Bored at 3AM

UPDATED JULY 4th 2025

This is a compilation of the various adaptations of Arthurian legend, edited to work together as one story.

I consider Boorman’s Excalibur to be the high watermark for Arthurian Myth adaptations. No one has done it better. However, with such a huge story covering so much material, I think it could use a little breathing room to focus on specific elements more. So I’ve turned Excalibur into a miniseries that chronicles Arthur’s birth to his death. It can be viewed on its own with just the Excalibur parts or you can include other Arthurian adaptations if you’d like.

1 EXCALIBUR - MERLIN & UTHER PENDRAGON (23min)
This is the opening act of Boorman’s Excalibur with some minor cuts. I think this is just about the perfect introduction to who both Merlin and Uther are while also setting up Morgana as the villain of the tale.

1b CAMELOT - UTHER & MORGANA (6min)
Starz’s Camelot was short-lived and a bit bland, but Eva Green is always excellent so I’ve included her first scenes of confronting Uther and her poisoning of him.

2a LEGEND of the SWORD - ARTHUR (25min)
Guy Ritchie’s decidedly non-traditional take on Arthur’s upbringing is not very kindly regarded, but I think it does the best job of depicting how powerful Excalibur is and the battles he fought to earn his place as king.

2b DISNEY’S THE SWORD IN THE STONE (44min)
You can also go the more Harry Potter-esque route with Walt Disney’s final film, the family-friendly adaptation of the first book of W.H. White’s Once and Future King.

3 EXCALIBUR - The SWORD & the STONE (11min)
We return to Excalibur again to see a more traditional version of Arthur’s first moments as king and the beginnings of his tutalege under Merlin.

4 LEGEND of the SWORD - VORTIGERN (37min)
Back to Ritchie’s version, we see Arthur’s mastery of Excalibur under the training of The Lady of the Lake AKA ‘The Mage’ and his climactic fight with Vortigern.

5 EXCALIBUR - ARTHUR & GUINEVERE (14min)
Arthur’s courtship of Guinevere and his creation of the Knights of the Round Table. I think Boorman nails this bit as well as he can given how fast he has to rush through it all. I’ve cut Arthur’s first scene with Lancelot as I’d rather he be more squeaky-clean until everything with his wife and best friend blows up in his face.

6 FIRST KNIGHT - LANCELOT & GUINEVERE (49min)
I think Richard Gere & Julia Ormond gave us the best modern retelling of the doomed Lancelot/Guinevere romance, even if the film utterly fumbles the love triangle by casting Arthur as a much, much older man and making his marriage a political alliance rather than a true romance. This has been updated to recast Connery as Leondegrance instead of Arthur.

7 EXCALIBUR - MORGANA (7min)
Coming back to Boorman, we are introduced to Helen Miren’s masterful turn as Morgana, her seduction of Merlin, and the birth of her unholy child Mordred.

7a THE GREEN KNIGHT (1hr 5min)
You could also slot David Lowery’s beautiful adaptation of Gawain and the Green Knight here. I think the theatrical cut is really interesting, but this is a more streamlined version that sticks closer to the essentials of the legend.

7b TRISTAN + ISOLDE (1hr 44min)
If you’d like a pitstop in Cornwall and Ireland and some very unsubtle foreshadowing of what’s coming in Camelot, Kevin Reynolds’ adaptation of the classic tragic love story can be slotted here.

7c QUEST FOR THE MAGIC SWORD (1hr 5min)
‘Quest for Camelot’ was an adaptation of Vera Chapman’s novel ‘The King’s Damosel’. It was unfortunately torpedoed by the clueless executives running Warner Animation, who tried to warp the story into something more Disney-esque. I’ve trimmed out as much of that as possible.

8 EXCALIBUR - The FALL of CAMELOT (24min)
Morgana’s manipulation of Guinevere & Lancelot. I’ve cut the Lancelot/Gawain fight as it’s unnecessary and we don’t really need to see Percival get knighted.

9 EXCALIBUR - THE QUEST FOR THE HOLY GRAIL (22min)
This is Boorman’s version of the Fisher King/Grail myth, uncut. I think he nails it.

9b MONTY PYTHON & THE QUEST FOR THE HOLY GRAIL (Theatrical cut available to buy or rent everywhere)
If you want to lighten things up, this is a perfectly valid alternative.

