Crafting a legacy sequel through creative editing
All roads lead to Raimi. Growing up, my weekends were often spent devouring Hercules and Xena episodes, hoping for an appearance from my favorite character: Autolycus, the King of Thieves.
As time went on, I developed a new obsession - the Build Engine shooters: Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, and Blood.
The larger-than-life heroes of these over-the-top games fired off perfectly timed one-liners while causing mayhem and destruction: “Hail to the king, baby!”, “Come get some!”, “Good, bad, I’m the guy with the gun.” I couldn’t get enough of it.
Time went on (again) and I became obsessed with 80s and 90s B-movies. Tonally, a theme became apparent: I am attracted to the combination of silly, excessive, funny, and ultra-violent. Naturally, I discovered the Evil Dead series. Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn became (and remains) my favorite movie - the greatest splatstick movie of all-time (a title contested only by Peter Jackson’s masterpiece Dead Alive). And then I saw Army of Darkness, the third in the series.
Suddenly, it all made sense. Everything I loved had come from this movie: the one-liners, the larger-than-life hero, the chainsaws, the violence. It was all lifted wholesale:
It dawned on me how deep the connections went: Sam Raimi had directed Hercules, Xena, and the Evil Dead movies. Autolycus was played by Bruce Campbell. Ash was played by Bruce Campbell. Duke Nukem was Bruce Campbell. I now had an idol, so naturally I skipped a day of school to meet him (but couldn’t convince my friends to join):
To this day Bruce Campbell remains a fixture in my life:
(my personal copy of Bruce Campbell’s special effects facecast from Army of Darkness)
Decades passed and fans like me begged for more Evil Dead. We finally got it in the form of a well-received 3-season television show: Ash vs Evil Dead. As fun as the show was, it was not what I had hoped for. My hope was for a playful sequel in the spirit of Army of Darkness, however the show leaned into the horror of Evil Dead 1 and 2. I enjoyed watching the series, but felt like I had not yet seen what I wanted: a sequel to Army of Darkness.
If I wanted a proper sequel to Army of Darkness, I would have to make it myself.
As a fully digital project, my process was straightforward:
Luckily I had the foresight (read: odd compulsion) to take notes during my initial viewing of Ash vs Evil Dead. For every episode I noted what I felt worked well, and what didn’t:
I also made notes of the most “Army of Darkness” scenes and dialogue. With the perfect ending of Season 3 (an improved version of the original Army of Darkness ending) I had all the material that was needed for a coherent storyline.
I was aiming for a feature-length (2 hour) sequel. The main plot would take advantage of the Knights of Sumeria plotline in Season 3, which directly continues from the events of Army of Darkness.
I planned to lift scenes and dialogue from Seasons 1 and 2 to restructure the narrative and provide context for new characters and events. Since I was entirely focused on continuing the Army of Darkness storyline, I planned to ignore most of the plotlines in the television show.
I used the official Blu-ray releases as the source for video (1080p resolution) and audio (5.1 surround sound). Handbrake was used for ripping the source material.
For a name, I went with Ash vs Army of Darkness.
After considerable brainstorming and planning, I was ready to edit.
Putting the edit together required a number of techniques:
Creating a new title card was fun:
The credits at the end of the edit were updated to reflect only the episodes which actually appeared in the edit (bonus feature: a reference to my other idol):
As an extra bit of polish the English subtitles were updated to reflect all my changes, and custom chapters were added:
The edit was ready for test screening.
Watching the edit with people who had not seen either Army of Darkness or Ash vs Evil Dead revealed inconsistencies with the narrative and editing. These were all noted:
Modifications were made, and re-tested. After a few iterations, the edit was ready for release.
Similar to an IMDb entry being the mark of a real movie, inclusion in the Internet Fanedit Database (IFDb) is the mark of a proper fanedit. Editors submit their fanedits to the IFDb Academy for review and if the edit meets the quality threshold (technical execution, plot) it may get approved for inclusion in the database.
As part of the submission I created a promotional poster:
The full package was submitted for review.
After three years (!!) in the Academy queue my edit was approved and added to the IFDb.
Trailer:
Those who like it, like it a lot:
