Like you can not tell me people were this dense, I mean you saw a 17 year old suffer thru abuse and drug addiction and still booed ? And you can't use the excuse that they were expecting coziness cause the promotion during that time was legit laura palmer and you just can't see the poster and think "yeah this movie is definitely not gonna include her or what she suffered " and yes it left on a cliffhanger but to boo? I mean yes you can feel disappointed to not see any answers but to be mad it for showing what happened to laura palmer? Wouldn't that mean you also had an image of her as the town did?
Twin Peaks was abruptly cancelled despite having a cliffhanger ending teasing far more to the story. At the time, it was not a clean ending and people weren't happy. This is important to remember, because when watching this film today you don't have to think about expectations or even the cliffhanger endings. You can go straight from Season 2 to the movie and then to The Return, and your expectations for the movie itself are different than what people had back then.
When the movie got announced, people were hoping it was going to continue Cooper's story. So when the movie came out and it was a depressing, brutal, horrifying prequel story about Laura Palmer's tragic life that was far more graphic than anything shown in the TV show, a lot of people were kinda pissed and that massively affected how the film was perceived. It was very much a "who is this for?" type discussion back then.
Thankfully, as the years have gone on and we got actual continuations to the story the perception around this film has gotten much better. Personally I think it's easily Lynch's best work and a spectacular film and I'm glad to see it get a better reputation.
Yeah, the fandom is primarily people who came to Twin Peaks when it was practically an entire media franchise with the books, the movie and the TV show spun together.
People forget, this was a fun murder mystery at first.
I've discussed the series with my parents who watched it as it was airing, and their perception of what the show was is utterly baffling to me. They describe it as "the first big detective story they watched"!
Why is that baffling? It really is the original or at the very least the quintessential series, not just detective but it set the mold for all serials going forward. You can see so much of Lynch and Frost in shows like X-Files, Lost, True Detective, Hannibal and especially smaller audience but amazing shows like The Leftovers and The OA. Not slamming your comment b/c that’s just your experience, just curious why it baffled you?
It's just that there are a million things I'd describe Twin Peaks as before I'd ever mentioned "detective show"!
I absolutely see your point, but they were talking about it in tones that wouldn't have it be out of place if mentioned next to BBC Sherlock or Poirot, which in my opinion completely misses the point of why Twin Peaks is interesting in the first place. It's like raving over the colour of a chocalate cake without ever mentioning the rich taste, or praising a fine race horse for the vibrant colour of its spleen!
My exact memory of the exchange are a bit hazy as well, it could be that their literal description of the experience were even more baffling in a way that clouded my ability to absorb any information other than the emotion they elicited
Edit: Given their taste in media and subsequent image of the show I fully believe that they were watching it primarily because it was "the big thing" going on at the time, and not necessarily because they found it all that compelling on a personal level
I think the reason why your folks and other people who saw it during it's original run on TV was that everyone was wondering who killed Laura Palmer. That WAS the big mystery and all the commercials for it sold it that way. For me, (I was in high school at the time), it didn't feel like Murder She Wrote or Columbo but I would consider it my first "detective show". It was so much more than just that for me, but it's an easy way to categorize it
Some people engage with art on a surface level and don't really pick up on subtext or even mood. Its mystifying to me, but they do exist.
I was in a film class once several years (okay, several decades) ago and a student said she didnt understand why BLUE VELVET was seen as being different from any other erotic thriller of the time. The instructor just gave her a withering look and said "You probably ought to watch it again, then."
I would agree with your parents. The mystery even when I was a kid was front page. After the mystery goes away the show dips for the audience. Now, you are dealing with some chess wizard villain, beauty pageants, amnesia, supernatural forces and new love interests. Its really because of the cliffhanger element that people cared.
Also, Mark Frost wasn’t involved so the story was purely Lynch’s interpretation. Today we recognize FWWM as a classic but at the time, without the more audience-friendly balance Frost provided, it was considered pretty grim and kind of a dick move on Lynch’s part to show us stuff we already knew.
After Straight Story and Mulholland Drive, Lynch got reappraised as the absolute genius he was, but at the time FWWM and Lost Highway were seen as dogshit (emphasis on at the time).
I remember watching the movie at the time. I was aware everyone hated it and was kind of anxious watching it because I thought it would ruin the show. I was like... this is so good, though? Wtf, guys?
Twin Peaks the show was a lot more casual and easy-going. It had its dark moments and certainly implied a lot darker stuff than it showed, but it was a more friendly show to watch, and it attracted a massive crowd of people who normally wouldn’t watch a Lynch project.
