Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me - Teresa Banks and the Last Seven Days of Laura Palmer

So, this is it, yesterday me and my friends finally enjoyed V2.1 of this fan-edit.
Expectations were high, the mood was on top when the lights were dimmed and it all started...

To begin with, let me make clear that the version we enjoyed was the Mp4 one, I'm sure that the real BR version would have been even better in the very well built home cinema that we enjoyed this in, but still we felt that the sound was well mastered and picture quality was as good as one can expect from this kind of compressed file, so don't cry if this is the only version you can find, it will do Q2's work justice.

It's very hard to ignore that fact that the extra and extended scenes are a product of Lynch, not Q2, if he hadn't had this great material to work with this wouldn't have been possible, so sometimes I felt that it was hard to put credit where it was due.
To be more to the point I sometimes feel that this is the way that Lynch would have wanted it cut if he had had the freedom to do what he wanted back in the day when this was released. That may make it sound like Q2 didn't do a good job or at least not much of a job, wasn't it all just cut and paste? But in truth you should instead ask yourself, didn't he do an amazing job?
To cut, edit, master and do all the work and tweaking needed to make this a whole and still convince me and also my friends sitting next to me that this is just what Lynch intended and would have wanted, it has to be good, it has to have been hard work and it absolutely has to deserve praise!

Let's leave Lynch behind for a while and talk about me, my friends, the audience, is this what we wanted?
Is this true to what we feel Twin peaks is? Oh Yes, it really is.
It was more than I expected when it comes to added story elements, a deeper explanation of the whole plot around Laura Palmer and this fan-edit or cut really has great value in the lore of Twin Peaks.
One of the ways I put value on a cut is by asking myself, would I pay for it, in other words, would I buy it on Bluray/DVD?
In this case the answer it's YES, not because of added playtime, that's to cheap, it doesn't always add to the story but in this case it truly does and I'd really like to point out that Q2s love for this material really shines trough.
Now some may say that this is a far to long movie cut this way..and they are right, no question about it, at least for one whole sitting, me and my friends were clever enough to take a break midway, it gave time for reflection and well need lift of spirit because let's face it, this is a dark story if there ever was one.
The original cut is a ride straight to hell and this one isn't any brighter believe me.
But heavy as it is and even heavier in this cut it should never be ignored,
this was an essential movie and Q2 has made it even more of "must see".

The final verdict from me would be that this is exactly that, a "must see" for all Twin Peaks fans.
This is what we all dreamed that the new boxset would contain but instead we got bits and pieces...
however these bits and pieces were merged together into a true holy grail, the one we have been searching for and dreaming of for all these years and it seems it will remain a fading legend since it scared the shit out of CBS..
who probably thought "My God this is good, why didn't we do this?" and pushed Q2 to hide this one up his sleeve forevermore.

My final words are aimed at Q2 himself: "Take credit for this one, be proud, this was so well made that they had to force you to hide it, that says it all."

(Note. This review has been revised for version 2.1)

A/V Quality – 10/10. Very nice!

Editing – 9/10.
Version 1 was a little bumpy and felt rushed. Q2 has gone back and fixed the issues and the result is a smoother experience, allowing one to get fully immersed in the world of Twin Peaks. There were still a couple small things that I think could have been done better, but I'm in the minority and to most they'd be tiny nitpicks.

Narrative/Improvement – 9/10.
In terms of the-(almost-)longest-version-you-could-watch, this was excellent. The pacing was great and the editor chose well for what goes where.

Enjoyment – 10/10
Hells to the yes this extended version was awesome!

Excellent job as always, Q2. I have only two minor suggestion for this edit:

1. Please find a way to include the last three deleted scenes. I'm sure the point of this edit is to include deleted scenes, so why not include them all. I think it's worth it even if your edit will suffer a little bit from it.

2. Please move the discovery of Laura's body to right after she's been killed, and not "some months later". The way it is now, she's actually found after the final episode of the series, and that ain't right.

If you do these changes, this edit will be 100% perfect, like the rest of your amazing work!

I watched through all of the original Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me recently. I was going to watch The Missing Pieces before moving onto The Return, but I decided instead to experience the bulk of it in the form of being reintegrated into the film - cue Q2. Thanks so much for putting this together! I have no regrets about watching the material in this form.

Visual editing is seamless. I did notice one audio transition, but it was niticky. My main gripe here (which it seems only one other reviewer mentioned) is that some of the dialogue is very quiet. It's quiet in the original film, but portions here are exceptionally so, and this (as far as I could tell) was only during some deleted portions. I had to crank up my volume and still couldn't really hear at times, and then had to turn it way down again for the following scene. Either way though, I think this is a film/edit in which subtitles would be valued.

Many have said this - the result of an exhaustive extended edition is that the pacing is affected by unneeded time away from Laura's narrative. But Q2's intent was to make a full extended cut and it is nicely done. Plenty of the scenes add a lot and, while they don't necessarily answer questions, they bring a bit more clarity to parts of the narrative and help things feel a little less random and rushed. Bowey's scene, for example, and also the initial dinner scene with Laura's father teaching them a foreign language - that scene is pretty pivotal IMO, since it so starkly contrasts his character for the rest of the film. Seeing him as the "good" dad makes the rest all the more impactful.

Overall, great to see everything integrated and I'm glad that I had the option to view the deleted scenes in a rewatch of the film rather than in isolation. I do think that a lot of these scenes improve the film and that a balanced cut is the way to go; one that leaves out stuff that is more or less irrelevant to the main plotline with Laura.

The edit is good but some things would be improved if you simply followed the script or the script-to-screen analysis, in my opinion. Like you would've figured out where to put Laura and Bobby at the locker and Bobby and the fake drugs (hint: it's not after the heartbreaking school montage, which you also could've figured out by the outfit she's wearing). The ending feels awkward. It makes sense to end with the angel scene because time in the lodge is non-linear but having the shot of Laura's corpse after the "some months later" scenes does not work because time in the real world is, of course, linear -- even as an artistic choice it came off as a bit sloppy. Coop's last scene in The Black Lodge in The Missing Pieces is actually supposed to be the last scene before Laura's Angel. If you look at the crossfade between Laura's corpse in the theatrical cut and Coop's face in The Missing Pieces, they both lead into the same shot.

The crossfade between Buenos Aires and the shot of the security cameras felt unnecessary, as with the fading in and out of the trucker scene (which could have just cut to on the last beat of Norwegian music).

The Norma/Ed truck scene felt strange where you put it. It might've worked better right before The Roadhouse scene, I don't know. I just think the Partyland sequences shouldn't be disturbed.

Also, the fan scene is in there twice. The shortened version in the theatrical version (right before Cooper tells Albert the killer will strike again) should have just been cut. It's too obviously the same scene, as noted by Laura's top.

The several different subtitle fonts could've been corrected if you'd just used the MK2 bluray as your source for the Partyland and Black Lodge scenes, as that release doesn't have any subtitles. That way, you could just add them using the Missing Pieces font which appears to be a variation of Century Gothic. I'm sure you could have later color-corrected the scenes to match the recent blu-ray but I guess that's what happens when you pump out a fan edit in a week.

The "Special Thanks" credit, while nice, was extremely distracting and took me right out of the final moment. It's such a beautiful scene and that last shot of Laura is the only time we really see her happy in the film except now -- I can't see anything.

Nice job on everything else though! Bloody good regardless of the short amount of time you did it in! Perhaps a V2 down the line...