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

Let me start off by saying that I'm not sure if the quiet dialogue in some scenes may be because of my setup or if it was the source. No one else has mentioned it, so it must be something on my end. Aside from that.....

This was a GREAT edit! Some of the additions really let this film breathe and you could get more into the oncoming terror that was inevitable as you watch poor Laura in her last days. As an extended edition, this was super well done and achieved it's goals. Is this the go to from now on? I wouldn't say so. The check-ins with the other residents from Twin Peaks isn't necessary to the main plot. This is more of a companion piece to view after watching the original run of the series and it is a must. If you just want to watch the essential last days of Laura, you may want to stick with the original film, though that could use its own tweaking for sure given how much better Laura's last days are told in this extended edition. Awesome job Q2!!!!!

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!).

Twin Peaks has always interested me. It was quirky, funny, terrifying, and creepy all at the same time. David Lynch has a unique perspective on the world to be able to construct a story the way he does. When I became aware of the movie I needed to see it. It was much darker than the TV series and I actually enjoyed it more.

To be able to see the movie with all of the deleted scenes added back into the main cut made it that much more enjoyable for me personally. As others have stated the added material only makes sense if the watcher has seen the TV series first. I enjoyed the small extra cuts that involved the ring. For some reason I was never really certain what role it played in the overall story but in this version its involvement is much more clear to me.

This is a dark, dirty, and gritty movie that exposes the things about people that normally one wouldn't want to see. With Q2's edit it is a much more well rounded experience and ties into the TV series perfectly making it a great edition to the Twin Peaks family.

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."

The faneditor has done a great job integrating a hell of a lot of deleted scenes into a movie that is already longer than a traditional length. Transitions are generally pretty clean both in terms of audio and video. I'm not a TP fanatic, just a fan, and the placement of the scenes is logical to me. I know that some of them don't follow the shooting script but it is what it is and what "it - is" is pretty freaking awesome. David Lynch doesn't do directors' cuts and in the absence of that this is about as good as you're going to find. Thanks to the faneditor for his time and effort on this.