Hmm. It feels like there was a more recent thread than this, but I can't seem to find it.
Anyway, after my half-joking suggestion in the thread "Star Wars New Digital Release!" that Lucasfilm releases the unaltered original trilogy but release fan edits in place of the prequels, it once again got me asking myself what the definitive fan edits to date are.
Looking at the FanEdit Database, there looked to be a way to sort by "Most Popular" or "Highest Rated" for all films, but not a way to sort those for just Star Wars films. So yesterday, with some free time on my hands, I made a list of those films.
The most popular prequel edits were easy enough to determine:
L8wrtr wins hands-down in that category...
Ep. I: Shadows of the Sith -- Average rating: 8.9 out of 10; 44 votes
Ep. II: An Empire Divided -- 9.2 out of 10; 35 votes
Ep. III: Dawn of the Empire -- 9.4 out of 10; 25 votes
As for highest-rated, there's a little more variety:
Ep. I: Return of the Sith, by
seciors -- 9.3; 16 votes
Ep. II: The Approaching Storm, by [MENTION=8536]Hal9000[/MENTION] -- 9.4; 11 votes
Ep. III: Labyrinth of Evil, by HAL 9000 -- 9.6; 14 votes
For the record, HAL 9000's Ep. I had an impressive 8.7 from 15 votes. seciors just edged him out on that one.
Of course, by no means am I saying that because these are considered the best that people should just give up on watching other fan edits and that no one else should ever attempt an edit. I cannot stress enough that I'm not just dismissing other people's work. But since there are so many edits, and that tends to overwhelm newcomers to the site, it seems like a nice idea to give them a good place to start.
While I was at it, I looked at the OT. [MENTION=5856]adywanuk[/MENTION] owns the Ep. IV edits, of course, with a perfect 10 out of 145 votes (!).
ADigitalMan did a Special Edition of
Empire that got an 8.8 out of 6 votes. And
Q2 did an
RotJ edit that got a 9.0 out of 6 votes.
(There are a few episodes that got very high ratings but only one vote, which I didn't include due to lack of consensus.)
Anyway, I hope this information is helpful to someone! And great job to all the editors, including the ones not mentioned here.