an article by boon23

Quite often the question raises how and when fanedits started. Well, this particular question cannot be answered, because most likely fanedits are as old as original movies. Someone with the ability to edit video material wanted to create his very own take of what someone else had created before him. It’s like altering a poem to fit to your loved one. It’s like the desire to have a Porsche motor in a beetle. It’s pretty much like changing whatever things to the way an individual prefers them.
Jean Paul Gaultier creates clothes, yet he did not invent the trousers or the dress, he just alters what already exists.
The question should rather be, when and how fanedits became known to an audience.
Now the first known fanedit to ever cause huge attention – and it still does – was the famous Phantom Edit by Mike Nichols aka The Phantom Editor, who cut Star Wars Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace to his likings. Since he was a professional editor, this fanedit was of astonishing quality. No hard cuts to video or audio, no plot issues. It was a real movie. And because millions of fans (especially from the “true” Star Wars generation) were vastly disappointed by the original release, so much that they wished for something better, something different, this one easily and quickly gained attention, especially because Mike Nichols published it (using the name “The Phantom Editor”, to keep his identity a secret). First of all by giving it to friends, who made copies and gave it to other friends. The rumor spread that there was an improved version of The Phantom Menace out there. It quickly reached Hollywood and was given from actors to directors to producers and even to the one and only George Lucas himself, who watched it.
By that time it was already uploaded to the newsgroups – a system to share files – and suddenly became available for all the world to enjoy. Meanwhile Hollywood was wondering, who the creator of that version was. One of the most likely candidates, as he is known to edit other movies, was Kevin Smith. Soon after the release of Attack Of The Clones, The Phantom Editor released his second strike, Attack Of The Phantom, turning this and his first fanedit to legendary and wide known status. George Lucas could not take it anymore and hired private detectives to find out about the identity of The Phantom Editor, only to reveal that Mike Nichols had done it because he was such a huge (but disappointed by the prequels) Star Wars fan, who by his profession was able to edit movies. Lucas invited him to the Skywalker Ranch and they had a nice dinner – after which Mike Nichols did not dare to edit Revenge Of The Sith…
so far for the myth. But now back to the question: when and how did fanedits become known to an audience?
The newsgroups were the first place where fanedits were spotted. With more and more broadband connections, people could up. and download huge files, such as DVDs and easily share them. It got even bigger with the beginning of Bittorrent, because unlike former sharing tools, Bittorrent did not come with a search engine. This meant that releases were published on thousands of websites and people would read through them to see what was new and available. Fanedits would be seen and discovered. And that was all they needed to spread around the world. The Internet made the success of fanedits possible.
Another important thing is a development of the late 1990s that is still continued: the so-called director’s cuts. Again George Lucas was the one to make it big by releasing the special editions of the original trilogy of Star Wars. By taking the old movies and adding effects and new scenes, he created new movies from them, which not all fans liked. This “not liking” is the important part about it. Now there were 2 versions of Star Wars and the fans had to decide, which one they would prefer. In this they started to think about editing decisions. The movie nerds that were always just fed with entertainment as it was given to them, suddenly formed an opinion of their own about good and bad scenes. And in the digital age, where software to professionally alter movies as well as the computers to be able to do that are so easily available to everyone, it took only a little step to come to fanediting.
Superman 2 – The Richard Lester cut, Superman 2 – The Richard Donner cut, Superman 2 – The whoever cut…
Hollywood opened the door and the movie nerds stepped right through it to provide us with sometimes incredibe great new versions of movies that we never thought to be possible.
Now of course the movie executives, the powers that are, the ones in charge, tell us that fanedits are crap, that amateurs cannot create something of quality at all, but everyone that has watched a good fanedit (and they exist) knows otherwise. We are not talking about creating movies, but we are talking about the final and most important step: the final cut.
And as we all know so well, even the best directors can fail with their theories of what the audience will like or not.The final cut is and will always be a mystery. And it can be on the same level approached by the professionals or by the fans, who still have an eye for what makes a movie worth watching.
This website here was created to present fanedits as what they are to us: a movie artform. Another take on the final cut by those who see the magic in movies.
So who and when did fanedits start? Answer: they were always there, but now you get to know about them. And if you ask me… the dawn of fanedits is not even there yet. Let’s wait for Adywan to release Empire Revisited.

Some of the oldest fanedits:

Some of the oldest fanedits on fanedit.org
	The Phantom Edit by The Phantom Editor: Some say this one started fanediting, which is of course not true. What it did was to start the worldwide discussion about them. It was the first fanedit ever to be brought to the attention of a wide audience. At first only available by personal sharing among friends, then available via the newsgroups, where the download numbers crossed the 1 million barrier. And even though it is already several years old, it is still famous and well respected.
	Attack Of the Phantom by The Phantom Editor: The sequel to the Phantom Edit was highly anticipated and did not disappoint the audience at all. Again it was downloaded and shared in the world hundreds of thousand times among SW fans. The famous commentar is still one of the finest extras ever available on a fanedit and the fanedit itself is also still liked a lot.

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