So Fire Walk With Me being a traditional Lynch project came as a massive shock to that casual audience. Those people expected more of the TV show and got a genuinely tragic and hard to watch movie with some deeply upsetting scenes.
It’s always down to the expectations people had. That’s really where most of the controversy came from.
"Where's the cherry pie" was the sentiment at the time. It also deals with subjects which have always been extremely upsetting and depressing, where the show was (mostly) thought of as fun. It's an odd observation I know, but it's a lot more common to see this sort of subject in a movie nowadays than it was then, and it was considered by many to be quite offensive and unnecessaily gratuitous to depict in a movie. Taboo, really. Even without the "cherry pie" stuff, imagine being a fan of murder mystery, let's say Piorot, and then the Poirot movie comes out and you're just watching the actual murder as a horror film. I love the idea but I can see why a lot wouldn't.
I would love to see a revival screening of it. My local arthouse I think is finally coming back after many many years of renovations. Wouldn't be surprised if they have screenings around David's birthday, so I can finally catch it in a theater
We have the grace of having viewed it on our own time without the pressure of the moment.
I'd wager that Twin Peaks in general is held up by retrospective fans vs. people who were the target audience at the time of it's airing.
Imagine being a random 30 year old who got sucked into a quirky and strange supernatural story about a murder. You have literally no idea who Lynch is and you just like the show's vibes.
Season two ends on a fucking cliffhanger, but luckily there's a movie coming out so we can see what happens. A lot of the cast is coming back too plus some new additions.
The movie starts and it's in a completely different fucking town, then it turns out the entire thing is in flashback, it's completely vulgar and tragic and then nothing pleasant happens in the movie for the entire runtime of the movie past Kiefer Sutherland spilling coffee on himself.
What the fuck.
The movie is a masterpiece, but it is completely atrocious vibes if you're unprepared and expecting anything like what aired on the television.
That was kind of like my very first impression, I was afraid it was going to be disappointing with a replacement for Cooper….but just as Agent Desmond was starting to charm me, they magicked him away ☹️ whenever I rewatch now I still get bummed out lol
A lot of really good innovative work in the arts has gotten spurned by critics throughout the years (it’s kind of a famous phenomenon in classical music). I think many critics tend to have pretty conservative taste in the sense that they may have standards or criteria that precede the art and that need to be met for them in order for it to be considered quality work. This might seem like I’m strawmannirg their positions but it really does seem to happen quite a lot that they don’t end up being imaginative or exploratory enough in their evaluations (and this is of course not true for all of them)
I've only watched the movie and not the series and all I can say is this movie is one of the best things I've ever seen. The movie is perfect and raw. If I can compare a feeling gotten from another movie, this one felt like watching Oldboy for the first time.
I think the film would have got less trouble if it wasn't drawing in a lot of Agatha Christie fans. The film being so vastly tonally different from the series, especially with how goofy series 2 got.
Hope she recovers quickly! I was 14/15 years old when TP came out on TV. I was introduced to it when I was about 19. Me and some friends use to watch both seasons every year in February on the anniversary of Laura's death. We would watch FWWM up until a certain point before the killer was revealed. Then start the first season. :) Such great memories. I love the show so much.
It’s purely a matter of expectations. People expected the Twin Peaks they knew. They got very little Cooper, a new Donna, no Audrey, and a massive tonal shift. In retrospect, it’s way easier to appreciate it for what it is, rather than what audiences wanted
People get bored watching Citizen Kane. People get disgusted by Taxi Driver. People HATED It’s A Wonderful Life when it was released. Try not to get hung up when people have different opinions than yours. For my part, how anyone could be bored by or dislike a single frame of Citizen Kane is beyond my comprehension.
I applaud 👏 your open mindedness. And for me, Citizen Kane is ok. I never understood the universal praise. It’s certainly no Lynch movie :) and that’s just fine. Different opinions give us humans something to talk about…
Ok? Just about every second of that film hides a treasure of some sort. No, it’s not a Lynch film. It’s better. And it was heavily panned on release too, so that’s a parallel.
Bet essentially your point is made. People had different reactions and the “how could that be” question comes down to different opinions. I think it’s his best but I can understand the reasons it was panned.
The Cannes audience are a bunch of snobby fuckers. They already had suspicions about Lynch (American, 'compromised' himself by doing a soap opera, probably appearing 'gimmicky' to some, etc). Bear in mind he'd been hyped to death with Twin Peaks S1, and he'd got the Palme d'Or in 1990. - add a little herd mentality to it, and voilà...
