Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2: Pruned Edition

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!

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.

GotG 2 was one of those films in the MCU that was not flat out bad, but it just wasn't my cup of tea, especially after the excellent first one. The humor was too much and silly, and it also dragged too long. My enjoyment factor was around 5. Thankfully there weren't any highly important moments, just Mantis' introduction and the death of Yondu (spoiler alert), so I could easily skip it in any MCU marathons. Still, when I found this edit I thought I should give it a shot, why not try and salvage one more movie?

The audio and visual editing was pretty much excellent, I didn't notice or "felt" any tampering in any scene. The only thing I found out of place, is when Drax has a chat with Mantis and calls her hideous etc. That part is cut out, and when Mantis feels his past with his daughter she calls her disgusting, because of the missing dialogue before with Drax, and now it seems completely out of place and uncalled for. Also, at the beginning, originally Drax tells Peter to find a woman who is pathetic like him, but now the line "like you" is cut out. I mean, if you leave the "pathetic joke", why cut it in half?

Narrative wise it was pretty great! I did not miss any of the edited content. Most of the silly jokes where cut out, plus other scenes, so it was more streamlined. Unfortunately, this still didn't save the movie for me. I feel I needed the movie to be even shorter, especially towards the last act that drags sooo long.

That being said, I definitely recommend this to anyone who found the movie 'ok' and above. I believe this will be your go-to version! To anyone who disliked it, I don't think it will work for you, it's not That aggressive edit.

Thank you rb and thanks to anyone who read my review!

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.