Talk:Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

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Thoughts on the article

As requested, some high-level thoughts. (Also planning on going through line edits, and will come back with more nitty-gritty thoughts.)

• My main critique reading through the article is an accessibility one; it presumes a lot of knowledge of the series and privileges information that apparently only has importance to the wider mythos versus being comprehensible without it. To that end, I would really rethink the plot section wholesale. A lot of the details don't seem to connect to other parts outside of the footnotes that say it relates to an episode of the TV series, and that makes the plot hard to follow as its own thing.
• I would look to focus on streamlining and summarizing more than relying on quotes, especially partial ones that disrupt the flow of the prose. I'm not sure the pull quotes in the reception and legacy sections add a ton either (why does Vincent Canby get the most important word on the film?) See WP:RECEPTION
• The reception section itself mostly reads as a list of critics and filmmakers giving opinions. While I generally see film articles have an introductory paragraph that discusses the range of general opinions about the film, it seems like with a film that has this much coverage it is better organized by talking about the aspects of the film (acting, writing, directing?) than just positive, neutral, negative groupings.
  • Also, why are the filmmaker opinions put in the legacy section? Some of them are contemporaneous with the theatrical release.
• Soundtrack being the final section seems a little odd to me.

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:55, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Many thanks for the review, David. I'm happy to address your concerns. To begin, would you mind taking a look at a draft revision to the plot summary, available at my sandbox here? I'm unsure how exactly to go about it because like the current summary in article space, the film as a whole presumes a lot of knowledge of the series, which was a big reason why critics hated it. My draft revision includes some of that background information from the TV series, but only for main characters and not the supernatural phenomena - holistically, I don't think we need to explain the spirits for the film to make sense, and the revision is already too long (~850 words) as it is. Please let me know if I'm on the right track. Namelessposter (talk) 01:47, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure the footnotes are really helping, since they all relate to the television series, and also imply a level of connection that we'd really need secondary sourcing for beyond WP:PLOTCITE. Some sticking points for me still:

• Template:Xt — these feel a little odd to join together considering it's two different people and relationships. Does Bobby break up with her too? You're using the past tense.
• Template:Xt I think you need something better than "the man from the street" to describe this character just because at this point it's not really clear it's the same guy from three paragraphs earlier.
• Template:Xt doesn't seem all that relevant
• Does the movie/critics split the plot into the named prologue and "Last Seven days" segment? If not, Wikipedia really shouldn't be doing that ourselves.

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 14:24, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments - I will give serious thought to how to implement them. Some quick responses:

• "She breaks up with James, and Bobby" - I take your point. I omitted to mention that earlier in the movie, Bobby tries to break up with Laura out of jealousy, but Laura talks him back in. However, when Bobby has his realization that Laura is dating him for cocaine, he is surprisingly gentle about it, and comforts her while giving her the drugs. Had Laura lived the future of their relationship would have been left ambiguous.
• I'll try to figure out better ways to refer to MIKE and The Man From Another Place. The primary difficulty is that the film never mentions them by name (and the franchise as a whole never mentions The Man From Another Place by name).
• Leland's lack of awareness is relevant to the "themes#sexual abuse" section, which discusses competing theories about whether Leland is personally aware of and responsible for his crimes, but I definitely agree that we can move it down from the synopsis to the analysis.
• I think generally critics recognize a distinction between the Deer Meadow and Twin Peaks sections, but there are no title cards saying "prologue" and "last seven days", just an interstitial card saying "One year later." "Last seven days" comes from the Japanese title of the film, Twin Peaks: The Last Seven Days of Laura Palmer. So the wording is from the film but its specific use comes from me. I do think some kind of split between the two sections needs to be recognized, since the film is tonally and visually different after the time jump, but I am very open to new ideas about how to do so.

More broadly, how strictly should we stick to the 700-word presumptive limit here?

Lastly - as you could probably tell from the sandbox, I've been heavily revising the critical reception section, but I wanted to take some time off and look at it with fresh eyes before circulating to you. Namelessposter (talk) 14:48, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

If there's secondary sourcing talking about the prologue and the rest of the film and their stylistic differences, I think that's better to mention upfront rather than subheads, personally, since that somewhat implies an "official" division for lack of a better term. As for the plot length, 700 words is a guideline rather than a hard-and-fast rule, but generally shorter summaries tend to be more comprehensible to casual readers; when looking to expand them I generally look to see what elements of the plot are talked about with production or critical reception/scholarly themes and if it needs more introduction in the plot rather than in those sections. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 00:15, 30 May 2025 (UTC)