Another Improvement To The Star Wars 'New' Trilogy Torpedoed By Copyright

Culture

from the not-helping,-you-are dept

While fan-made movie edits aren’t particularly new, they don’t often find themselves getting a ton of attention by the mainstream public. That changed a couple of years ago when Topher Grace, of That 70’s Show fame, decided to try to learn film editing and produced a recut single film of the Star Wars trilogy (episodes 1, 2 and 3) that came out a decade or so ago. The result was a tighter, single film that decapitated a great deal of the nonsense Star Wars fans hated. Instead, it was a single movie that left in the real meat of the story, focusing on Anakin Skywalker’s relationships and his fall from grace. In other words, it’s what Star Wars films should be.

Only a few friends of Grace saw the recut film, because copyright got in the way, though it became the stuff of legend, with lots of people talking about it. Grace made it clear that he had no plans on putting his work up on the internet. So people were deprived of a recut, to some degree transformative work, despite how much the public wanted just such a thing.

Of course, Topher Grace isn’t the only one doing these kinds of edits, and isn’t even the only one looking to wrap up the early Star Wars episodes into something other than the mess that George Lucas released.

A reimagining of the Star Wars prequel trilogy edited into a single compelling movie, based on the structure conceived by actor Topher Grace. As a critique of episodes 1-3, many large plot pieces have been removed or changed to strengthen the core relationship between Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala. More than 100 video and audio edits heighten the main character’s tragic fall from grace.

This appears to be an even more transformative attempt than Grace’s, with scenes recut and reordered to portray an even deeper emotional storyline of the infamous Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader. Some early comments on the edited films were quite positive. I can’t provide you with my own review because, well, you’ve probably already guessed it.

UPDATE (6:58pm): And the video’s now gone, presumably removed for copyright reasons.

And so, again, viewers are deprived the opportunity to see a recut, fan-made exhibition of their own Star Wars take due to the overprotective nature of copyright holders. It’s a situation that makes little sense. You can’t even really appreciate the recut film without seeing the originals, so that you have the context of what was done. While many will argue that the finished recut film was itself a better movie than the 3 original films, the star here is the editing work, not the film itself. That’s the transformative art. I won’t go so far as to say that copyright shouldn’t even apply here, but there’s no way it’s serving its original purpose.

On top of that, forcing Jar Jar Binks down our throats by kneecapping a film that omits him/it/whatever is just mean.

Filed Under: copyright, edit, fan edit, george lucas, star wars, topher grace, trilogy