I'm curious if fanedits might be considered to fall under the homage, parody, and tribute umbrella.
Legally, no. An "homage" is where you do something new that references something old. Like, the award ceremony/throne room scene in
Star Wars is a visual homage to
Triumph Des Willens, and the trench run is an homage to
The Dam Busters. But all of that is happening in the context of an otherwise original work. A tribute is basically the same thing as an homage. No fan edit falls into this category because they're basically just tweaking the original work.
A parody subverts the meaning of the original work, usually for humorous effect or for social commentary purposes or some mix of the two. So,
Airplane! is a parody of the film
Airport and its multiple sequels. It takes the same basic concept (large cast featuring multiple focal characters, disaster film about a plane trying to land, etc.), but it makes the whole thing intentionally humorous.
This is closely related to the concept of a "transformative work" where the original work is so altered as to fundamentally change the meaning of the work. 2 Live Crew's "Oh Ugly Woman" and the book The Wind Done Gone are examples of transformative works that courts have upheld. The concept of a transformative work is also part of the fair use doctrine. Fair use is what's known as an "affirmative defense" which basically says "Yes, I copied the work, but it's ok because...."
All of this stuff is
highly fact-specific, too. But the bottom line is simple: no fan edit out there that I've seen would be likely to receive fair use protection or be considered a transformative work. They're blatant copyright infringement under the law. It's just that the rights holders generally ignore the infringement.
But more, Dan and JD have got me thinking... Not about the OOT, in this case, but. What are the chances Fox has approached Lucasfilm about a re-release in theaters of the extant Star Wars films, but Disney has blocked it in an attempt to force Fox into being more cooperative with their Marvel properties?
I doubt Fox has approached Disney. I doubt Disney wants Fox releasing anything at this point, since it will only (A) draw focus away from their new stuff, and (B) mean that Disney has to share money with Fox when they don't need to. There isn't enough of an upside in re-releasing the OT or the PT in theaters. And Disney not allowing Fox to release the films -- if Fox even asked in the first place -- doesn't really relate to the Marvel issue.
The Marvel issue is settled: Fox has the film rights (and I think the TV rights) to X-Men and the FF. They're not gonna give that up. The last X-men film was well received and financially successful. First Class was, too. Even The Wolverine did decently. That's three succesful X-Men films in a row. They're not about to give that up. The reason the Sony deal with Disney happened was because Sony has had several not-so-well-received Spider Man films in the past few years. Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 both failed to really take off, and the whole Sinister Six thing looks like it's going nowhere, too. While they may appear to be run by incompetents based on the email hack and other recent stuff, they appear to at least be smart enough to want to tie their next Spidey film in to the MCU itself. This may also relate to the push by Marvel to bring more "Spidey-adjacent" properties to the big screen/TV, like Daredevil and Jessica Jones.
