Pollack argues that the main reason that Giant Steps is such a high mountain is because it is traditionally played at such a ferocious tempo. Slow it down, and the Coltrane Changes become fairly ordinary ii-V-I substitution progressions.
I’m persuaded. I love Coltrane, and I’ve listened to the Giant Steps album countless times. The Coltrane Changes are very nice, but in the line of other jazz theory such as tritone substitution, the deceptive cadence, and so on.
The main thing with Giant Steps is that to play it like Coltrane does you have to practice it to death, accumulate a vocabulary of riffs, and gain facility at improvising over sophisticated changes moving at a speed that other tunes won’t have prepared you for.
EDIT: I originally posted the wrong link, to Giant Steps slowed down 30%. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilbrDJy9-98