Northwest Passage: A Twin Peaks Fanedit
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Updated
User reviews
33 reviews
Overall rating
9.2
Audio/Video Quality
9.4(23)
Audio Editing
9.6(22)
Visual Editing
9.4(22)
Narrative
8.5(21)
Enjoyment
8.9(33)
(Updated: September 08, 2012)
Overall rating
9.0
Audio/Video Quality
9.0
Audio Editing
9.0
Visual Editing
9.0
Narrative
9.0
Enjoyment
9.0
September 20, 2011 @ 10:32 am
REVIEW (contains massive spoilers)
This edit is – for the most part – a perfectly realised murder mystery whodunit edit chronicling the investigation of the murder of Laura Palmer. The problem is that Twin Peaks was never meant to be primarily a murder mystery whodunit chronicling the investigation of the murder of Laura Palmer. Now that this story (which was only a part of Twin Peaks) has a true beginning, a middle, and an end (things the original didn’t have and didn’t intend to have), it actually makes a lot of the problems of Twin Peaks more evident, as the sprawling nature of the serial storytelling used to hide the story flaws in the complexity and wonderful detours and non-essential elements. Is this the fault of the edit? No. But also: yes. I’ll try to explain.
I’ll start with the praise: This edit tries to turn a soap opera into a film, and it succeeds admirably. Scenes are cut to preserve the sense of a focused cinematic story. The Ghostwood/Packards/Sawmill plot (a HUGE part of both seasons) is completely removed – and it doesn’t create one plothole as far as I can see. At some points, sentences are even cut in half, like when Lucy explains what happened last night to Cooper. You have to know the scene intimately to be able to tell that the scene used to be twice as long. This was a particular standout to me. Audrey is also almost completely removed from the film. While removing Audrey freakin’ Horne is obviously a deeply disappointing thing to have to do, she doesn’t really impact Laura’s story in any big way, so it’s necessary for this edit, and I applaud the kill-yer-darlings-cojones of the editor for this move.
While pretty much all the transitions work brilliantly from a technical standpoint, there are a few story transitions that seem a bit wonky, like the Harold sequence and the Jacoby sequence. The Harold sequence is the only sequence that seems truly rushed and barely makes sense as recut. Since Donna tries to steal the diary pretty much immediately, it creates a plothole when she later tells Harry that Harold read to her from the diary. It also makes no sense that Harold trusted a total stranger when the long sequence where he lets Donna into his life is missing. This is one of the parts where the recutting hurts the film.
A couple of times, though, transitions are wonky from a technical viewpoint. I’m thinking mainly of the occasional abrupt crossfading, a few music volume fluctuations (which could have been fixed through painstaking audio editing, although I imagine it would have been extremely hard), and some weird edits. I’m thinking mostly about the scene where the camera pans from Maddy to Hank Jennings, which cuts mid-pan, and the really weird scene where Audrey is about to open the door to the Sheriff’s conference room and Harry is there instead. Now, of course I only know it’s supposed to be Audrey because I’ve seen TP 10 times, but the transition is really weird either way. The weird full moon insert in the middle of the Diary Heist sequence is another example. There are limitations in the source material, sure, but these scenes take you out of the film. Could it be fixed? I don’t know. Probably some, probably not all. Did it annoy in the grand scheme of things? Not really, as they take up a minuscule amount of the 5 hour runtime.
Audio quality is stellar, apart from occasional weirdness mentioned. Video quality is mostly perfect, with the occasional washed-out skin tone in high-light scenes. I haven’t seen the itunes hd version this is based on, so I don’t know if it’s present there, but I would doubt it since I can’t remember it from the gold box dvd. More likely, it’s from the zooming/upsampling due to the reframing. The 16:9 reframing I was REALLY skeptical to, but it worked surprisingly well. The occasional missing head of hair from the top and missing hand at the bottom of the picture only occasionally annoys, like the “meanwhile” in the red room.
Now to the conclusion: Do I recommend this edit? Yes and no.
