The Internet has changed since the days of 2005ish. It seems that the initial reaction to this particular fan edit of TLJ has been to conflate it with the no-women cut, the petition to remake the movie, and other unhelpful garbage.
Even though I think anyone who listens to my commentary track would easily see that those are far from my intentions, I probably could have made the edit’s documentation a little more forthcoming about what the edit is NOT trying to do. Honestly, it didn’t even occur to me that such a thing would be necessary, given what fan edits have been up to this point. With this film’s reader-response dialogue, I should have anticipated the need for doing so.
I have added an addendum to the “intention” portion of the documentation, in the hopes that this project not be so easily assumed the worst of due to an intertextual sense of hatred toward the film for morally questionable reasons.
People are right to point out that most of the changes I’ve made are nitpicky and unnecessary. Of course they are; I wouldn’t have produced this edit if there wasn’t some sort of ‘critical mass’ of changes to get it started. But, while I am at it, I’ll take care of things here and there. I am not going to alter the changelist, as I could type at length for each change. The reality is that people who are predisposed to view any fan edit as anathema will reject it out of hand, and the only way for those interested to assess it is to invest the time into viewing it themselves. It’s merely an alternative; fan edits are not destructive of the original version.
As my commentary track makes clear, I like this film a great deal, which is why I want to produce an edit like this, as opposed to doing nothing. I’m preaching to the choir, but wanted to reflect on the initial reception this edit has gotten on the Internet at large.