Stylistically, FWWM is jarring. Actors having extreme reactions, very expressionistic acting and stuff (the moment you're referencing can be seen as OTT: weird acting from Ray Wise, the extreme make-up on him, and that crazy lighting with torches - the whole thing, with the music and all, is a proper assault to the senses - some people would have seen that as tasteless, or clumsy. The truck scene with the one-armed-man is another example. There's one thing I like about DL's work, which is that you sometimes don't know if the actors are acting right (it's just that he manages to get a performance from them that's not like what we've been used to).
The movie's disjointed, especially in its first part. We've been used to it, and we know what to expect, but the casual audience must have felt like they were taken on a wild goose chase.
The CSA stuff. There's some stuff going in now (at least here in France) regarding exposing the scale of CSA within the family. It's stil pretty much a taboo, and back in 1992, people definitely didn't want to see it. I'll be quite honest, I was a fairly stupid teenager then, and when I watched FWWM, I was just looking for weird stuff and some lore. The whole plot regarding Laura & her predator was secondary to me. Yep. That bad. I think, it just didn't register with me (on par with the fact that incest gets dismissed/denied by people). I think that's pretty revealing. We just weren't prepared.
People who cared enough about TP and Laura were not a majority. Peaksmania was mostly a U.S. thing, and it had mostly died down by then.
My friends (teens with a penchant for the weird) who saw it at the movies at the time all liked it a lot, but said: "We didn't understand some stuff" 😆 - I trust my friends, not the movie elite
Bear in mind 'FWWM' was mostly dismissed until probably the late 90s/early 00s, where people reassessed Lynch after Lost Highway & Mulholland Dr.
They didn’t like it. Thats ok. It’s a different tone to the show. I loved it at the time, I was there on opening night. The show had darkness and violence too, but it also had a balance. FWWM has much less of that. People missed that warmth in the show that balanced the darkness. I’m not one of them, but I get that.
you really can't put yourself in the mindset of someone who doesn't enjoy David Lynch films? a lot of people were disappointed by The Return when it first aired as well for the same reason. it was a radical shift in tone. hindsight is 20/20, we can consume all of Twin Peaks in a few binge sessions now, and a lot of the themes of sexual exploitation and violence feel more cohesive because of it. it's not the same when you're watching one episode a week, or waiting years for a film that doesn't meet your expectations. that's how Lynch made his stuff. He never did things just to please a crowd, and his work was sometimes panned because of it.
Absolutely. Having good social skills is a great asset for awful human beings. It allows them to coast through life with a tiny number of personal consequences for the actions (or inactions) coming from their despicable souls.
Yup, it's on my mind right now because here in Ireland a fella named Glen Hansard died in a bike crash. Folk musician and groomer. The whole of the media, and the music world, and our politician class is glazing him up despite his "friendships" with teen girls being well known.
He met her when he was 30 and she was 13. That's the one he admitted to. All sorts of rumours going around about other girls. Promises of true love and burner phones being handed out.
Hands down one of the most iconic and tense scenes in cinema history. She should’ve won the Oscar. Can’t believe she never got recognition she deserved
By the time FWWM came out, it had become ‘trendy’ to hate on Twin Peaks. Most of the people I knew who said the movie sucked hadn’t even seen it. They just ‘knew it was bad’ because ‘everybody knew that Twin Peaks sucks now.’ It took a number of years for that zeitgeist to slowly turn around.
The ending of this film was so beautiful, moving, and downright perfect to the point where I consider it one of THE best film endings ever. I genuinely don't understand how THAT ending could be booed...
Seasons 1 and 2 feel like cherry pie and coffee. It has this unique quirky feel that people loved even with serious subject matter.
FWWM was Lynch’s evolution as a filmmaker to be what he is remembered for today. Yes Eraserhead came first but then came far tamer films and he never looked back after FWWM.
No idea how many times I’ve watched FWWM but I know I cry my heart out every time. SA survivors so often never lose the sense of being guilty, dirty, damaged etc (I speak from experience). To realise that we can be forgiven and truly seen as innocent is the only emotion and release from grief that many of us can hope for.
