Creating a legacy sequel through creative editing and copyright infringement
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.
Time goes on and 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 goes on again and I become obsessed with 80s and 90s B-movies. Tonally, a theme becomes apparent: I find myself attracted to the combination of silly, excessive, funny, and ultra-violent. Naturally, I discover the Evil Dead series. Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn becomes (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 comes 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 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 pass and the fans 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 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 the sequel to Army of Darkness.
If I wanted a proper sequel to Army of Darkness, I would need to make it myself.
As a fully digital project, our process will be straightforward:
Luckily I had the foresight (read: odd compulsion) to take notes during my initial watch-through of Ash vs Evil Dead. For every episode I noted what I felt worked well, 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) we have all the material that was needed for a coherent storyline.
We will aim for a feature-length (2 hour) sequel. The main plot will take advantage of the Knights of Sumeria plotline in Season 3, which directly continues from the events of Army of Darkness.
We will lift scenes and dialogue from Seasons 1 and 2 to restructure the narrative and provide context for new characters and events. Since this edit is entirely focused on continuing the Army of Darkness storyline, we will ignore most of the plotlines in the television show.
We will use the official Blu-ray releases as the source for video (1080p resolution) and audio (5.1 surround sound). Handbrake will be used for ripping the source material.
For a name, we will go with Ash vs Army of Darkness.
After considerable brainstorming, we’re 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 appear 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 our changes, and custom chapters were added:
The edit is ready for test screening.
Watching the edit with people who have seen neither Army of Darkness or Ash vs Evil Dead reveals any inconsistencies or overlook narrative and editing problems. These are all noted:
All necessary modifications are made, and the final edit is re-tested. We are 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 can submit their fanedits to the IFDb Academy for review. If the edit meets their quality threshold (technical execution, plot) it gets approved for inclusion.
As part of the submission we create a promotional poster:
And edit together a trailer, which conveys the tone we are going for:
The full package is submitted for review.
After three years (!!) in the Academy queue our edit is finally approved and added to the IFDb.
Those that like it, like it a lot:
