Ash vs Army of Darkness - my AvED / Evil Dead 4 fanedit

tferg93

Primitive Screwhead
Joined
Mar 6, 2019
I've put together something that some of you might enjoy - an Ash vs Evil Dead fanedit, with the objective of making a feature-length (2 hour) sequel to Army of Darkness. The main plot takes advantage of the Knights of Sumeria plotline in Season 3, but there are scenes and dialogue lifted from Seasons 1 and 2 to restructure the narrative. This edit is entirely focused on continuing the Army of Darkness story, and it ignores much of what happens in Ash vs Evil Dead (no cabin revisits, for example).

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Here is my plot summary:

In this sequel to Army of Darkness, our bumbling hero Ash Williams has enjoyed 25 years of local celebrity in his hometown of Elk Grove, Michigan. For hundreds of years, the evil demon Ruby has wandered the Earth, searching for the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis. When a drug-fueled mistake results in a passage from the Necronomicon being read aloud, Ruby's plan is set into motion and the forces of evil return to our world to destroy mankind. It is up to Ash, his trusty sidekick Pablo, and the descendants of his long-lost knightly companions to send evil back to Hell one last time.

The reason for making this edit is that (like some of you) I was generally disappointed with the direction taken in Ash vs Evil Dead. I wanted an Army of Darkness sequel: similar in tone and continuing that story. As I watched the show, I made notes of what I felt were the most "Army of Darkness" scenes and dialogue. These notes were my guide for what to include and what to cut. With the (perfect, imo) ending of Season 3 I knew we had what was needed for an Army of Darkness sequel.

The video and audio are sourced from Bluray (1080p x264, AC3 audio). I have edited with 5.1 audio intact. I have reworked the (English) subtitles. I have added chapter markers and names. In the flashback sequence at 59:33 I have substituted an Army of Darkness scene (also sourced from Bluray). There is a new title reveal at 00:43, which I have also carried over to my modifications of the poster and banner (originally from Season 3). I have edited the credits as well.

Aside from those changes above, the rest is just creative editing, dialogue removal/replacement, some cropping, screen-flipping, etc. It worked out better than I had hoped. As far as I am concerned, this is Evil Dead 4. I've submitted this edit for inclusion in the IFDB (but that might take a while).

I can't post the magnet link to my torrent here. Click through to my profile or send me a PM if you'd like to see the edit.
 
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DeathLivesAgain

Loud Mouth Braggart
Joined
May 17, 2018
Fanedits are a wonderful thing. I'm downloading it right now.

So how would the series go with this fanedit ?

The Evil Dead
Evil Dead II
Army Of Darkness (which version ? - U.S. Theatrical ? International Theatrical ? Director's Cut ? Television Version ?)
Ash Vs Army Of Darkness

?


- a few hours later -

I just watched it. Great job. It was coherent and worked. It made sense. And that's what I look for in fanedits. I especially love when it gets creative in it's narrative/editing. I'm mainly referring to the whole climax with The Dark Ones appearing wherever they damn well please and Pablo getting all three of the bodies together at once for the trio to make it through the rift together.

And I liked that you went the extra mile and made custom subtitles.

I'm not disappointed at all with the direction of the series, so I don't see this (or any) fanedit as an improvement. But, as an experiment to take Season 3 (and a couple of scenes from Season 2) and edit it into a two-hour theoretical 4th Evil Dead film that follows the film trilogy (as if the first two seasons never happened), this was a job well done.
 
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MaidOfKandar

I May Be Bad But I Feel...Good....
Staff member
Joined
Mar 31, 2013
Good work!
 

tferg93

Primitive Screwhead
Joined
Mar 6, 2019
Thanks for the kind words, I'm glad those who've watched it have enjoyed it.

I agree that a fanedit needs to make sense in the context of the original material. I got pretty lucky with the footage available in order to make it all come together for the climax.

I was doing the editing with the assumption that this film was the sequel to Army of Darkness (US Theatrical) due to the "Hail to the King" quote, the American Flag motif, the fact that Ash returns to modern times, and the implication that due to his stupidity Evil followed him (the deadite in S-Mart). I also like that the ending of AvED (and thus the ending of this fanedit) restores the original vision for the ending of Army of Darkness Director's Cut: an apocalyptic future. We're now setup for never-ending speculation about the next Evil Dead installment (which will never end up happening) - just like how we've felt since 1993.
 