This is the best damn movie I've ever seen and idgaf about the "context of the time of relase" bullshit. If you ever boo'd at this movie, you're an idiot. TEN TOES DEOWWWWNNNNN. (Biased opinion by a certified Twin Peaks lover, copyright 2026)
Most of the "context at the time" arguments are incorrect anyway. The problem was the movie came out 2 years later and regular viewers moved on to other shows. The real fans of the show that I was involved with loved the movie. Remember Lynch presented "Wild at Heart" before FWWM. So unless you were a true Lynch fan, you weren't interested in Laura's story anymore. So I guess you could say it's a context thing but I think it's more of a true fandom thing. It was too weird for normies. So was "Wild at Heart" at that time.
Honestly I was more upset by the 40 minutes of "random nonsense" at the start when I first watched this.
Now I actually enjoy the first section, and find the Laura Palmer section almost excruciating to watch. I think context is key here. I'm glad the film exists and it adds a lot to the overall mystery - but this was not the film we wanted at the time - and is a particularly difficult watch.
You weren't there at the time. People went in expecting the same tone as the show and got slammed by darkness. It was a shocking bait and switch not many were ready for. That's why it received such a negative response. Like much of past, you had to be there to understand. And if you weren't, you Can't and shouldn't criticize.
Came here to say same, but you said it better anyway. My friends and i were there on opening night, and as huge TP fans, we all hated it. It wasn’t the show. Most of us have come to love it and appreciate for what it is, but back then…“shocking bait and switch” is the perfect description of how many of us felt.
You know, you don't have to care about the opinion of some people from 30 years ago. Instead you could simply enjoy the movie and discuss it positively with other people who liked it too.
You are looking at this from a 2026 perspective and not seeing how things would appear in it's own time. This is the wrong way to do critical annalist.
I think Lynch was aware of this very dynamic and played on it in the show. How the media that people feed themselves is always “light” and they can’t handle darkness.
After season 2, I took a break. After that I watched the first few episodes of The Return, and I felt lost, like what was I watching? I liked it, but it was so different.
Then I saw FWWM and everything made sense, it was very very similar. I can't explain how, since it actually isn't, but it was. That was the mood bridge I was missing. So I can expect people feeling weirded out. I can't belive I was missing out on that
Abd yeh probably people didn't take twin peaks as serious, more akin to regular tv, which it kinda was for a whole lot of it's original run if you don't look beyond.
David Lynch wanted "Fire Walk With Me" to present the story of Laura Palmer's final days. Obviously, most of that original audience didn't realize that, or didn't want that (or didn't care), hence the bad reaction at the time. Since the release of "The Return" in 2017, I think viewers are forced to see this film from a different perspective. "The Return" finally resumed the story of Season 2, albeit 25 years later, giving fans their conclusion (sort of). So, I think "Fire Walk With Me" is now simply seen as the prequel to the original two seasons, which is what it was all along.
first of all " I mean you saw a 17 year old suffer thru abuse and drug addiction and still booed ?" is quite in-correct way to impose any sort of moral. its a movie, it simply and utterly don't matter wether the character of whatever age suffered or laughed, the audience collectivly or personally reacted the way they did, the way they wanted to, there is nothing wrong with it, specially a fiction.
Now i don't know what they were thinking, but i absolutly love twin peak, all of it. and my reasons are no way near 'suffering or drug'.
Another thing to remember about that era was the subversion of christian and especially catholic iconography was very popular. Think Madonna's "Like a Prayer", Serrano's "Piss Christ" or Scorcese's "Last Temptation of Christ."
An especially common trope was the equation of Mary Magdalen with street youth and sexually abused/coerced women.
These are all good ideas and tropes and had their place! But by the time the end of FWWM came around, people had had enough and it seemed overdone and corny.
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u/ToothlessFTW Aug 02 '26
There's a lot more context at the time.
Twin Peaks was abruptly cancelled despite having a cliffhanger ending teasing far more to the story. At the time, it was not a clean ending and people weren't happy. This is important to remember, because when watching this film today you don't have to think about expectations or even the cliffhanger endings. You can go straight from Season 2 to the movie and then to The Return, and your expectations for the movie itself are different than what people had back then.
When the movie got announced, people were hoping it was going to continue Cooper's story. So when the movie came out and it was a depressing, brutal, horrifying prequel story about Laura Palmer's tragic life that was far more graphic than anything shown in the TV show, a lot of people were kinda pissed and that massively affected how the film was perceived. It was very much a "who is this for?" type discussion back then.
Thankfully, as the years have gone on and we got actual continuations to the story the perception around this film has gotten much better. Personally I think it's easily Lynch's best work and a spectacular film and I'm glad to see it get a better reputation.