10 EXCALIBUR - MORDRED (21min)
The epic conclusion in which father and son face one another for the final time. No cuts here. Again, Boorman absolutely nails it.

This is for my ESL students, so hardcoded English subtitles are included on all of them. In addtion, there is an ESL reader adaptation that incorporates elements used by Boorman, T.H. White, Ritchie, and many more.

This is available in the same folder as all my other edits. If you don’t already have the link and want one, please send me a PRIVATE MESSAGE. As always, suggestions are welcome.

1995’s First Knight has the distinction, from my perspective at least, of being the most successful modern depiction of the Lancelot/Guinevere romance, but it utterly fumbles the ball in regards to the love triangle by making Arthur so much older that it’s not even a question about which man Guinevere will choose, particularly if the other guy is a 65 year old Sean Connery in full “gimme my paycheck” mode. It also chickens out and kills off Arthur in a pretty lame way so that Lancelot and Guinevere can be together, guilt free.

This edit aims to not only speed-up the films sluggish pacing, but keep Arthur as an off-screen presence that the audience can imagine however they wish. This unfortunately leaves the Lancelot/Arthur friendship absent, but the movie only half-heartedly establishes any relationship between the two. Again, it’s best to leave their friendship off-screen so that the audience can imply whatever they choose.

The theatrical cut was 2 hours 6 minutes. My edit is about 45 minutes. Some of the transitions are less elegant than I’d like, but nothing too distracting, I hope.

This is for my ESL students so it will have hardcoded English subtitles. I’ve also included my ESL reader for Arthurian Legends, which incorporates elements of First Knight, in addition to Boorman’s Excalibur, Ritchie’s Legend of the Sword, and others.

This edit is in my movie edits folder now. If you don’t already have the link, please send me a PM. As always, suggestions are welcome.

Based upon feedback from my classes, I’ve trimmed a further ten minutes of unnecessary fat from this edit. The new runtime is 1 hour 12 minutes. It is for ESL students so it has hardcoded English subitles. However, I could certainly make a new version without subtitles if I get enough polite requests.

The link is the same. If you’d like one, please contact me through PM.

metal venger1 said:

Bored at 3AM said:

metal venger1 said:

Hi, I know it is a long time after you created this but I was wondering if you could reupload the download link to the Twin Suns cut you made.

Edit: Accidentally sent comment 3 times cause of a loading glitch

I have it, with English subtitles I made. If anyone would like a link, please contact me through PM.

Hi, I actually just created my account for this edit so I cant PM for 7 days. Do you want me to wait until then?

I’ve sent you a PM.

metal venger1 said:

Hi, I know it is a long time after you created this but I was wondering if you could reupload the download link to the Twin Suns cut you made.

Edit: Accidentally sent comment 3 times cause of a loading glitch

I have it, with English subtitles I made. If anyone would like a link, please contact me through PM.

I’ve seen a preview cut and I can confirm that this meets the extremely high standards of quality and craftsmanship that all of BroomKid / StraightCutsNoChaser’s previous edits shared. You guys are in for a real treat.

Might I suggest the movie title “Rebellion” for season two?

The first movie in your trilogy would be “Andor” and the last would be “Rogue One”.

I made an edit of ‘Secret Cargo’ with Mon Mothma’s speech from Andor if anyone wants a copy. Just send me a PM. It includes an SRT file with English subtitles.

CamSMurph said:

Who’s Leonheart?

A fan editor from Reddit. I got the spelling wrong though.

It’s leeonheart22

I agree that Cassian being ordered to kill Erso is a must now as well. Rogue One can’t really be just Jyn’s story anymore. It’s essentially Andor’s series finale.

I think this version of Rogue One is exactly what I’d want, but I think reinserting Andor’s introduction would be better at this point. I understand the idea of starting the story off through Jyn’s eyes, but Cassian’s first scenes were sorely missed.

Some of these edits have been lurking in my edits folders for a while, but I just haven’t gotten around to releasing them publicly yet. All of them are for my ESL students so each of them have hardcoded English subtitles. Sorry if that’s a dealbreaker for any of you, but it makes editing them so much easier.

All of the edits also include ESL reader adaptations of the films themselves.

