Mando.
10. The horrible music in the Cantina scene has now been corrected to that song about bleeding love by that artist.
11. The Tusken Raiders no longer sound like donkeys, but speak English with a Texan accent.
12. Instead of being a mysterious wizard-like character, Obi-Wan has been re-edited to be a bad-ass warrior that flies around and telekinetically rips of the heads of the Tusken Raiders that attacked Luke. He then rips his robes off and does the "Krayt roar", which scares off the rest of them.
13. Han Solo now shoots Greedo first, as it should be. He then rips off his face, which is only a mask, to reveal a Mando helmet, proclaims "I am a Mando, RAR!" and proceeds to mow down the whole canteen. As it should be.
14. The space battle above the Death Star has been recut to be more epic, using visuals and music inspired by Lord of the Rings and flying dinosaurs.
15. Chewbacca is now the protagonist of the film and gets all medals at the end.
16. C-3PO was cut from the film. In some tricky scenes where it was impossible to remove him completely, he has been replaced by innocuous items like coat-hangers and futuristic lamps.
17. Credits have been recut to include the names of internet posters who gave me positive comments, and also Sarah, the girl I have crush on (hi Sarah <3)

[Drooling Iguana]

The problem with these fan-edits is that the people who are obsessive enough to actually devote the time and effort that this sort of project requires tend to lack a sufficient sense of taste and style to do it right, with this one being a prime example. Every change here that wasn't correcting an obvious mistake was either a change for the worse or something completely unnoticeable to anyone not in the habit of watching movies frame-by-frame.

[Dooey Jo]

Having now downloaded and watched it, I have this to say:

Hahaha, they changed the needle on the interrogator droid's syringe into a tiny lightsabre!
And also the arm Obi-Wan lops off is now some weird club thing
Oi! Where's the rotation effect when the Millennium jumps into hyperspace?!
The Alderaan asteroid field looks suspiciously copied from ESB (as do basically all new Star Destroyer and TIE Fighter shots).
Surprised they didn't fix the stormtrooper bumping his head into the door...
Boo! What the hell is that RotS music doing the in the Obi-Wan v Vader duel? Also, how many times, exactly, did they re-use the same clip to make it seem longer?
The Imperial March plays as a bunch of disorganised TIE fighters slowly approach during the Battle of Yavin. It is crap.
The Death Star explosion pacing is fucked up.

All in all: They should have continued down the silly path started by the lightsabre-syringe. Now it's just meh, and the music edits are blasphemous.

[Darth Onasi]

So long as we're making stupid changes..

1) Han crash lands the Falcon into Jabba's palace and kills Boba Fett stone dead.
2) Darth Vader destroys Wedge's X-Wing and the resulting debris hits Luke and sends him tumbling into a turbolaser's sights.
3) The Death Star destroys Yavin IV and obliterates the rebels. Long live the Empire!

[Stark]

Having now downloaded and watched it, I have this to say:

Hahaha, they changed the needle on the interrogator droid's syringe into a tiny lightsabre!

Dude, that's hilarious. Is it on the list of changes? It'd be fantastic if they tried to hide their shame.

[Drooling Iguana]

I just watched a few more pieces and it just gets more and more hilariously bad, from them playing dramatic music (the Imperial March followed by the Emperor's Theme) over the Imperial Brass office meeting scene, to moving the playback of Leia's hologram to the beginning of the scene in Obi-Wan's place instead of the end (they watch it, then promptly forget about it for a few minutes while they talk about Anakin, then remember again) to the RotS duel music playing during Obi-Wan and Vader's ultra-slow-paced libghtsabre fight.

And the list of Internet screen names in the "Special Thanks To" section of the credits took up about half of the credits' total running time.

Final clinching proof that some people just shouldn't be allowed near a computer.

[Tychu]

I watched the trailer, didn't notice much except for that weird looking blue planet that the Stardestroyers were flying around. I wonder if I should just buy the DVD because I have no idea what links are suppose to work for the download

[Drooling Iguana]

You have to scroll way down for the download link.

[LMSx]

Well, that YouTube trailer successfully made Star Wars look like a corny 70s film. One of the keys? Playing poorly delivered lines of dialog from Leia. From the brief glimpse I got, what I assume is the raison d'etre for this edit, the SWEET EXTRA CGI, looked out of place anyways.

As far as I'm concerned, the list of Star Wars alterations should be as follows:

1) Fix the Lightsabers (if you're feeling saucy)
2) Cut the Greedo scene. Fine, Han shoots first, but the physical alteration just looks bad. If Lucas didn't want Han shooting first, the added Jabba scene replaces (IIRC) all the critical plot points that Greedo does, with half the cringe-worthy retcon.

[Dooey Jo]

Dude, that's hilarious. Is it on the list of changes? It'd be fantastic if they tried to hide their shame.

They said something about "added a laser effect", I think, but they didn't say it had become a small lightsabre with a standard Adobe After Effects lightning effect on it...

Having now also watched some of the dialogue and some other scenes more carefully, the music editing is now truly terribly cheesy. Luke's theme (or is it "The Force Theme"?) plays as Obi-Wan talks to Luke about the Force and that stuff. The Imperial March plays in all the places it shouldn't. Ugh.

[Lord Poe]

LOL!! They made Greedo scowl!

