Mission: Impossible 2 - The Spence Edit

This movie....i have introduced a handful of people to the MI series, and this is an early hurdle to have to explain to people, IMO its the worst of the entire series, just a throw away action movie made in the late 90's, I remember liking it as a kid and always had a soft spot for it due to some of its filming locations which i had frequented a lot as a child before the movie was shot.
I have to say though, this edit is now the only version of this movie i would watch and if i were to introduce another person to the series this is the MI2 cut i would show, it take away so much of the unnecessary and moves the story along.
The only issue i had and i don't really know if its a real issues to be honest... was the sound track, it could have hit a little harder and being a 90's kid i would have liked to have heard that Limp Bizket MI theme just once, even as the outro. But again thats hardly a gripe on this edit,
But that intro ! So good
Highly recommend to all.

Thanks for putting the work in Spence

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!

Kudos to Spence for making this movie feel much closer to Mission Impossible (at least the movie series)! Nice trimming of a few over the top scenes and "John Woo moments". The first half now feels like a proper spy thriller. The last half ends up being a lot of shooting and action but that's rather baked into the thing. My only criticism is that, due to the ambitious re-scoring of the entire project (which is phenomenal), some of the sound design gets lost or has its punch diminished. I listened on reference speakers so it's possible this is less noticeable on other systems. But the ability to enjoy another MI movie without suffering through Limp Bizkit is worth a small sacrifice!

The Spence Edit is the best version of Mission: Impossible II, and one of the best fan edits I’ve ever seen. After I finished watching it, I said, “You cut 22 minutes out of this film? The theatrical cut must have had a lot of filler, because I didn’t even notice anything missing.” That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, of course. There were some bits where I was like, “Oh wow. That part is gone. But that’s a good thing.”

One of my favorite parts about this edit is the opening title sequence. Cutting from the plane exploding to the fuse lighting? Brilliant. And the title sequence itself is edited just like the title sequences in past and future films in the series. It’s so expertly done, and feels much more like a Mission: Impossible film to me than the theatrical cut does.

I think the new score works well and is more consistent with the rest of the series. But I must admit, I do kind of miss the heavy metal score from the theatrical cut in a couple of places. I know it’s over the top and hasn’t aged well. It’s just what I’m used to hearing when I watch the second film. It’s bad, but in a cool way. You know?

I’m sorry to say that even this version of Mission: Impossible II is still the worst in the series, but there’s not much you can do to fix that in the editing room. That being said, taking out as much of the bad stuff as you can really does elevate the overall quality of the film.

The next time I have a Mission: Impossible marathon, I’m going to drop this version into the playlist instead of the theatrical version. Great job!