The first is an edit of Superman II that incorporates elements of Donner with some Lester, but uses the excellent work done for ‘The Kryptonian Cuts’ to modernize the Metropolis battle and Fran Garcia’s ‘Richard Donner Vision’ fixes for the unexplained new powers. I end the film with Lois still knowing who Superman is. No memory kiss or time reversal.

The next is called ‘Superman’s Big Week’, which combines all the best leftover bits from Lester’s Superman work to create a fast-paced series of shorts. I’ve used the excellent work done by leeonheart22 for Superman III here.

The last two are pretty simple tweaks of Wakeupkeo’s edits for Man of Steel and Wonder Woman. While I think Keo’s edits of BvS and JL are the high water mark for DCEU edits, I wanted more material from the theatrical cuts when I show them MoS and WW. My Man of Steel edit is essentially Keo’s edit, but with the full Krypton sequence restored while my Wonder Woman edit is the theatrical cut, but with Keo’s fix for the awful Daddy Zeus/Ares scene inserted.

If you already have the link to my edits, you’re good to go. Please contact me through PM for one.

Russell said:

I’d like a link to this cut, please. I just joined. I have looked through this site, but see no way to “PM” the fan editor. I’ll keep looking.

Click on the person’s name on the top box and then click on “Start Private Conversation”

honestabe said:

I would not take the attacks over at the Fanedit Reddit forum personally. A few of those folks tend to get a bit puritanical when editing certain movies.

Besides, my fanedit philosophy has always been that if you are not interested, then no need to comment or attack. We have way too many real problems in this world to get upset over fan edits.

Anyway, I have enjoyed some of your edits. Keep up the solid work.

No worries, I wasn’t taking the attacks personally, I’d already guessed what I was getting myself into when I made the post, but I didn’t want that mess spilling over here and causing grief for the mods.

I appreciate your kind words though. Glad you enjoyed them.

Are you planning on revising this edit once the entire series is complete? I was very impressed by how well you were able to compress it all into 2.5 hours, but the events of the second season have certainly complicated things. 😉 I’ll be very curious to see what you come up with if you’re planning to do so.

That last episode of Andor really tees it up. Swapping out the audio for the hologram shouldn’t be too tricky as it’s tiny enough that the lipsynch shouldn’t matter too much. Aside from a few bits and peices here and there in which the obvious needs to be pointed out for the younger viewers, this is a pretty solid episode that pairs nicely with Andor s02e09.

If anyone is planning on making this edit, I’ll make English subtitles for it.

Just in case this post turns into the Film Nerd Outrage Magnet that my Reddit post on this edit has become, let me be clear:

1. I love Pulp Fiction. It is one of the great movies. I am not trying to ‘improve’ it or ‘ruin’ it for anyone. The original will still exist despite another version of it existing that is 9 minutes shorter.

2. This is for 18 year old ESL students who aren’t going to fully appreciate long-winded conversations about the merits of female pot bellies or Mongoloid impressions.

3. This is a film that requires a lot of its audience. I want to expose my students to this film classic without some of them checking out because they’re bored.

Pulp Fiction is undeniably a classic, but I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t find a few bits of the film a little uninteresting. This edit is for one of my teenage ESL classes that absolutely loved Kill Bill and wanted to see more of Tarantino’s work, so I began showing them Pulp Fiction.

I’d warned them that this film was far less action-packed than Kill Bill and that it was much more dialogue-centric. It’s working for some of the students, but I can tell that it’s too much of a slog for others. Then I remembered that I have the Butch/Fabianne scenes coming up, which even I found a little dull, so I’ve decided to trim those scenes back to make that section of the film go down a little easier for my attention deficit disorder students and get to the Gimp a little sooner.

So, the long single take monologue with Butch listening to Marcellus Wallace pontificate is gone, most of the stuff with Butch and the taxi driver is gone, Fabienne’s pot belly talk is gone, as is Butch’s mongoloid talk in the shower.

Aside from that, the film is untouched. The original running time was 2 hours 34 minutes. This cut is 2 hours 25 minutes. This is for ESL students so hardcoded English subtitles are included.

The movie is in the same folder as all my other edits. If you don’t already have the link, send me a PM. As always, suggestions are welcome.

21C Peasant said:

Also, I am trying to send you a DM in Reddit about Andor Season 1 edit and I am not able. I don’t understand why. When I finally succeeded sending a message, it was removed just after because, apparently, it does not allow new accounts to send messages or comments. Anyway, could I also get the link of Andor too please?

