Why people love Twister has little to do with the movie itself

For decades, I’ve heard moviegoers dismiss blockbusters as mere excuses for elaborate visual effects. More often than not, that’s hyperbole. In the case of TwisterIt is 100 percent true.

As detailed in this 2020 article in The bell ringer, Twister It didn’t start out as a story about daredevil storm chasers. Director Jan de Bont didn’t grow up as a child in the Netherlands dreaming of the day he could capture the majesty and terror of tornadoes on screen. The whole movie started when Steven Spielberg I wondered in the mid-1990s if computer effects had progressed to the point where you could create a convincing CGI tornado.

He commissioned the special effects wizards at George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic to film a test. At the time, “the company had never attempted anything close to replicating a force of nature.” His proof of concept was so convincing that numerous studios immediately wanted to back the film, even though there was no film. There was only a test reel of a tornado throwing farm machinery at a truck.

“The moment we brought that shot into the studio and they saw it, they said, ‘Done. We want to do it,’” he said. Twister Producer Kathleen Kennedy in 2015“We didn’t even have a script yet!”

This doesn’t sound like the origin story of a classic film. But… Twister It was an immediate success upon its release in the summer of 1996. It was the second biggest hit of the year, behind only Independence Day. And in the years since it became a favorite of its time, Not to mention it’s a staple of cable TV. With a fan base loyal enough to earn it A sequel almost 30 years laterWatching the movie today, Twister It contrasts so starkly with the modern generation of big-budget films that it’s not hard to see how a film conceived as a special effects demo became a generational favorite.

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Ironically, the film’s complete lack of inspiration beyond a Spielbergian daydream gives Twister A unique quality that sets it apart from most modern films of its scale. Today’s summer blockbusters are usually sequels, remakes, or adaptations. They’re either based on something or inspired by something.. They’re pandering to an audience; they’re playing on an audience’s knowledge of the existing source material; they’re tapping into nostalgia, like, for example, people’s feelings for the original. Twister in 2024.

TwisterOn the other hand, it is not based on anything. Its co-writer Michael Crichton He later said that he and his collaborator Anne-Marie Martin were inspired by a PBS documentary about tornado chasers and the plot of the Howard Hawks film. Your Friday Girlin which a newspaper editor and a journalist who used to be husband and wife must put aside their differences to get the crime story of the century. But you don’t need to know anything about any of those movies, or about tornadoes (or literally anything at all) to understand TwisterIn an age when so many blockbusters feel like exams, when they come with assignments that are practically prerequisites for proper viewing, Twister It remains a film whose complete synopsis can be summed up in its one-word title.

If you need more than a “twister” to sum up the plot: Bill Paxton and Helen’s Hunt Bill and Jo, two estranged storm chasers who collaborated on a new tornado-measuring device called the “Dorothy,” but never completed it before parting ways, Bill seeks out Jo one last time to get her to sign divorce papers so he can start his new life as a lowly TV weatherman. He even brings along his new fiancée, Melissa (Jami Gertz).

Jo is singularly obsessed with tornadoes, because they took her father’s life when she was a child, a tragic story told in surprisingly intense detail throughout TwisterOpening sequence of the film. Hoping that Bill will help her get Dorothy off the ground, she hesitates and tries not to sign the papers. She also shows Bill a working prototype of Dorothy that her crew is about to deploy during a flurry of intense storms. Caught up in the excitement of trying to get Dorothy to fly, Bill rejoins the crew and is inevitably reunited with Jo as the storms swirl around them.

It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s amazing how fresh a big-budget movie about adults with adult problems (marital disputes, needing to get papers signed, tornadoes destroying your aunt’s house) feels today. Yes, Twister It focuses heavily on ILM’s digital tornadoes, and yes, the dialogue rarely rises above the level of one-word exclamations shouted over the sound of wind machines (“Right! Left! Debris!!”) Still, the mere fact that Twister It’s about a bickering couple in a rocky marriage, and it seems boldly adult compared to the simplistic material released every week during the summer.

But Bill and Jo don’t just fight, like Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns in Your Friday GirlThey clearly still feel mutual attraction, another element that makes Twister It feels like a product of a bygone (and dare I say superior) cinematic era. Modern blockbusters are sexless, for fear of offending someone or limiting the film’s potential appeal to all possible ages and demographics. Twister it’s a horny Movie. Hunt spends most of the movie running around in the rain in a thin white T-shirt. There are unnecessary shower scenes. In virtually every sequence, Bill and Jo are thrown into very close physical proximity and do that thing that happens in movies where two people who don’t want to admit they want to kiss end up with their faces very close together and then have to awkwardly pull away without exchanging saliva.

Like this!

Notice the deeply suggestive way Paxton utters the line “I want that” right after he and Hunt almost kiss. He’s talking about a plate of comfort food. But he’s also No Talking about food is all very cheeky… but Hollywood movies have forgotten how much fun it is to be so cheeky.

That helps Twister It has actors of Paxton and Hunt’s caliber to sell those lines. Neither was a big name when they were cast in the film’s lead roles; Paxton was a perennial supporting actor and Hunt was known as one half of the comedy’s central couple. Crazy for You. The real stars here were the tornadoes themselves, which outshone Paxton and Hunt. on the movie premiere posterand to a lesser extent Spielberg and Crichton reuniting after the success of Jurassic Park and the hit television drama IS. Twister’s marketing also heavily promoted that it came from De Bont, the director of Speedwhich became a surprise hit two summers earlier with a similar formula of appealing second-rate films with simmering sexual tension, an ingenious concept and practical special effects and stunts.

With Spielberg, Crichton, de Bont and the magic of ILM as main attractions, Twister He was free to surround Paxton and Hunt with a large cast of supporting actors. Cary Elwes, who had already made a name for himself in comedies like The princess Bride, Hot shots!and Robin Hood: Men in Tightsplayed the main non-meteorological villain, a rival storm chaser named Jonas. Veteran character actress Lois Smith appeared for the key role of Jo’s Aunt Meg. Jo and Bill’s team included familiar faces and future stars such as Jeremy Davies, Todd Field, Alan Ruck and a young Philip Seymour Hoffmanwho steals most of the movie with his sheer youthful enthusiasm for everything that happens on screen.

All of these elements combine to form a clever formula: good actors and impressive special effects from ILM. Some of the twists seem a little less convincing than they did in 1996, but having seen this film in the theater, I can personally confirm: back then, Twister had a huge impact on the big screen.

And yet, I didn’t love it Twister When I saw it in 1996, I don’t like it much now. Paxton and Hunt’s banter, and the endless parade of thunderstorms, get a bit tedious and repetitive. (Also, for all the supposed sexual tension between the characters, The actors supposedly had a lot more real tension off-camera..) Even with that amazing cast, Twister It feels like a film conceived as a showcase for emerging effects technology. It contains memorable moments, but it’s one of those films that feels like a glamorized B-movie, both in terms of the type of film and its quality.

Anyway, I totally understand why so many people love it… Twisterespecially nowadays. It doesn’t look or sound like the kind of blockbusters we see today. Even if Twister Not exactly a classic, we could definitely use more movies like this, perhaps with a little more emphasis on story and less on particle physics.