When I first heard of the Phantom Edit, I was skeptical but excited at the possibility. I think The Phantom Edit kind of introduced the idea of personally editing movies, and I think in the case of the SW PT trilogy there was nothing to lose. Since this time I have been enthusiastic about fan edits, but my high speed internet has torrents blocked.
Since FE began putting them on rapidshare I have taken the effort to grab a few. So far every single one has been a big disappointment. The best work I have seen by far is ADM's Pearl Harbor edit, but honestly there are parts of it that don't work. This is by no fault of ADM, but the fact is the actors are out of sync with the edit. I guess you work with what you have, and it is still a vast improvement above the original. Pearl Harbor is a movie I see justified to edit, it had some great material, and is about a subject that is very close to many people's hearts. Extended editions are also sometimes really cool. But sometimes it feels that they are just edited to be edited. Not even to make them flow better or to bring them closer to their source material, but rather to create a whole different story that takes it even further away from the source material. Does anybody else feel this way? My opinion of fan editing dropped from feeling it had great potential to improve movies with slight flaws, to feeling like it is just a bunch of kids seeing how much they can change the story of one movie to be something completely different. Anybody want to mention any outstanding edits they feel are definitely worthy of downloading? Or their general opinion on them? (Not trying to rag on anyones edits, just something that was on my mind and I thought I would post it to see if others felt likewise).