Reddit might have blocked you from contacting me because they had banned my account for a few days claiming that I was spamming people when, in fact, all I was doing was responding to an overload of link requests. Anyway, it’s back up and running now!

Check your DMs here.

The same thing happened to me, twice. The trick is that the other person has to start the chat. If you do it and post the link, you’ll be flagged for spam. It’s why I shout at people in all-caps to PM me instead of the usual ‘Lnks plz’ bullshit in the thread.

BTW, I’m looking forward to seeing how you figure out a movie length cut of Andor s2 after you miracled up one from s1. 😉

This is a companion piece of a kind with my edit of The Shadow, another story predicated upon the very outdated idea of white guys gaining superpowers from Eastern mumbo-jumbo. However, I loved this film as a kid so I decided to give it a fresh coat of paint after someone suggested this movie to me as potentially being ripe for an edit.

Due to the yellowface and our heroes being of a secret death squad answerable only to the President of the United States, this movie is very much a product of its time. That said, the relationship between Remo and Chiun is still great. As outrageously racist as Chiun is, both in the character’s disgust towards any other people on Earth but Koreans and the unfortunate decision to cast a white actor in ‘slanty-eyed’ make-up, Chiun remains adorable.

It’s highly unlikely this film will be given a critical reappraisal but I do think there’s some fun stuff in here, particularly once you strip away a lot of the stuff that doesn’t work–namely, the dull set-up of the underwhelming villains.

The best parts of this film are undeniably the scenes with Remo and Chiun and the always stellar work by Kate Mulgrew as a military officer trying to nail a corrupt weapons manufacturer.

I’d originally played with the idea of speeding up the hilariously slow ‘martial arts’ bits, but decided against it. The lack of believability is part of their charm.

The theatrical cut was 2 hours and change. My cut is about 1 hour and 50 minutes. No English subtitles this time around, but I might make a version with hardcoded subtitles if I receive enough polite requests.

The link is the same as all my other edits but, if you don’t have the link yet, please send me a PM. As always, suggestions are welcome.

I’ve made some minor tweaks to the ending to remove the Obi-Wan Kenobi bit at the end in which Clint remembers to ‘think in Russian’

This is a companion peice of a sort to my similarly-minded edit of Stealth. Like most people who watched Clint Eastwood’s first attempt at a big budget VFX action blockbuster, I was disappointed in how long it took to get to the actual stuff with the jet. I think the cat and mouse stuff in the first two acts is fun, but it simply drags on for far too long and there are multiple exposition dumps that are just unnecessary. I’ve cut about 20 minutes of plate-spinning to keep the pace moving as quickly as I can without losing too much of the Robert Ludlum-esque spy thriller vibe of the first hour of the film. Once Eastwood is in the cockpit, I’ve let the film play out as it did theatrically. I think it might be possible to trim it a bit more, but I’m happy enough with it is now to release it publicly.

It will be in the same folder as all my other edits. If you don’t already have the link, please send me a Private Message. No English subtitles this time, however, as this edit wasn’t made for my ESL students. It was made for 10 year old me who was bored silly waiting for the jet to show up 😉

Any suggestions, as always, are welcome.

This is a very simple edit of a stand alone episode of Criminal Minds from the 11th season. I was looking for a nice twisty-turny short story for my students and this episode, featuring a great performance by Aubrey Plaza fits the bill perfectly.

The cuts are relatively simple. I’ve trimmed everything out that doesn’t relate to the main plot invovling the ‘dinner date’ between Plaza and Mathew Gray Gubler. The total running time now is 38 minutes and requires absolutely no previous knowledge of Criminal Minds or its characters.

In fact, I’d never really watched the show myself, but my wife absolutely loves the show and I’m a fan of Plaza and heard this was a good episode, so I checked out this episode from my wife’s collection and thought it’d make for a fun one-and-done episode with a few trims.

The episode has handcoded English subtitles, as it was created for my ESL students, in addition to an ESL reader adaptation of the episode.

The edit has actually been in my folder of edits for a little while, but I’d forgotten to make a post about it. If you need a link, send me a PM.

I’ve added a new reader based loosely on elements from the Legend of Herakles edit to the folder if anyone is curious.

I’ve added another version with hardcoded subtitles for anyone who was waiting for it.