It's different because you're explicitly fucking with someone's art and redistributing it with your name attached against their will. I kind of hate remix culture though so I'm the wrong guy to ask.

Talking about and critiquing a work academically and offering suggestions is very different.

I should clarify, I'm ok with fan-edits if they're done for your own personal enjoyment. If I wanna take my purchased blu-ray of a movie, take the time to make a custom edit that I like, and burn myself a copy to watch at home, I think that's fine.  I have a serious problem with it when you then post that online (often-times on piratebay), and start promoting it and making it about yourself, and stupid discussions start up about what the "best" fan-edit is for a particular movie, and whatnot.

Is there a certain what-if curiosity around potential re-edits of some movies in rare cases? Sure. The attempt to re-create Tarantino's original structure for True Romance is one example. However, the problem is that usually the people trying to do this stuff are not good editors, and so 95% of fan-edits online are garbage. Often riddled with mistakes, glitches, nonsensical choices, all because having a copy of Finalcut made them think they know how to edit. I think that's very disrespectful to the filmmakers and editors who busted their asses to make the movie they made.

If you want to try this stuff as an editing exercise (and it can be a valuable exercise), knock yourself out, but keep it to yourself.

I see what you're saying, I just think that with access to that limited set of material, all you can do is cut up and/or rearrange the pictures. You won't really know what else can be done and how much better it can be. Without access to the takes where Jake Lloyd was accidentally being a good actor, all you can often do is make something less shit. Takes and angles play a huge part in the editing process, and 'cutting shots/scenes' is such a limited vocabulary as you say.

To bring it back to the Hobbit, I've found real difficulty in excising 'offensive' material in the first movie, that awful Radagast sleigh chase sequence for example (which as shown makes no sense).

So, I enjoyed both movies. No, they're not nearly as good as LOTR, for many, many reasons. But I can enjoy them as part of the Middle-Earth history--instead of getting mad--because of this shameless retconning:

The Hobbit is "written" by Bilbo Baggins. He's far more fanciful and dramatic than Frodo, who "wrote" the Lord of the Rings. This character difference is obvious even in their portrayal in LOTR, and is highlighted by Bilbo's introduction in the first Hobbit film: the dwarf kingdom is not the greatest kingdom of Middle-Earth, but he kinda makes it out to be. This is to be expected from someone telling his own story and that of his best friends.

LOTR is far more grounded and "real" because it was written by the pragmatic Frodo (with additions by Sam), and therefore is a far more accurate account of events, with much less of the drama and embellishment contained in the Hobbit. This allows me to enjoy the Hobbit movies as fanciful tales (as, indeed, the book was), and the Lord of the Rings as more realistic "history."

Sure, movies are movies, and if it's a bad movie, it's bad. But I like 'em, and can preclude disappointment by remembering the above. After all, I really don't care for the book Hobbit, while LOTR is awesome. So there you go.