Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2: Pruned Edition

It's been a few weeks since I watched this but I just wanted to say it's a fantastic edit.
I found Mantis and Drax to be somewhat annoying in the theatrical cut, especially Drax in contrast to how his character was in the first film. rb has cut alot of the jokes that didn't work. I'll drop a point for the lack of Stan - or was he there? if so I apologise in advance.

This is pretty much the film we should have gotten although I wish there was a way to remove pac-man, alas it wouldn't be possible in way that makes the fight jarring and I can't hold that against rb.

Give yourself a pat on the back because this edit fits perfectly into the continuity of volume 1 and Infinity wars.

Aside from a few issues of having a joke payoff without it, really, having been setup, this was an excellent edit. I would recommend this over the theatrical cut any time.

I thought the theatrical version of GOTG2 was... "fine". I really enjoyed the story and most of the character arcs. My only real gripe was with some of the humour coming at the expense of more dramatic moments. This is edit solves most of if not all of those problems. It's been a long time since I watched the theatrical so I can't be entirely sure what was cut but boy oh boy does the main narrative and all those character moments shine much more than I remember!

Video and audio quality is fine, not the best, but that hasn't stopped it replacing my Blu-Ray from now on. Great work!

The technical elements of this edit are flawless. Seriously, great work. They help to move the narrative along at a quicker pace, and you really don't notice a single issue with the cuts A/V wise.

However, as a big Guardians of the Galaxy fan, Vol. 2 being my favourite, I did not enjoy this edit as much as the original. I have an echoic memory (audiographic memory - like photographic memory but for sound), and thus I remember things like song lyrics, sound effects, soundtrack queues and, most importantly, film dialogue very well. So, having seen this movie a number of times, I did notice what was cut a lot of the time.

And, while I do feel MCU humour does tend to 'break' the moments a bit, I actually think they generally work perfectly in the Guardians films. So, the cutting of that kind of stuff did throw me off a bit (not a problem if you don't have the same connection to the franchise, or an echoic memory).

Additionally, a more valid criticism then my hyper-awareness, is that I felt cutting out a lot of 'banter' or even just normal dialogue that got removed made for some strange moments. For example, when Quill and Gamora are arguing, I'm pretty sure some of the dialogue got cut, and it made them get aggressive way too fast. Instead of their voices getting progressively hostile, they just kind of go from chit-chat to yelling down each others' throats. There were also some moments where I think the soundtrack was replaced due to cuts made, which also stuck out to me.

Essentially, the editors' technical elements are flawless, but sometimes these technical elements ignore other elements of filmmaking such as pacing and dialogue, which stuck out to me very much.

Take this all with a grain of salt, as other reviews don't really express my criticisms, and maybe a lot of these issues were already present in the original and I just never noticed because I wasn't looking for them. Again, a lot of this stuff won't be a problem if you don't have the same hyper-awareness to this sort of thing as I do. I will be sticking to the original on a rewatch of Guardians 2, so I can't recommend this edit for people like me. However, it does have great merit and there's no reason you shouldn't watch it for yourself.

To preface this review, I couldn't stand to watch the theatrical cut of GOTG 2 for more than 20ish minutes when it was first released. The jokes present in the film not only failed to land but choose to linger, killing the overall pace of the film. It was a letdown compared to the first in the series, failing to capture the manic energy the original had.

With all that said, I am happy to report that this edit vastly improves the quality of the film. The most noticable improvement was the pacing of scenes, with jokes being truncated to make them snappier. This had two effects: a) Jokes that were ruined by overemphasis were given room to breathe, with jokes that fell flat given less screen time; b) it grounded the film and made it feel less like a medicore sitcom.

The video editing was crisp with no obvious flaws and the same holds true for the audio. While the edit is not particularly focused on narrative adjustment, the removal of the opening intro which gives away the primary plot twist is a welcome change to the film.

Overall, this edit improves GotG 2 to a point where it is an decent MCU film. I wouldn't say it's as good as the original, but that has to do with the writing rather than the edit. Also the short behind the scenes video included is an amazing touch. Thanks for the edit rb!