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

Wow... just... wow.
I was already a fan of FWWM but Q2's seamless reincorporation of the "Missing Pieces" deleted scenes has elevated my enjoyment of the film to a whole other level. Everything just flows so much better and there's so much great stuff for the hardcore fans. 10's across the board, I just couldn't find anything wrong with this edit... as much as I tried. :D

I first watched 'Fire Walk With Me' perhaps twenty years ago on a late night TV screening before I'd ever seen a frame of Twin Peaks. I thought it was quite brilliant, with scenes, sounds and images forever burned into my brain. It wasn't until last year, after the complete Twin Peaks blu-ray came out, that I watched the show this movie was a prequel to. With the show coming back I thought it was time to view the "missing pieces" and Q2's fanedit.

Q2 has integrated the deleted material fantastically well visually and audibly. I don't think it makes the film better, as it interrupts the primary "fall of Laura Palmer" narrative but it sure is wonderful to see it all together in order. It feels closer to the Twin Peaks tone but I'd still like to see somebody fully edit the material into a few traditional style episodes. Lose the Chris Isaac prologue, add TP opening titles, tone down some of the more insane stuff, eliminate non-TV show related threads etc (Hint Q2!).

Things make more sense in this sequence. Thank you for your efforts.

I didn't like Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. It lacked something that made its predecessor special. Back then I just assumed that Mark Frost's departure removed the friendlier, more lovable side of the eponymous lumber town, leaving behind only the darkness, confusion, and sadness that composed the last days of Laura Palmer's life. Very little goodness seemed to be left and the seedy underbelly of Twin Peaks had spread across even the surface.

Then Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery came out and changed my perspective. All the charm, eccentricity, and lightly bizarre moments were present the entire time, only to be removed in post production either for time or to make the theatrical film closer to a standalone feature. The aptly named Missing Pieces served to bridge the tonal gap between Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me. Q2 had a simple, but very important and difficult task: to put those pieces back together, and make them fit.

Bear in mind that Theresa Banks and the Last Seven Days of Laura Palmer is not a standalone film, and many of the missing pieces will make very little sense if you haven't seen the Twin Peaks series (or at least watch Q2's own abridged edit of the series, Northwest Passage). Some of those pieces, however, were vital no matter where you start. Without spoiling anything one scene in the theatrical film showed a family dinner scene that was dark, tense, and legitimately frightening. It was the only dinner scene the viewer got to see, and from what was evidenced the viewer had to assume it had been this way for this family for a long time. A deleted scene proved necessary, as it shed light on the context of the situation and made the theatrical dinner scene that much darker and more impactful. Similar light/dark contrast permeates this fanedit, and all of it worked.

I try not to give 10s across the board unless a fanedit significantly changes its source material for the better, and the Theresa Banks edit did just that. The reinclusion of the weird beauty of Twin Peaks and its citizens provided much needed relief from such a grim film, and made the darkness seem that much darker. The A/V quality, A/V editing, my personal enjoyment, and especially the narrative flow all get 10s. This was a three and a half hour film that kept me in my seat until the end, without any awareness of how long I'd been sitting. And even better, it left me wanting more. An absolute must for any Twin Peaks fan.

Great!
Q2 is very goog!