Yes because it does an extremely good job of restructuring the series into a film, and because it contains a lot of the best scenes of the series while being 5 instead of 25 hours long. No because it was never meant to BE a film, and the impact of the story suffers from the restructuring. An example: from late in the first season Audrey is at One-Eyed Jacks on a personal, risky stakeout. The One-Eyed Jacks sequence with Cooper and Big Ed in episode 7 of the series is a really tense sequence. Not because it’s particularly tense to begin with, but because we know what Cooper doesn’t – namely that Audrey (who Cooper is also looking for) is in the same damned building! The scenes in the edit flow beautifully, but the edit is robbed of this tension. Also, in this edit, it’s necessary to go into the drug angle because Jacques is so necessary to the flow of the story. However, in the series we already know that Ben is the bank behind the drug operations, and Ben is ALSO at One-Eyed Jacks! In this edit, there’s only Ed and Cooper (and Jacques) – not the great confluence of crazy events that made Twin Peaks so unique.
But my main gripe with this story is with the ending. Not only does the excising of Dick Tremayne make a climactic event come out of the blue instead of being explained, but the actual ending is one of the cheapest and worst scenes of the series, in my opinion, and not worthy of being a Twin Peaks ending. On the show, this tremendous disappointment was softened by the fact that the episode contained a cliffhanger that opened up the door to this not being the end of Bob at all. A much better (open) ending was eventually provided, but this had to do with Cooper’s own past, not Laura’s. While the red room sequence as featured in the edit is expertly recut and re-inserted to provide some closure and background, it still feels weirdly out of place with the eventual ending. (Note of praise: cutting Windom Earle entirely from this worked really well, although the Coop doppelgänger is a bit of a head-scratcher without Hawk’s monologue.)
Another problem: after being told for a couple of episodes that this is a possession story, the extremely grisly murder scene of the series blurred the line between Bob and his “host” considerably. Fire Walk with Me went even further in this regard. The (really well done) editing of the murder scene and removal of all scenes up until the end that pointed out the killer, redraws the line between Bob and his host, making it more of an Exorcist-like possession story. This was, to me, never what Twin Peaks was about, and the “happy” ending of this edit ruins the complexity and makes the line clearly defined. This isn’t the edit’s fault per se. All the scenes are in the show. But the show, thankfully and interestingly, contradicted itself on more than one occasion making the story more complex. This was to the show’s credit, imo, and I’m sad to see it more focused and streamlined – usually positive traits, not so in this case.
The murder scenes (in the series, not this version) and FWwM make it unclear when the “host” is Bob and when he’s simply himself. There’s also the scene (cut from this edit) where the killer is driving around carelessly. Is he Bob there? I’m not sure, and that’s the beauty of it. The ending of episode 16, on the other hand, made this line fine and crisp, the killer “innocent”, and it even contradicts Mike’s words that Bob feeds on fear. What was the killer really afraid of in Laura? What did he fear? The answer is unpleasant in the extreme, but the series didn’t really dwell on that question at all. Instead the killer sees the light and is greeted by Laura in the afterlife. Give me a break. Thankfully, the series continued from there, went through some major speedbumps (Little Nicky and Malcolm Marsh – ouch!), but ended gloriously with darkness engulfing even the infallible Special Agent. Intense. Crazy. A blurred line between spirit world and real world. Dream Souls that Wander, like Hawk says. This edit stops where the spirit world gets interesting. It’s not the fault of the edit, the show was that way – and yet it is the edit’s fault, because it stops.
I’m also a bit unsure about how wise it was to cut so many Donna and James scenes. While there’s obviously a lot of filler, A LOT of their scenes are investigative. The Harold sequence could have been longer (or maybe it could have been cut entirely?), and the Dr. Jacoby sequence (with Maddy and wig) would have worked in this edit too because it investigates the same thing Cooper investigates from a different angle (while the half-heart is mostly cut from this edit, it could still have had a place). Also, I love, love, LOVE “Just You (and I)” – generally considered an insane sentiment, I know – and would have loved to see it included, especially since Maddy subsequently seeing Bob doesn’t have the same impact without it.
If you want a fresh Twin Peaks ride, I can recommend this. If you, like me, feel that Audrey and Major Briggs are as important as Laura Palmer, you might want to watch it anyway, but with a healthy dose of skepticism. If you, unlike me, loved the resolution of the Laura Palmer case on the show, then this edit is DEFINITELY for you.
