The Best Fan Edits Ever?

Adywan’s Star Wars Revisited project is generally seen as the pinnacle of Original Trilogy fanediting, though ROTJ is still in production.

Hal9000’s Prequel trilogy edits are also seen a definitive, though there are many other prequel edits that cut them down even more if that’s what you’re after.

There are two main schools of thought for the Original Trilogy: Those seeking absolute purity of the original releases, and those seeking modern polish.

For the latter, as Nev has mentioned, you’ve got Adywan’s Star Wars Revisited, which are “the special editions as they should have been”. They’re an absolutely meticulous and painstaking depth of polish.

For the former, you have Harmy’s Despecialised editions, which seek to present a restored version of the movies which you could have reasonably seen in the cinema in 1977. And you also have the 4K series (4K77, 4K80, 4K83 for each of the three OT movies) which seek to present that original vibe carefully upscaled to 4K.

I can’t much speak to prequel trilogy three-in-ones, other than (and due to) a personal belief that you’d always lose something that way, and that there is value in the prequels when a layer of polish is applied, and that supplemental prequel content like Tales of the Jedi and Clone Wars are also valuable both on their own and to recently released content.

As for the sequels, there’s an excellent loose-but-related trilogy comprising TFA Starlight, TLJ Rekindled, and TROS Ascendent, which many hold up as the pinnacle of sequel tightening. TROS Ascendant is probably the single fan edit which gives you the most value-add compared to the original movie, and has been a spectacular multi-disciplinary collaboration.

Others are generally more of a matter of personal taste, but there’s a variety of great TV-to-movie edits of recent Disney TV content, of various lengths based on how much you want to preserve. They’re generally in the first few pages here.

You owe it to yourself to watch ANH and ESB ‘Revisited’ by Adywan at least once.

I had a hand in each of these, in disclosure, but I’d recommend these three edits for the sequel trilogy:

The Force Awakens: Starlight
The Last Jedi: Rekindled
The Rise Of Skywalker: Ascendant

VineSauceShamrock said:

Hello again Hal 9000! I don’t know if Ill ever watch the sequel trilogy, Im kinda of going out of my way to ignore everything that happened post Disney, and stick to the old EU, but if I ever do give them a try, I can promise you those will be the ones I watch.

Honestly I’d give those sequel edits a serious try. And you’d probably enjoy moviefied versions of some of the Disney stuff. If you’re game, I bet this community would love to hear the opinions of a first-time viewer who hasn’t even seen the original versions! You’re the “hypothetical first-time viewer” that we often edit for…!

while it’s not a 3 in one , Dark Force Rising by Kerr is my favorite edit of Revenge Of The Sith

Jar Jar Bricks said:

Hal 9000 said:

The Force Awakens: Starlight
The Last Jedi: Reforged
The Rise Of Skywalker: Ascendant

You probably meant to say “Rekindled” because that edit you mentioned is a much more radical one.

Thanks; fixed it. Embarrassing mistake.

Oh yeah, I meant Rekindled too.

Omni said:

PixelJoker’s upcoming Kenobi edit might join the pantheon of greatest edits, we’ll see. Could also be too ambitious for its own good, but I hope not.

In my experience, ambitious ideas are only a bad thing if the editor doesn’t have the technical skills to actually pull them off. I’ve seen so many “radical prequel edits” that aimed to recast Anakin and replace all the special effects and other insane stuff, and they all crashed and burned because the editor had no idea how to actually do any of the stuff they were promising. PixelJoker doesn’t seem like that type, though: he’s clearly an insanely skilled VFX artist of the Adywan mold, and I have no doubt his edit will be released eventually (although it might take years).

For prequals I still go to an edit which is now over 10 years old and nothing still comes close to it, its called
StankPac’s Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith Special Edition:

here I treat Revenge of the Sith like when a new hope can out ie the previous numbered movies are not needed, want to watch clone wars go watch the animated show, want to watch a kid darth vader talk about space angels and do pod racing, neither do I 😅.