Review Detail

Positives:
Spence has a real knack for flow and pacing. I watch all the Marvel stuff shamelessly, maybe "religiously", and am shocked by how little I missed that was cut out. This is slightly over two hours, the source I think being approximately six hours. I have no intention to make an edit like this but I think many wondered while watching the show what a movie or fan edit could have been like, and I think Spence got really close to what would have been in theaters if things in the real world had gone differently. The show has extra subplots and tangents but a lot of it felt like filler and this edit proves you can carve down to the core story and not miss any of the extra characters and dances and meme material. The problem with really good editing is I don't have much in mind that stands out, it was just a really overall smooth experience, it never felt like I was watching a show, just a "smaller" movie. I think the stuff that was kept works really well.

Negatives:
One shot looked shimmery or pixellated, the establishing shot for Riga, Latvia around 56:05ish. The shot immediately after has a similar effect but only on the road, then after it's back to looking perfectly clear. It's not that distracting, it's very short, and much worse has happened to my picture quality watching actual streaming services. I assume this was either in the source, or from how the source was captured, a render error, or something to do with the conversion to the smaller file I watched.

I do miss the cop scene after the first meeting with Isaiah, I think it helps drive home the point Isaiah is making to Sam in their second meeting. But I understand, the scene leads directly into more material that was cut and there's no clean other way out of it. If you could have found a way to include some of it, I would consider this edit basically the perfect version of the story, narratively.

I think some of Sam's speech at the end falls a little flat, and I would have tried to cut a little bit of it where he's telling the council not to call the flag smashers terrorists, but that's a problem with the show, not the edit. I have faith Spence made a weighted decision here, the part I'm talking about was the beginning of his speech and it could have been really awkwardly short or lacking context for the rest of the speech if that part was missing,

Back to Positive:
At first I thought the edit was missing that opening action beat (there's a lot of talking and character and plot setup) but I do remember the opening action scene in the show was a lot of fluff and not very relevant to anything. But I still went in thinking that cutting that entirely was a mistake. But after watching, I think not opening on expensive big action and instead opening on Sam at home really reinforces what this story is, which is small-scale, character-driven, and conversation-based. Right through to the end, this is Character Moments: The Movie. If you complain about Marvel movies all being the same big CGI action sequence over and over, this is the break from that you've been looking for.

I enjoyed this much more than the show itself, this edit is an accomplishment. Thanks, Spence.