Another good reason to see this is that it makes a GREAT companion piece to Fire Walk with Me. FWwM being all nuance, all mystery, all craziness – the yin to this edit’s yang. Watching FWwM after this would actually fix most of this edit’s inherent flaws. Kinda like: “That was one ending – here’s another, better one”. One that doesn’t contradict the first one, but expands on it. If Fire Walk with Me is watched right after Northwest Passage, I don’t think I would even have a problem with this ending.
It’s a credit to the tremendous quality of this edit that you can go into a rant about how you dislike how story points were handled. A bad edit doesn’t provide that opportunity. Try if this makes sense: I enjoyed every second of this edit, even the seconds I hated.
Scorecard:
Storytelling: 9/10 “objective” score (a few minor quibbles, including the fact that Harold’s story doesn’t really make sense, but the sheer kill-yer-darlings efficiency of what’s cut and what’s necessary and technical difficulty of some of the cuts make it a clear 9 all the same); 6/10 subjective score (I hate the ending)
Audio editing: 9/10 (occasional volume fluctuations)
Video editing: 9/10 (weird skintones in a couple of scenes)
Presentation: n/a (the AVCHD menu didn’t work for me, but that’s probably I played it from hard drive or because I don’t have proper proprietary bluray drivers installed on my computer; I don’t care about menus anyway; the chapters worked, though)
Total: 9/10
REVIEW (contains massive spoilers)
This edit is – for the most part – a perfectly realised murder mystery whodunit edit chronicling the investigation of the murder of Laura Palmer. The problem is that Twin Peaks was never meant to be primarily a murder mystery whodunit chronicling the investigation of the murder of Laura Palmer. Now that this story (which was only a part of Twin Peaks) has a true beginning, a middle, and an end (things the original didn’t have and didn’t intend to have), it actually makes a lot of the problems of Twin Peaks more evident, as the sprawling nature of the serial storytelling used to hide the story flaws in the complexity and wonderful detours and non-essential elements. Is this the fault of the edit? No. But also: yes. I’ll try to explain.
I’ll start with the praise: This edit tries to turn a soap opera into a film, and it succeeds admirably. Scenes are cut to preserve the sense of a focused cinematic story. The Ghostwood/Packards/Sawmill plot (a HUGE part of both seasons) is completely removed – and it doesn’t create one plothole as far as I can see. At some points, sentences are even cut in half, like when Lucy explains what happened last night to Cooper. You have to know the scene intimately to be able to tell that the scene used to be twice as long. This was a particular standout to me. Audrey is also almost completely removed from the film. While removing Audrey freakin’ Horne is obviously a deeply disappointing thing to have to do, she doesn’t really impact Laura’s story in any big way, so it’s necessary for this edit, and I applaud the kill-yer-darlings-cojones of the editor for this move.
While pretty much all the transitions work brilliantly from a technical standpoint, there are a few story transitions that seem a bit wonky, like the Harold sequence and the Jacoby sequence. The Harold sequence is the only sequence that seems truly rushed and barely makes sense as recut. Since Donna tries to steal the diary pretty much immediately, it creates a plothole when she later tells Harry that Harold read to her from the diary. It also makes no sense that Harold trusted a total stranger when the long sequence where he lets Donna into his life is missing. This is one of the parts where the recutting hurts the film.
A couple of times, though, transitions are wonky from a technical viewpoint. I’m thinking mainly of the occasional abrupt crossfading, a few music volume fluctuations (which could have been fixed through painstaking audio editing, although I imagine it would have been extremely hard), and some weird edits. I’m thinking mostly about the scene where the camera pans from Maddy to Hank Jennings, which cuts mid-pan, and the really weird scene where Audrey is about to open the door to the Sheriff’s conference room and Harry is there instead. Now, of course I only know it’s supposed to be Audrey because I’ve seen TP 10 times, but the transition is really weird either way. The weird full moon insert in the middle of the Diary Heist sequence is another example. There are limitations in the source material, sure, but these scenes take you out of the film. Could it be fixed? I don’t know. Probably some, probably not all. Did it annoy in the grand scheme of things? Not really, as they take up a minuscule amount of the 5 hour runtime.
