danny_boy said:

I would have to disagree with the definition of the special edition as constituting a fan edit.

Harmy did not work on the original production of star wars in 1976....by all accounts....he was not even born!

Lucas,Muren,Hart(who cut the negative on ESB and ROTJ) and Burrt were all involved in making those original flicks......and yeah they vandalized them in 1994-1997.....but they are not "fan editors".

You don't think they're fans of their own movies? That's harsh ;)

Well, actually, Lucas has recently said things that sound like he's no longer a fan of these films, but I think it's fair to assume he was once a fan of them.

Just kidding, mostly. I was pointing out that it's a matter of semantics, which means there's plenty of room for alternate interpretations. It's perfectly reasonable to say fan edits exclude edits done by the original production crew, I just don't buy into that.

I think putting the word "fan" in front of "fan edits" is often used as a way to marginalize/demean the quality of the work, when I feel we have plenty of examples of fan edits with notably better technical execution and fidelity to the spirit of the originals than edits done by the studios. And also because I don't think any particular post-release edit is any more legitimate than another. Neither the Special Editions nor Revisited are The Real Thing (although one of them is trying to pass itself off as such)--in my mind, who created them is irrelevant to that basic fact. For that reason, I do rather intentionally lump all post-release edits into the same bucket, for better or worse.