Mission: Impossible 2 - The Spence Edit

I enjoyed the original version of M:I-2 while still seeing the huge flaws that the movie had. It is always fun to rewatch the action scenes of the movie, but there is too much cheesiness and the style of music doesn't work in a Mission Impossible movie. So I'm glad to say that this fan edit by Spence does fix the biggest flaws, two of which were my biggest gripes with the movie: the pace and the music. Anything redundant has been removed to quicken the pace and get to the point. The action scenes and the quieter moments are more emotional and improved thanks to the music from other M:I movies and the pace making them tighter.

Just like some reviewers have said before me, this fan edit does salvage the second M:I entry and make it worthy one as well. It does make it, at least in my books, as good (maybe even better) as the first M:I movie. Well done, Spence! I don't know how you managed to fix this movie, but you managed to do it and even made it a great action movie in my eyes.

This is the one M:I movie I could never bring myself to watch more than once every 5+ years, if only to remind myself that it was as bad as I remembered. Spence managed to salvage it, but more than that, make it a worthy entry in the series. I didn't notice any editing issues, and the 13 GB copy I watched looked fantastic. Bravo Spence! Looking forward to seeing more of your work.

As an avid fan of John Woo (he is forever one of my 5 favorite directors), to say M:I-2 was a retroactive disappointment is an understatement (I say retroactive because I watched and hated M:I-2 years ago before I knew who John Woo was or had seen any of his films besides, but I recently watched 14 of his most excellent filmography, 13 of which were his HK films, and I fell in love, so after seeing those, I am retroactively disappointed in M:I-2). Spence set himself a defined set of goals for what his edit needed to accomplish, and he achieved them incredibly well. The visual editing is nigh flawless, his audio editing is incredible and as good as can be given the monumental task of rescoring one of Zimmer’s worst scores. So there are obviously moments throughout the edit that are noticeably rough, albeit very slightly. The pacing is much improved, as the first half moves quickly onward in its set up, but doesn’t feel overly rushed, and once we get to the action scenes, they are still awesome in all their Woo-ness, but they aren’t as far into the realm of self parody as they used to be. And while the beginning half is still a bit slow, that’s an issue at the core of the film’s writing, and is neither Spence’s fault, nor Woo’s in my opinion. Overall, a fantastic achievement and definitely my go to for future marathons of the franchise. Thank you Spence!

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II is the ugly step child of the M:I franchise.

Of all of them, it feels the most dated and, retroactively, the most stylistically out of step with the rest of the movie series.

But idea of trying to fan edit this John Woo extravaganza into something more akin to the later films, is a daunting... some might even say.. IMPOSSIBLE... concept.

But thankfully Spence has accepted this mission!

And he achieved his set goals masterfully.

This fan edit is slimmer and tighter paced, increasing the entertainment value immensely. Due to plot requirements, some of very John Woo signature elements remain, but this is no fault of the editor. The new soundtrack is great, it definitely sounds more like the other movies in the franchise. Though on occasion the viewer can noticeably hear the audio remover warble after effect and there are other times where the new soundtrack is a tad too loud and it competes with onscreen dialogue. But none of this distracts from the fun factor.

This a great popcorn edit.

MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED!!!

:)

I was not really planning on watching MI-II ever again, as I remembered it as 'everything bad about John Woo's films', but this edit actually redeems the film.
As other commenters mentioned, the theatrical cut of this film was over-the-top, with lots of slow-mo's and pigeons. Some of the slow motion scenes are still with us, sadly, as are a few trimmable shots of pigeons, but the pacing (and essentially everything else) is so much better!