Audio quality is stellar, apart from occasional weirdness mentioned. Video quality is mostly perfect, with the occasional washed-out skin tone in high-light scenes. I haven’t seen the itunes hd version this is based on, so I don’t know if it’s present there, but I would doubt it since I can’t remember it from the gold box dvd. More likely, it’s from the zooming/upsampling due to the reframing. The 16:9 reframing I was REALLY skeptical to, but it worked surprisingly well. The occasional missing head of hair from the top and missing hand at the bottom of the picture only occasionally annoys, like the “meanwhile” in the red room.
Now to the conclusion: Do I recommend this edit? Yes and no.
Yes because it does an extremely good job of restructuring the series into a film, and because it contains a lot of the best scenes of the series while being 5 instead of 25 hours long. No because it was never meant to BE a film, and the impact of the story suffers from the restructuring. An example: from late in the first season Audrey is at One-Eyed Jacks on a personal, risky stakeout. The One-Eyed Jacks sequence with Cooper and Big Ed in episode 7 of the series is a really tense sequence. Not because it’s particularly tense to begin with, but because we know what Cooper doesn’t – namely that Audrey (who Cooper is also looking for) is in the same damned building! The scenes in the edit flow beautifully, but the edit is robbed of this tension. Also, in this edit, it’s necessary to go into the drug angle because Jacques is so necessary to the flow of the story. However, in the series we already know that Ben is the bank behind the drug operations, and Ben is ALSO at One-Eyed Jacks! In this edit, there’s only Ed and Cooper (and Jacques) – not the great confluence of crazy events that made Twin Peaks so unique.
But my main gripe with this story is with the ending. Not only does the excising of Dick Tremayne make a climactic event come out of the blue instead of being explained, but the actual ending is one of the cheapest and worst scenes of the series, in my opinion, and not worthy of being a Twin Peaks ending. On the show, this tremendous disappointment was softened by the fact that the episode contained a cliffhanger that opened up the door to this not being the end of Bob at all. A much better (open) ending was eventually provided, but this had to do with Cooper’s own past, not Laura’s. While the red room sequence as featured in the edit is expertly recut and re-inserted to provide some closure and background, it still feels weirdly out of place with the eventual ending. (Note of praise: cutting Windom Earle entirely from this worked really well, although the Coop doppelgänger is a bit of a head-scratcher without Hawk’s monologue.)
Another problem: after being told for a couple of episodes that this is a possession story, the extremely grisly murder scene of the series blurred the line between Bob and his “host” considerably. Fire Walk with Me went even further in this regard. The (really well done) editing of the murder scene and removal of all scenes up until the end that pointed out the killer, redraws the line between Bob and his host, making it more of an Exorcist-like possession story. This was, to me, never what Twin Peaks was about, and the “happy” ending of this edit ruins the complexity and makes the line clearly defined. This isn’t the edit’s fault per se. All the scenes are in the show. But the show, thankfully and interestingly, contradicted itself on more than one occasion making the story more complex. This was to the show’s credit, imo, and I’m sad to see it more focused and streamlined – usually positive traits, not so in this case.
The murder scenes (in the series, not this version) and FWwM make it unclear when the “host” is Bob and when he’s simply himself. There’s also the scene (cut from this edit) where the killer is driving around carelessly. Is he Bob there? I’m not sure, and that’s the beauty of it. The ending of episode 16, on the other hand, made this line fine and crisp, the killer “innocent”, and it even contradicts Mike’s words that Bob feeds on fear. What was the killer really afraid of in Laura? What did he fear? The answer is unpleasant in the extreme, but the series didn’t really dwell on that question at all. Instead the killer sees the light and is greeted by Laura in the afterlife. Give me a break. Thankfully, the series continued from there, went through some major speedbumps (Little Nicky and Malcolm Marsh – ouch!), but ended gloriously with darkness engulfing even the infallible Special Agent. Intense. Crazy. A blurred line between spirit world and real world. Dream Souls that Wander, like Hawk says. This edit stops where the spirit world gets interesting. It’s not the fault of the edit, the show was that way – and yet it is the edit’s fault, because it stops.
