Twister

Summary

“Cow…. Another cow…”

In 1996, my family went to the local Cinema 150 to see Jan de Bont’s film Twister on what was the biggest screen available. I was eleven years old, and my sister was nine years old. I vividly remember that experience. Experience the film’s sound design and the very impressive melding of CGI and practical visual effects in a theater with an audience was a formative experience. Leaving the theater, filmgoers felt like they had really been through an experience, and in the ensuing years that followed (despite numerous valiant attempts) Twister remained the best of the weather related disaster films. 

Written by Michael Crichton and Anne Marie Martin, the film was in many ways as much of a science fiction film as a disaster picture. Crichton is best known for writing Jurassic Park, but at the time he was the bestselling science fiction writer of that era (dating back to early masterpieces such as The Andromeda Strain.) His television series E.R. was a huge hit, his Wesley Snipes/Sean Connery matchup Rising Sun had done well theatrically, and Jurassic Park was an absolute cultural phenomenon. Other films adapted from his novels in that decade included Congo, Sphere, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, and Disclosure. In the Nineties, the male authors that were best known were Grisham, Crichton, and King, and they were all well represented onscreen. Twister was executive produced by Steven Spielberg, who connected Director Jan de Bont (hot off of his success with Speed) with Industrial Light and Magic to see if the film could be made convincingly. After a well received screen test proved that the CGI could be convincingly meshed with the footage using practical effects, Twister was given a green light. It was a massive success at the box office with nearly half a billion at the worldwide box office, despite a mixed critical reception. At the core of the film is a love story, with a lot of destructive storms as the impetus for renuniting two charming lead characters.

The film begins on a farm in Oklahoma in 1969. An approaching tornado wakes a family into action. The father (Richard Lineback) grabs his daughter, Jo Beth, and his wife to race to the storm shelter. Jo’s tiny puppy Toto runs behind her and the dad lets the dog into the shelter just as the storm arrives. Seeing the need to hold the storm shelter door in place, the father holds onto the door with all his might. The tornado sucks the door and the father into the vortex. In present day (1996,) meteorologist Bill Harding (Bill Paxton) drives with his fiancée Melissa Reeves (Jami Gertz) to the middle of Oklahoma to track down Jo (Helen Hunt.) Jo has grown up to become a doctor and a storm chaser with a ragtag crew of similarly minded scientists including Dusty (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Rabbit (Alan Ruck,) Allan (Sean Whalen,) Beltzer (Todd Field,) and some others. Bill has come to see Jo and have her sign the divorce papers that she received months earlier, so that he can proceed to marry his therapist fiancée Melissa. Jo has been working on a prototype tornado modeling system that she plans to deploy nicknamed Dorothy that is made up of numerous individual sensors contained in one machine. Her goal is to deploy the sensors into a tornado’s vortex to collect data from the inside of the tornado with hopes of creating a better storm warning system. This idea was thought up by Bill, and Jo has brought it to fruition. Jo gives a weak excuse and doesn’t sign the papers. She begins to chase a storm, so Bill begins to accompany Jo and her team as they try to feed a tornado the sensors. In order to do so, Jo and Bill will need to place the machine directly in the path of a tornado. To make matters more complicated, a rival storm chaser, Dr. Jonas Miller (Cary Elwes,) has stolen their idea and created the D.O.T. System which functions in the exact same way. He is onsite in Oklahoma to chase the exact same large storm system. As Jo and Bill race to beat the other storm chasers and try to survive the immense danger they are driving towards, old romantic feelings reemerge.

Twister remains a rollicking good time. It’s a simple concept with some great ideas (the sensors technology was basically science fiction at the time) that is executed extremely well. Jan de Bont was one of the most in-demand cinematographers in the Eighties with amazing results on classic films such as Flatliners, Black Rain, The Hunt for Red October, and Die Hard. His directorial career started off with the blockbuster hit Speed, so he was handpicked by Spielberg to work on Twister. Reading the script, Jan felt like the script had been written specifically for him. Using CGI technology that was still in its infancy, Jan de Bont was able to blend his well shot practical footage with impressive CGI imagery to make a film that felt like a theme park ride. The shoot was anything but easy. It was very physical. For example, Bill Paxton was pelted with “hail,” which was ice made with milk added into it, shot out of a snow machine while the car was in motion. If you watch any of the behind-the-scenes footage on the disc, it is easy to understand that the actors had to embrace the madness and truly commit to the roles and the physicality they required. The chemistry between Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton is palpable, but the supporting cast brings a lot of great energy to the role. Who could forget Philip Seymour Hoffman as Dusty? The film rides a wave of excellent energy between a crew of great actors.

