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

(Ratings for V2.1 --- May contain Minor Spoilers)

This is the DEFINITIVE Twin Peaks FWWM FanEdit. For many, the Twin Peaks FWWM Deleted Scenes have been considered the Holy Grail. Did they still exist? Would we ever get to see them? For many, this was as big of an enigma as the very show itself. When it was finally announced the Twin Peaks Deleted Scenes would finally be available, it was one of those great days in fanboy history. Not only did they exist, but there was a good 90+ minutes of deleted and extended scenes which features many characters who were cut or trimmed from the movie. While FWWM is a prequel to the series, the scenes also provided some insight to what happened after the series ended.

While David Lynch has masterfully given us these deleted and extended scenes, they were not incorporated into the movie. If ever there was a need for a FanEdit Extended Edition of a movie, this is the one.

Q2 has done a masterful job of reincorporating the deleted scenes into the main narrative of the movie. Some changes were made between V1 & V2.1 to better follow the shooting script and address some minor quibbles. Q2 has managed to use pretty much all of the extra scenes effectively. While one could possibly make minor changes to the narrative here or there based on personal preferences, I do not see the need for there ever to make another FanEdit of this movie unless one were to make a drastically shorter version which does not use most of the deleted scenes. For what Q2 was trying to accomplish though, he has done is masterfully.

As for the Audio and Visual editing, you could make minor quibbles here and there. But nothing really major or worth editing or worth doing a new version for. These are so minor, I feel bad for taking any points off. Is everything perfect? No. But it is damn close. Especially when you consider how incredibly fast Q2 did this FanEdit, it was a great job.

Overall: This is one of the best extended FanEdits of all-time. Some will argue it is due to the footage and material David Lynch has given Q2 to work with. While this is true, Q2 still had to put it all together (something Lynch deliberately decided not to do). The final results are astounding. It is better then any fan of Twin Peaks could ever have hoped for. It may have taken 25 years, but it was certainly worth the wait.

(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!

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...

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.