I’m also a bit unsure about how wise it was to cut so many Donna and James scenes. While there’s obviously a lot of filler, A LOT of their scenes are investigative. The Harold sequence could have been longer (or maybe it could have been cut entirely?), and the Dr. Jacoby sequence (with Maddy and wig) would have worked in this edit too because it investigates the same thing Cooper investigates from a different angle (while the half-heart is mostly cut from this edit, it could still have had a place). Also, I love, love, LOVE “Just You (and I)” – generally considered an insane sentiment, I know – and would have loved to see it included, especially since Maddy subsequently seeing Bob doesn’t have the same impact without it.
If you want a fresh Twin Peaks ride, I can recommend this. If you, like me, feel that Audrey and Major Briggs are as important as Laura Palmer, you might want to watch it anyway, but with a healthy dose of skepticism. If you, unlike me, loved the resolution of the Laura Palmer case on the show, then this edit is DEFINITELY for you.
Another good reason to see this is that it makes a GREAT companion piece to Fire Walk with Me. FWwM being all nuance, all mystery, all craziness – the yin to this edit’s yang. Watching FWwM after this would actually fix most of this edit’s inherent flaws. Kinda like: “That was one ending – here’s another, better one”. One that doesn’t contradict the first one, but expands on it. If Fire Walk with Me is watched right after Northwest Passage, I don’t think I would even have a problem with this ending.
It’s a credit to the tremendous quality of this edit that you can go into a rant about how you dislike how story points were handled. A bad edit doesn’t provide that opportunity. Try if this makes sense: I enjoyed every second of this edit, even the seconds I hated.
Scorecard:
Storytelling: 9/10 “objective” score (a few minor quibbles, including the fact that Harold’s story doesn’t really make sense, but the sheer kill-yer-darlings efficiency of what’s cut and what’s necessary and technical difficulty of some of the cuts make it a clear 9 all the same); 6/10 subjective score (I hate the ending)
Audio editing: 9/10 (occasional volume fluctuations)
Video editing: 9/10 (weird skintones in a couple of scenes)
Presentation: n/a (the AVCHD menu didn’t work for me, but that’s probably I played it from hard drive or because I don’t have proper proprietary bluray drivers installed on my computer; I don’t care about menus anyway; the chapters worked, though)
Total: 9/10
T
(Updated: September 08, 2012)
Enjoyment
9.0
May 14, 2011 @ 5:06 pm
At five hours, you might be wondering if this edit is worth your time. If you like David Lynch’s work generally–his off-kilter take on small-town America, odd and dreamlike characters and situations, fondness for surrealism, hints of the supernatural–then the answer is yes.
I’d say this edit has three phases. First, an introduction to the setting, main characters, and the crime event that is at the focus. Then a long central segment where characters are introduced and fade away, plot lines start up and disappear, while the main investigation chugs along in an episodic way. This central segment is relatively shapeless and unorchestrated; it just flows along like a broad, deep river. Finally, the ending draws together with some surreal sequences and a resolution of the crime mystery.
The first phase was my favorite, as it has the most humor, mystery, and atmosphere. I enjoyed the finale too, even though the surreal parts ran on a bit. The central phase could have been shorter and more suspenseful. Because some of the plot lines come and go without much resolution, and because Dale Cooper tends to solve things with flashes of insight that come out of nowhere, more material could be cut without much disruption. I agree with Emphatic that the Orchid Guy could have been cut… the key diary page doesn’t come from him. Maybe the entire Maddie character could have been cut.
Flaws are few. There are a few transitions that flow less smoothly than I would have liked, but the disruption is minor. A few scenes near the end are in the wrong aspect ratio. Sound work is excellent. Overall, Q2 has done a fine job of assembling many disparate scenes into a coherent and absorbing narrative. 9/10
At five hours, you might be wondering if this edit is worth your time. If you like David Lynch’s work generally–his off-kilter take on small-town America, odd and dreamlike characters and situations, fondness for surrealism, hints of the supernatural–then the answer is yes.
I’d say this edit has three phases. First, an introduction to the setting, main characters, and the crime event that is at the focus. Then a long central segment where characters are introduced and fade away, plot lines start up and disappear, while the main investigation chugs along in an episodic way. This central segment is relatively shapeless and unorchestrated; it just flows along like a broad, deep river. Finally, the ending draws together with some surreal sequences and a resolution of the crime mystery.