Bill Paxton is wonderful in the picture. Paxton always brought something extra to his roles, and is an actor I am always excited to watch onscreen. He is sorely missed. Billy “the Extreme” Harding is one of his best roles. I wish he could have been placed in more lead roles, because he had some serious screen presence. Jan de Bont had to fight to cast Helen Hunt in the lead role because she was best known for her role on television’s Mad About You. This role proved her theatrical viability and within a couple years she had won an Academy Award for her role in As Good As It Gets. Cary Elwes is a fantastic “villian” in the film. Philip Seymour Hoffman steals every moment he shows up onscreen, and the rest of the supporting cast is fantastic. The direction by de Bont brings out the very best of the cast, and he also handles the action sequences brilliantly.

This film is one of those where lightning seemingly strikes again and again in the same place. I have been a fan of the movie since I was a child, and the experience of watching the film in 4K with Atmos ranks as one of my favorite experiences of this year.

Video

Presented in Native 4K in an aspect ratio of 2.39:1, Twister looks wonderful in its UHD presentation. There has been a little bit of controversy regarding some tweaks that Jan de Bont has done in color timing for this release. This is all due to just a few moments in the picture which have been color timed to bring out more green lighting in the beginning moments of a tornado. In the special features Jan de Bont explained that it simply was not possible to create this green effect when the film was originally released. As a purist and nostalgist, I can understand how some critics became upset that anything had been tweaked whatsoever to shy away from our memories of seeing the film before. On the other hand, as a fan of the film and of Jan de Bont’s cinematography, I did not find this few moments of revisionism to be that big of a deal. My kids and wife had seen this movie on the old VC-1 Blu-ray release numerous times, and none of them seemed to note this change at all. What they did notice was just how good the film looks on 4K now. The original Twister release used a muddy looking VC-1 transfer. This was still a big leap forward from the DVD, which was the first mass manufactured DVD to come to market, but the film desperately needed a makeover. Some purists will bitch about the few minutes of revisionism, but I can’t imagine watching this film but in this beautiful 4K presentation supervised by Jan de Bont himself. Keep in mind, that Jan de Bont was one of the finest action film cinematographers before he started his career as a director, and he achieved exactly what he had hoped with this release. The film as never looked better, maybe even theatrically. Fine detail is excellent with grain well resolved. The HDR brings out the very best of the film’s palette, and 90% of the film is completely true to the source. Warner have done the work to restore Twister to its former grandeur, and I am willing to wager that fans will be fairly blown away by just how good it looks.

Audio

When Twister was released on DVD, it was the demo disc that most people used in their home theaters to show off their systems until Saving Private Ryan was released a few years later. On Blu-ray, Twister was presented with an excellent Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track which upped the ante substantially. Now, Twister has been given a truly glorious Dolby Atmos track which can only be improved upon when the next technology in 3D surround sound comes along in twenty years or so. It sounds absolutely phenomenal. The experience of watching this film in my home theater with my family truly brought back the memories of catching it with an audience in that Cinema 150 when I was a child. Thank you Warner for the care you gave this track. 

Supplements:

• The Legacy of Twister: Taken by the Wind – This new interview with Director Jan de Bont finds a very cheerful director reminiscing on a film he is obviously very proud of, but talso extremely excited to share what he considers the definitive way to view the film (including a discussion of his tweak to the color timing to be closer to how tornadoes appear.) I shared his enthusiasm with the final product. De Bont is a hero of mine, so I appreciated this piece.

• Audio Commentary – A legacy track featuring Jan de Bont and VFX supervisor Stefen Fangmeier.

• Chasing the Storm: Twister Revisited – this archival piece features interviews with de Bont, members of his VFX team, and actor Bill Paxton. This is a great piece if you have not seen it.

• HBO First Look: The Making of Twister – another solid EPK style feature.

• Anatomy of a Twister – another DVD-era featurette.

• Van Halen “Humans Being” Music Video

Overall Scores:

Video – 4.5/5 

Audio – 5/5

Supplements – 4/5

Overall – 4.75/5

Twister is a film that my family watches every year or two. It’s a nostalgic thrill for my wife and I, but my children love it also. Coinciding with the theatrical release of Warner’s sequel Twisters, Warner has given Twister a director approved 4K UHD release that is sure to blow away fans of the film. There is a bit of controversy regarding some of the “green” color timing that Jan de Bont used ina couple sequences, but I did not find this issue to be that egregious given that it only lasts for a few moments in the entire film. The huge leaps forward from the antiquated VC-1 Blu-ray to an HDR-enabled 4K UHD with mind-blowing Atmos sound make this an easy recommendation. It was an absolute thrill to experience the film in my home theater with my family. Buy it!