Mission: Impossible 2 - The Spence Edit

From a film which was a guilty pleasure stuck in 2002 to becoming a timeless action movie. Spence has nailed it out of the park and now this movie which used to be the one we all skipped, can be watched without the cringe. 100/100

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.

As spence made very clear in his thread, this movie needed a fanedit. So i was glad to read about his project and he didn´t disappointed with his work. The new opening fits for this edit despite not having the iconic MI intros (even though i like the original mountain opening).
The music iterations are seemlessley, some louder pieces are noticeable but necessary to cover up original track niose.
I like this treamlined version of MI:2 :)

My ony´ly gripe would be the overall video quality regarding the bitrate, but i´m kind of pedantic in this regard.

I've always liked mi2, used to love it but I admit that it's a bad film. Made when little Tommy cruise was into bad metal and John woo movies, this entry has always stuck out and has dated horribly. Just when everybody had given up on it Spence comes along and sits the film comfortably back into the franchise. No more limp bizkit, less balletic slo-mo gun fighting and the first act of the film is now suitably restructured to fix the drag. I have been eagerly waiting for this edit since Spence announced it and I was not disappointed.

This edit elevates an out-of-place, unnecessary, entirely skippable entry in what is otherwise an excellent franchise to fit right in among the others (albeit at the weaker end). I really was not expecting this much of an improvement and will definitely keep this edit in my M:I lineup.