The first phase was my favorite, as it has the most humor, mystery, and atmosphere. I enjoyed the finale too, even though the surreal parts ran on a bit. The central phase could have been shorter and more suspenseful. Because some of the plot lines come and go without much resolution, and because Dale Cooper tends to solve things with flashes of insight that come out of nowhere, more material could be cut without much disruption. I agree with Emphatic that the Orchid Guy could have been cut… the key diary page doesn’t come from him. Maybe the entire Maddie character could have been cut.
Flaws are few. There are a few transitions that flow less smoothly than I would have liked, but the disruption is minor. A few scenes near the end are in the wrong aspect ratio. Sound work is excellent. Overall, Q2 has done a fine job of assembling many disparate scenes into a coherent and absorbing narrative. 9/10
B
(Updated: September 08, 2012)
Enjoyment
9.0
April 30, 2011 @ 10:31 am
A tremendous idea, very well executed.
I’ve watched the two seasons of Twin Peaks twice all the way through and I love the show.
The biggest thrill for me watching this fanedit was how the story of Laura’s killer came so much more sharply into focus. I can see now that it’s really a story about possession – demonic possession – but the original TV series stretched out and diluted the main narrative so much that, until now, I never regarded in this light.
The 16:9 framing is surprisingly good. Only a handful of scenes suffer a little from chopping the top and bottom off the frame.
Editing is mostly excellent and the lead up to the climax – with added dream footage from episode 29 – is handled well. I had some minor issues with the continuity at the start of the 2nd disc regarding the mostly excised subplot about Dr Jacoby receiving a supposed phone call from Laura Palmer and going to meet her. The remaining elements of that subplot didn’t quite gel.
Great fanedit. 9/10.
A tremendous idea, very well executed.
I’ve watched the two seasons of Twin Peaks twice all the way through and I love the show.
The biggest thrill for me watching this fanedit was how the story of Laura’s killer came so much more sharply into focus. I can see now that it’s really a story about possession – demonic possession – but the original TV series stretched out and diluted the main narrative so much that, until now, I never regarded in this light.
The 16:9 framing is surprisingly good. Only a handful of scenes suffer a little from chopping the top and bottom off the frame.
Editing is mostly excellent and the lead up to the climax – with added dream footage from episode 29 – is handled well. I had some minor issues with the continuity at the start of the 2nd disc regarding the mostly excised subplot about Dr Jacoby receiving a supposed phone call from Laura Palmer and going to meet her. The remaining elements of that subplot didn’t quite gel.
Great fanedit. 9/10.
S
(Updated: September 08, 2012)
Overall rating
10.0
Audio/Video Quality
10.0
Audio Editing
10.0
Visual Editing
10.0
Enjoyment
10.0
April 16, 2011 @ 9:43 pm
Video 10/10. Audio 10/10. Editing 10/10.
This is the most enjoyable Fanedit I have ever seen. I love a lot of them, but none have gripped me and entertained me as much as this one, despite knowing what happens.
I would like to add that if you are new to Twin Peaks, watching this first and then watching the full two seasons is the way to go. You’ll really enjoy Twin Peaks more that way.
Northwest Passage: A Twin Peaks Fanedit = 10/10.
Video 10/10. Audio 10/10. Editing 10/10.
This is the most enjoyable Fanedit I have ever seen. I love a lot of them, but none have gripped me and entertained me as much as this one, despite knowing what happens.
I would like to add that if you are new to Twin Peaks, watching this first and then watching the full two seasons is the way to go. You’ll really enjoy Twin Peaks more that way.
Northwest Passage: A Twin Peaks Fanedit = 10/10.
M
(Updated: September 08, 2012)
Overall rating
10.0
Audio/Video Quality
10.0
Enjoyment
10.0
April 15, 2011 @ 2:03 am
“Who killed Laura Palmer?
In 1990, this question was heard by everyone. As I was a freshman in college I was often busy with, well, other things so I never watched a moment of the show, but there was never any denying its appeal as the common room was always packed on Twin Peaks night.
So for 20 years I have actually wondered to myself, who DID kill Laura Palmer? Since neither my wife or I had seen the show, we were eager to watch something so ambitious and see if it could be successful. We felt we were the perfect test subjects.
Picture and sound were excellent on this project, as emphatic has noted, the re-framing into 16:9 is beautiful. Not once did I feel that I was watching something where I was missing something or that it fit poorly. Easily 10/10 for me.
