Review Detail
9.6 24 10
(Updated: October 03, 2021)
Overall rating
9.6
Audio/Video Quality
10.0
Audio Editing
10.0
Visual Editing
10.0
Narrative
9.0
Enjoyment
9.0
In the forum thread for this edit, Spence made two promises: it would still be our least favorite Mission: Impossible movie, and it would become significantly more watchable. And both turn out to be true. M:I-2 is still the weakest link in the franchise (editing can only get you so far), but this is a gigantic improvement. By removing the worst offenders and having an actual good music score (very well integrated, and that's one of the most painful and time-consuming aspects of fanediting) the positive qualities of the film, and there are a handful of them, are pushed to the foreground. Watching it I was thinking all the time about how much better the action scenes in this look and play in comparison to today's heavily color-filtered, everything-is-CGI approach. And thanks to the score replacement, this film now feels timeless instead of locked on the early 2000s. It now sounds and looks great. And is highly enjoyable.
My only gripe (out of the stuff that could have been resolved by editing - facts like Cruise being at his most Zoolander-ish, or that gun in the sand at the end being the mother of all contrivances, are things nothing can be done about) is that while the visuals of the Seville procession scene were beautifully fixed, the verbal reference by Anthony Hopkins' character to saints being burned stays (and the song is still from the wrong part of Spain). This is kind of a big deal for Spaniards: ask any how they felt about this movie and they'll go on a long rant about the insultingly and hilariously wrong Seville segment. For everyone else, though, this will likely pass unnoticed, so it's minor in relation to the big picture. Everything else is tremendously improved and very well realized. Highly recommended overall.
My only gripe (out of the stuff that could have been resolved by editing - facts like Cruise being at his most Zoolander-ish, or that gun in the sand at the end being the mother of all contrivances, are things nothing can be done about) is that while the visuals of the Seville procession scene were beautifully fixed, the verbal reference by Anthony Hopkins' character to saints being burned stays (and the song is still from the wrong part of Spain). This is kind of a big deal for Spaniards: ask any how they felt about this movie and they'll go on a long rant about the insultingly and hilariously wrong Seville segment. For everyone else, though, this will likely pass unnoticed, so it's minor in relation to the big picture. Everything else is tremendously improved and very well realized. Highly recommended overall.
D