Northwest Passage: A Twin Peaks Fanedit

Disclaimer: I'm not a fan of Twin Peaks, and I've only previously managed to get through the pilot. However, this is a very well made edit. Cutting down 16 hours of content down to 5 hours is very impressive. And despite a lot being cut, the pace is not high. It still feels like a TV series. I mostly followed the plot (as much as is possible when Lynch is directing), although it is convoluted, and I started to lose track of things towards the end. I do believe even more content could have been cut at certain points to further streamline the narrative and place the focus on more essential points (although I respect that this has already been done to a great degree).

Editing-wise, the cuts were superb, the only thing I noticed were occasional quick music fades that are unavoidable when making TV-to-Film edits. I wish that some of the loud background music had been removed when characters were speaking, although this is no fault of the editor. Cutting the footage from 4:3 to 16:9 was a great idea, looked great on the TV. A/V quality was excellent.

In conclusion, this is a high quality edit, but Lynch is still a nutjob. I think fans of the series should definitely give this a watch, but non-fans are unlikely to be converted.

Positives:

Technically great. Audio/video are excellent, and it looks great in widescreen. You get the whole Laura Palmer story all in one sitting. Most of the pertinent scenes are here and fit in seamlessly, with a few exceptions. All of the unenjoyable filler is removed. No more Nadine ridiculousness or idiotic Civil War reenactments!

Negatives: The edit is just too straightforward, almost to the point where it is un-Lynch-like. Really the only Lynchian weirdness left is the visions various people (especially Cooper) have. Gone is any mention of the Black Lodge, which is my favorite aspect of the entire series. The long sequence in the Black Lodge is abridged and reduced to a vision Cooper has in the Road House when he remembers who the killer is (as revealed to him by Laura Palmer in a dream). It's clever editing, but I really miss the Black Lodge being an actual place, which makes the riveting scene where he enters it, as well as the subsequent long sequence inside it, much more impactful than what is seen here.

I would have left in: 1) Almost everything related to the Black Lodge, 2) Enough of the Windom Earle plot (which was pretty good) and surrounding subplots where the events of the final episode, including the entire Black Lodge sequence, make sense, and 3) Any scenes of Lynchian weirdness. For example, the scene where Agent Albert Rosenfield suddenly professes how he models his life after Ghandi and King. All this additional material would probably add an hour or two to the edit, but so be it.

Curiously, Q2's other Twin Peaks fanedit (to the Fire Walk With Me movie) adds in additional subplot elements and strengthens the Black Lodge element, so these two fanedits aren't really compatible.

There are a couple minor problems with the narrative where a transition is awkward because something got edited out that was necessary to explain a subsequent scene. One is the attempt to steal Laura's diary from Harold Smith. The entire Harold Smith subplot was so reduced that we don't know what Maddy is doing when she shows up and looks for the diary to steal.

There is a small problem with the widescreen conversion where, in the scene in the Black Lodge (here just a vision) where Laura flicks her fingers downward, her fingers are out of frame.

A very competent effort, but not what I was looking for. I'm not sure who would enjoy this other than people who don't like David Lynch but are curious about the main story in Twin Peaks.

The first thing that perplexes me about this fan edit is how a 300 minute running time qualifies as being re-imagined as a feature film. When was the last time you saw a five hour movie at the show? The second thing that perplexes me is why Q2 thought editing out all of the subplots and character digressions in Twin Peaks was a good idea since that is actually where a good amount of the entertainment value lies.

Some of the viewers who gave this rave reviews claim to not like David Lynch and that is likely the best audience for this fan edit. Anyone who enjoyed Blue Velvet or Lost Highway would be doing themselves a disservice by watching this version instead of the complete program. On the other hand, if David Lynch isn't your thing and you still for some reason want to watch Twin Peaks then I guess this is the version for you.

The plotting from series one episodes is clean and if you aren't familiar with the program it's likely you won't even notice that anything is missing. Q2 had more problems editing down season two. Leo Johnson is depicted as a major suspect but is shot off-screen. The attempts by Donna, Madeleine and James to investigate Laura's murder are so muddled it would have been better to cut them completely. Their first person of interest, Dr Lawrence, has a heart attack off-screen. Their second investigation, of the agoraphobic Harold Smith, suffers from abrupt jumps in time and culminates in a scene where its difficult to tell exactly what Donna, Maddie and James are even trying to do.

Northwest Passage largely rights itself after Harold's death as the focus shifts away from Laura's friends back to Agent Cooper and his attempts to solve the case. The reveal scene is no less powerful in this version than it was in the original series and provides one of Twin Peaks greatest moments of horror and tragedy.

I'm honestly on the fence about whether this fan edit is worth watching or not. You do get 5 hours of mostly excellent Twin Peaks, which is nothing to sneeze at, but so much that is wonderful and strange about the show is missing--seeing characters I loved when first watching the show pop up for one scene and then disappear completely is frustrating.

Q2 also did the Fire Walk With Me fan edit that added 90 minutes of deleted footage. That version improved on the original because it allowed you to spend more time in the Twin Peaks universe. It's counter-intuitive to me that the same person who made that would also chop down the Twin Peaks television program to create a subplot free version. How could somebody with an affinity for Twin Peaks do both?