Editing was also top-notch in my opinion, this fit well both for audio and visual cuts. rarely could I detect the hand of the editor in the project, and when you consider the task on hand, mixing together elements of so many episodes, that task alone is stunning.
Story however, is really what matters here. Without the baggage of knowing all of the storylines that were cut-out, without attachments to specific characters, in-jokes and subplots, would this still feel like a coherent story, and would it be entertaining?
100% yes. My wife and I were riveted the entire time watching this. The focus on Coop and Truman kept the edit fresh, funny and simultaneously mysterious. When fringe characters ebbed and flowed in and out of the story, it never affected us because we were focused on one thing, Who killed Laura Palmer? And that is where the story relentlessly stays, and it also lent an air of mystery wondering who was relevant in their investigation, just like a real investigation people of interest come on the radar, and then are dismissed, people provide their important bits and then fade away.
*spoilers ahead*
The mystery is wonderfully handled, and from what has been explained to me, several climactic moments are handled with exceptional skill. When asked by the editor how certain scenes like Maddie’s murder, or the red curtain scenes worked, if we were confused or felt his work, I was pleased to report that they felt natural and that I assumed simply that was how they played out in the original.
Improving on the original was not Q2′s intention with this edit, it was a challenge; could you alter the story so that only the primary question is addressed, who killed Laura Palmer? The answer is a resounding YES.
As I told Thunder/Q2, I was always on the fence about David Lynch, but after this edit I now have a tremendous appreciation for his genius and no longer view him as just a madman. I cannot wait to go back and watch the two full seasons to see what was carved out, to see those subplots and characters that which I’ve now heard much about. But I’m glad that this is how I was introduced into the world of Twin Peaks, this was radically enjoyable and satisfying.
Thumbs up, a damn fine edit. 10/10.
“Who killed Laura Palmer?
In 1990, this question was heard by everyone. As I was a freshman in college I was often busy with, well, other things so I never watched a moment of the show, but there was never any denying its appeal as the common room was always packed on Twin Peaks night.
So for 20 years I have actually wondered to myself, who DID kill Laura Palmer? Since neither my wife or I had seen the show, we were eager to watch something so ambitious and see if it could be successful. We felt we were the perfect test subjects.
Picture and sound were excellent on this project, as emphatic has noted, the re-framing into 16:9 is beautiful. Not once did I feel that I was watching something where I was missing something or that it fit poorly. Easily 10/10 for me.
Editing was also top-notch in my opinion, this fit well both for audio and visual cuts. rarely could I detect the hand of the editor in the project, and when you consider the task on hand, mixing together elements of so many episodes, that task alone is stunning.
Story however, is really what matters here. Without the baggage of knowing all of the storylines that were cut-out, without attachments to specific characters, in-jokes and subplots, would this still feel like a coherent story, and would it be entertaining?
100% yes. My wife and I were riveted the entire time watching this. The focus on Coop and Truman kept the edit fresh, funny and simultaneously mysterious. When fringe characters ebbed and flowed in and out of the story, it never affected us because we were focused on one thing, Who killed Laura Palmer? And that is where the story relentlessly stays, and it also lent an air of mystery wondering who was relevant in their investigation, just like a real investigation people of interest come on the radar, and then are dismissed, people provide their important bits and then fade away.
*spoilers ahead*
The mystery is wonderfully handled, and from what has been explained to me, several climactic moments are handled with exceptional skill. When asked by the editor how certain scenes like Maddie’s murder, or the red curtain scenes worked, if we were confused or felt his work, I was pleased to report that they felt natural and that I assumed simply that was how they played out in the original.
Improving on the original was not Q2′s intention with this edit, it was a challenge; could you alter the story so that only the primary question is addressed, who killed Laura Palmer? The answer is a resounding YES.
As I told Thunder/Q2, I was always on the fence about David Lynch, but after this edit I now have a tremendous appreciation for his genius and no longer view him as just a madman. I cannot wait to go back and watch the two full seasons to see what was carved out, to see those subplots and characters that which I’ve now heard much about. But I’m glad that this is how I was introduced into the world of Twin Peaks, this was radically enjoyable and satisfying.
Thumbs up, a damn fine edit. 10/10.
L