DeathLivesAgain

Loud Mouth Braggart
Joined
May 17, 2018
Thanks for the kind words, I'm glad those who've watched it have enjoyed it.

I agree that a fanedit needs to make sense in the context of the original material. I got pretty lucky with the footage available in order to make it all come together for the climax.

I was doing the editing with the assumption that this film was the sequel to Army of Darkness (US Theatrical) due to the "Hail to the King" quote, the American Flag motif, the fact that Ash returns to modern times, and the implication that due to his stupidity Evil followed him (the deadite in S-Mart). I also like that the ending of AvED (and thus the ending of this fanedit) restores the original vision for the ending of Army of Darkness Director's Cut: an apocalyptic future. We're now setup for never-ending speculation about the next Evil Dead installment (which will never end up happening) - just like how we've felt since 1993.

I know the series very well, so watching this fanedit, I had to mentally erase the series from my mind and keep it in that perspective of 'this is Evil Dead 4'. Which, you obviously know what I'm talking about because you made it brilliantly that way (referring to watching for things that wouldn't make sense in the context, wondering how you're going to get around any callbacks to previous seasons). A perfect example was Ash going after this demon woman, Ruby, but he doesn't know her or her name, just as Brandy's guidance counselor, which he only knew about because Dead Brock mentioned it to him that the cute guidance counselor resurrected him from the grave. When he's in Ruby's house with Heidi (I think her name is) and they are escaping and hiding from the baby-Ash, Ash finds all this documentation on himself that Ruby has. And Heidi asks him, "You know her, this demon woman, this 'Ruby'?" and Ash says something like, "The who with the huh?" (which was also a callback to Brock's same phrase from in the hardware store flashback). It was brilliant. I'm like, this editor knows what they're doing, they get it. The continuity worked in the context intended.

And there were a couple of moments where I was like, "Oh no, the editor fucked up. Why would they have that flashback to Ash talking to his dad about the secret and they're all covered in blood?" And it took me a little while to realize (I was thinking, 'How can that make sense, am I missing something?") that, "Oh, yea, the very first moment of the film, Ash is talking about saving Elk Grove, so there was an incident and that was the incident which led to Brock's death." So, I couldn't find any flubs or out-of-place callbacks to something that shouldn't there. It was perfect. And you got it down to a pretty precise 2 hours, which was impressive. That's the length a studio would have had you cut it down for a feature film (these days).

This is probably the third fanedit (feature-film-wise) I've ever seen (from beginning to end). My first experience was with a fanedit of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy titled, 'Spider-Man: The Birth Of A Hero". It was all three films made into one big film that was 3 hours and 45 minutes. So it was a 6 hour (the three films back to back) block cut down to 3:45. And it was revelatory to me because they managed to tell the first movie in the first hour and then combined 2 & 3's story to where at one point Spider-Man is fighting Doc Ock outside and immediately encounters Sandman robbing that money-van. Then when Spidey's done, he swings up to a building and let's the sand out of his socks saying, "Where do all these guys come from?". And the best thing about that fanedit was how they managed to create a new ending for the trilogy (SPOILERS -
After Peter hits MaryJane to the ground from wearing the symbiote so much, they break up and she eventually gets with John Jameson and they get engaged, with the ending of this whole story being that she leaves the wedding to be with Peter. It got the ending of Spider-Man 2 to be the ending to the overall story.)
And it was brilliant.

I've been fascinated by fanedits since, what one can do with the material. This was about a decade ago. And while I will occasionally download them, I rarely sit down to watch them (I'm always saving for later). But it just excites me so much.

There's a Star Wars prequel fanedit where they make it into sort of a live-action anime by dubbing the voices with some foreign language and then creating their own subtitles, so they can manipulate it to tell virtually anything they can come up with - they solely create the entire dialogue for this fanedit. I just thought that was genius and got so giddy at the possibilities. I'm looking forward to watching that someday.

And then there's Teenage Mutant N...a Turtles on Youtube, which is made up into about 11 parts. This guy does all the voices and I laughed so hard I cried, for about an hour (because that's how long it is). It's a must see. The characterization and continuity is beyond amazing: (Don't be turned off by the title. This entire thing is voiced and put together by one black guy, by the way.)

I really enjoyed Ash Vs Army Of Darkness. So thanks for making it.
 
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