[tim31]

You've got to love people that think they can fuck around with someone else's creation and make it the way they think it should have been done. When those people actually get studio funding we get bullshit like ST Nemesis

...moving the playback of Leia's hologram to the beginning of the scene in Obi-Wan's place instead of the end...

What I would have added here? "Intergalactic proton tentacle droid! Intergalactic proton tentacle droid! Intergalactic proton tentacle droid!"

[Drooling Iguana]

Is that a reference to something? 'Cause I don't get it.

[Kurgan]

I was going to post about this when it came out, but I thought perhaps the legality of it (of fan edits of movies in general) would get the post nixed.

But, now that the floodgates are open.. (for now), I'll comment.

First let me say that anyone criticizing it before they've actually watched it needs to actually watch it first.

Yes, the list of changes creates an impression, but both the list and the screenshots do NOT do it justice. Some of the changes I thought sounded utterly moronic, but once I saw and heard them, I thought they were actually cool. I think subtlety is good (Lucas could learn a thing or two about that these days). Fan Editors can be obsessive, but hey, that way I don't have to be.


I disagree with some of the changes, like the Episode III musical insertions, and changing Vader's eye color, and the removal of the Tarkin shot right before the DS blows. But by and large it's a massive improvement over both Special Editions.

Chewie getting a medal is a bit subtle but it looks real to me.


All in all, I figure if Lucas can tamper with his movies so much, it's not immoral for a fan to do so (though it may be illegal to distribute such changes).

The main problem I had with the Special Editions on DVD (2004 editions) was the horrible color "correction," the picture that was too dark, the reversed stereo channels, and (in the case of ESB and ROTJ) a few of the new changes that were done just for the DVD (like Hayden Christiansen, the Gungans, Temura Morrison's voice over, etc).

SWR is probably the best and most extensive fan edit of ANH I've ever seen. ESBR is "in the works" but the author says he probably won't have it done until sometime in 2010. This edit took him 2 1/2 years, he didn't have access to the HD material, had numerous hard drive failures in the process, etc. Though he plans to make fewer changes to ESB. The main issues are the color correction that Lowry Digital (and whoever else) screwed up on the commercial discs.

[Kurgan]

The trailers on Youtube are NOT of the finished product. All of the scenes you see of it on YT are unfinished (other than the "torture droid" clip and the clip of Obi-Wan meeting Luke in Jundland Wastes, those look the same in the final version). Some of those trailers and clips are over a year old.


There's an Xvid out too, but it's also unfinished (there's a bunch of spelling errors in the credits, we see a "flipper" from Ponda Boba in the cantina instead of Evanzan's hand.. the latter I think looks way better, and a few of the lightsaber batteries/wires are still visible).

The DVD5's, pal (real proper) and ntsc (repack) are the real deal (though the "repack" and regular dvd5 ntsc are the same except for the shot of the DS explosion, which is slightly more pixelated at one point in the non-repack).

The DVD9 with better quality and extras is coming next month, according to the author.

Having now downloaded and watched it, I have this to say:

And also the arm Obi-Wan lops off is now some weird club thing

That's in the Xvid version. The author got a lot of flak for the hand painted "flipper." After attempts were made to make it look more lifelike, adywan decided that continuity wise (canonicity be danged) it should be Evanzan's human hand (he's in front of Ponda Boba, and its his gun that is drawn in the preceding frames, wolfman never wore that jacket and he's nowhere near the scene).

Oi! Where's the rotation effect when the Millennium jumps into hyperspace?!

I'd have to double check the theatrical version on that...

The Alderaan asteroid field looks suspiciously copied from ESB (as do basically all new Star Destroyer and TIE Fighter shots).

Most of them are, but some of them are brand new CG models (the Yavin battle, for example).

Surprised they didn't fix the stormtrooper bumping his head into the door...
Boo! What the hell is that RotS music doing the in the Obi-Wan v Vader duel? Also, how many times, exactly, did they re-use the same clip to make it seem longer?

The whole scene was recut (normally the fight was show in multiple segments and was actually a bit longer).

The Imperial March plays as a bunch of disorganised TIE fighters slowly approach during the Battle of Yavin. It is crap.
The Death Star explosion pacing is fucked up.

I do miss the "four firing in formation" shot from the original, but I got goosebumps when I saw the new TIE approach. It works in the DVD version, though I know some people absolutely hated it. I also miss Tarkin's "farewell shot" even if it is just recycled from earlier in the film.

Alderaan's explosion was even more violent than the SE. I'm surprised more SDnetters aren't commenting on that!

[tim31]

Is that a reference to something? 'Cause I don't get it.

Family Guy: Blue Harvest. The gag was itself a ref to an earlier Family Guy moment.

[Darth Onasi]

Chewie's medal looks utterly fake. What, it sticks to his fur or something?
Not to mention the notion of it is retarded.

Regardless, I'm sure Lucasfilm will shoot the whole thing down in flames once they get wind of it.

[Havok]

Chewie's medal looks utterly fake. What, it sticks to his fur or something?
Not to mention the notion of it is retarded.

Regardless, I'm sure Lucasfilm will shoot the whole thing down in flames once they get wind of it.

There are hundreds of fan edits out there. Lucasfilm can't really do anything about it as long as nobody is making money off it.