In the last ten years, two sets of films have been the subject of fan re-edits, Lucasfilm's much anticipated Star Wars prequels, specifically The Phantom Menace, and the Wachowski Brothers' The Matrix. In both cases, the films were not parodied or satirised, but improved by fans who, presumably, thought the originals weren't good enough but felt strongly enough about them to go to the effort of re-editing them at all.
The Matrix has been subject to two different fan edits, The Matrix: Reloaded, The Recut and The Matrix: Dezionised (the latter of which I have not seen yet). The former attempt to improve the much-maligned sequel to the first Matrix film involved adding cut scenes from the video game Enter the Matrix), removing scenes that didn't push the plot, and radically re-editing the rave/sex montage from the original, turning it into a separate (and much shorter) dance scene, followed by a quieter and more intimate sex scene.
This last example is interesting in that the separation almost totally reverses the feel of the original scene. By intercutting the rave, a public, group-oriented but still blatantly sexual event, complete with sweaty, nearly-naked bodies, and 'tribal' rhythms, with Neo and Trinity's love-making, the montage effect connected the signifiers of the two different settings: the almost primal nature of music and dance and the inherent messiness of human sexuality (which is visually juxtaposed with Neo and Trinity's data ports, remnants of their lives as slaves to the machines).
The scene loudly proclaims (almost literally given the content of Morpheus' preceding speech, "we are here, and we are unafraid") that this is humanity, low-tech, sexual, almost animalistic, dancing in a cave, as opposed to machine life, which is cold, hard, metal. The casting of a predominantly African-American and Latino-American population for Zion emphasises the point, making the rave feel universally human, not to mention rendering the scene in 'Earth'-toned skin, browns and beiges.
The recut version splits the two contexts and drastically reduces the rave scene, thus severing the connection between sex and dance, slightly retints the Neo/Trinity sex scene, making their skin seem pale, and shifts to a quieter, more 'soft rock' sound track, making the sex itself less animal-like, and more leisurely. All of this would seem to be an attempt to (1) cut out the rave scene entirely, which most fans hated, and/or (2) emphasise the plot point that, even in the midst of having sex, Neo cannot keep his prophetic vision of Trinity's death out of his mind (in fact, his mental flash to that vision either coincides with, or interrupts, his orgasm).
I can't comment much on The Matrix: Dezionised because I haven't seen it, but this fan edit results from combining the two Matrix sequels into one film, and cutting out all but Neo's story, which means primarily cutting out scenes in Zion, the last human city. Like The Matrix: Reloaded, The Recut, a plot-driven film, Dezionised seems to proceed from a desire to make the theatrical releases better, as opposed to abandoning them entirely as films that simply weren't good enough.
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was first recut in two versions that circulated by hand, The Phantom Edit: New York and The Phantom Edit: Chicago. I have, sadly, not seen the original edits, but there are now several versions of The Phantom Edit and Attack of the Clones circulating around the internet. Some are simple recuts, involving merely removing scenes or characters (I.e., Jarjar) or adding deleted scenes available on DVDs. Some are more elaborate, going so far as to change major plot elements by, for example, scrambling the dialogue of all aliens and robots and rewriting it in subtitles. One version even recuts the Obi Wan/Maul light sabre duel such that Obi Wan never loses his weapon. This recutter, whomever it might be, had to digitally change the colour of Obi Wan's light sabre to achieve the effect, an extremely difficult, and just a few years ago impossible thing to achieve with a home computer.
The reason I go into all of this detail of how the cuts work, how they change the films, and just how difficult they are to create is to demonstrate the sheer effort put into by fan recutters who remain totally anonymous, aside from pseudonyms like "Magnoliafan" (some on-line chatter has it that "Magnoliafan" is Kevin Smith, a known fan of Star Wars, and a known detractor of both the Special Edition films and the sequels, who is also somewhat infamous for attacking the P.T. Anderson film Magnolia on his own website). By virtue of being anonymous, the recutters are also not profit motivated. The question remains, then, why do it at all?
The answer to that lies in the love/hate relationship fans have with failed versions of their favourite films. Both Star Wars and The Matrix set the bar high with, in the former case, the first three films, and in the latter case, the first of three films. In both cases, the 'originals' (a problematic concept in this context) were loved by fans, and made a lot of money. In both cases, the sequels that followed were critically disliked and box-office flops.
Serious fans of these sequels felt, on some level, betrayed, claiming, for example, that George Lucas had "taken away their childhoods,� or that the Wachowskis has somehow misrepresented their talent in their first film (rumours of plagiarism floated around for a few years after the first sequel was released). Instead of abandoning the failed attempts at sequels, however, fans took it upon themselves to 'save' and 'improve' them. The fan edits of Star Wars and The Matrix claim a new kind of community ownership over the originals. They, as symbolic acts, say 'When you (George Lucas, Andy and Larry Wachowski) released these movies into the world, you gave them to us. You created a world that we took on as part of our culture. Therefore, when you ruined the sequels, you took something from us, and now we will take it back.'
And now, the point: fan edits are very clear examples of mass audiences reinterpreting mass culture and making it their own. Any argument about mass-produced art's monolithic uniformity, or the passivity of a pop culture audience, is obliterated by the very act of recutting a Hollywood film.
Sela.
Posted by orion at March 10, 2006 6:42 PM