Montana Smith said:
Re-cutting KOTCS to make it a 'better' movie for some would end up with it being a very short feature, as there would be little else to insert to make up for the missing sections. Keeping KOTCS at a reasonable length would be like that snake that grew legs and wandered off as a lizard: it would be an entirely different film, and not just a re-cut.
Well said. Like most of you in this thread, I don't necessarily agree with fan-edits. I've only ever read summaries of what fans wanted to do to a particular film, but never really watched any of it. I can agree from what I read that it drastically alters the movie into something a lot shorter or at least a lot more bland and completely not the same movie.
I remember reading about Richard Donner's Superman II about 10 years before it was released. For years, I remember hearing how fans hated the comedic elements of SMII and some of the nonsensical parts (Amnesia kiss, Cellophane S). I myself was always put off by how inconsistent it was with the first movie and how much was "missing." To say the least, I was fascinated by this unreleased footage and would have given anything to see Donner's version as close to how it was meant to be.
When it finally came to light, it had been my most anticipated movie I had ever waited for. For me, it was perfect. It was so great that I do not think I could ever watch the Richard Lester version of Superman II again. Fans however, had a billion problems with it. Here was the ironic thing...the movie starts out with an introduction by Richard Donner stating that it's not complete and that he wished he could have filmed more scenes back in the day. Further more...even a title card appears before the movie starts stating that this is as close to a Donner version as they could get it, they even go as far as stating how they had to use screen tests for certain shots just to keep it as close to the original vision as possible.
Well, apparently, even stating that it is an in complete film, is still not enough to show fans that if they had the time and money and were aloud to travel back in time, the movie would have been drastically different than what is being presented today. All I read was "They blew it....It could have been better... I would have done X, Y, and Z to make it better..." And here was an even more ironic thing...fans started to re-edit the Donner version of the film with footage of the Lester version! Yes, all the scenes they complained about, they were actually putting back into a version of the film who's soul purpose and goal was to NOT have that footage in it.
I guess my point to the whole thing is, even if a director re-cuts/re-edits there is just going to be a fan that re-cuts/re-edits that and then another fan that re-cuts/re-edits that...and so on and so on. When does it stop? Sometimes directors themselves can re-cut/re-edit their own films until they begin to stop resembling what we all know and love.
Movies such as KOTCS, Terminator 3 and the like have always been "bonus" movies to me. Clearly the the span of time separates them from the greatness we've come to expect and love. Re-editing them as you see fit just seems to be a viscous cycle that neither adds or subtracts, but just sort of morphs the film into something even more incomprehensible.