Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2: Pruned Edition

Although I didn't mind the original, there was multiple things that didn't need to be included and this edit perfectly edits them out which improves the pace of the movie and improves the overall watching experience. I did notice what was cut but that's only because I have seen the original every day for the past couple months as my 2 year old son is currently obsessed with baby groot, but what was cut will not be missed and makes this movie much more enjoyable when I always have to watch it. So thanks rb for making my experience watching this movie much more enjoyable.

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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.

I'm a huge Guardians of the Galaxy fan. I thoroughly enjoyed Vol. 2 in theaters, but after watching it at home I felt like Gunn just went a little overboard in parts.

At first I was annoyed by the lack of a detailed cutlist for this edit, but I decided to give it (along with a few other MCU edits) a chance in the lead-up to Endgame. And I feel like this is the highest praise I can ever give a fan edit of a movie I've seen in its theatrical form many times:

I didn't notice 95% of what was missing.

That's right. This edit is a full 16 minutes shorter and other than the pre-credits sequence and a couple of jokes here and there, I didn't even notice, and I fell in love with the film just the same way I did when I saw it in theaters the first time.

As with several edits in recent years, I wish it was available in a larger, higher-bitrate file, but beyond that, this will probably be the only version I watch from now on.

The second guardians suffers from Marvelitis with the excess of jokes outbalancing the drama. This fanedit fixes those problems and makes the film much more compelling and I couldn't tell where the jokes were cut out. The humor lands better in this, as a result and keeps the movie more interesting in my eyes. More fanedits needs to be made for movies like this where the humor can get in the way of a good story (Dr. Strange). Overall great job!