Why people love “Twister” has little to do with the film itself

For decades, I have heard moviegoers dismiss blockbusters as mere excuses for elaborate visual effects. Most of the time, this is an exaggeration. In the case of Twistersit is 100 percent true.

As detailed in this 2020 article from The Ringer, Twisters didn’t begin life as a story about daredevil storm chasers. Director Jan de Bont didn’t grow up as a boy in the Netherlands dreaming of the day he could capture the majesty and terror of tornadoes on screen. The whole movie began when Steven Spielberg wondered in the mid-1990s whether computer effects had advanced enough to create a convincing CGI tornado.

He commissioned the effects wizards at George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic to do a test. At the time, “the company had never attempted to recreate a force of nature.” Their proof of concept was so convincing that numerous studios immediately wanted to back the film – even though there was no film. There was only one test shot of a tornado hurling farm equipment onto a truck.

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

That doesn’t sound like the story of how a classic film came to be. But Twisters was an instant hit after its release in the summer of 1996. It was the second biggest hit of the year, only Independence Day. And in the years since, the film has become a favorite of its time, not to mention a staple on cable television and a loyal fan base that has given it a sequel nearly 30 years later. If you watch the film today, Twisters stands in such stark contrast to the modern generation of big-budget films that it’s not hard to understand how a film conceived as a special effects demo video became a beloved favorite of an entire generation.

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Ironically, the complete lack of inspiration for the film, other than a Spielberg daydream, Twisters a unique quality that sets it apart from most modern films of its magnitude. Today’s summer blockbusters are usually sequels, remakes or adaptations. They are based on or inspired by something. They flatter the audience, they play with the audience’s knowledge of existing source material, they tap into nostalgia – such as people’s feelings for the original. Twisters in 2024.

Twistersis based on nothing. His co-screenwriter Michael Crichton later said that he and his collaborator Anne-Marie Martin were inspired by a PBS documentary about tornado hunters and the plot of Howard Hawks’ His girl for special occasionsin which a newspaper editor and a reporter, formerly a married couple, must resolve their differences to land the crime story of the century. But you don’t need to know anything about these movies, or about tornadoes – or literally anything at all – to understand Twisters. In a time when so many blockbusters feel like quizzes, when they come with homework that is practically a prerequisite for proper viewing, Twisters remains a film whose entire plot summary can be summed up with its one-word title.

If you need more than “Twister” to sum up the plot, Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt play Bill and Jo, an estranged storm-chasing couple who worked together on a new tornado gauge called “Dorothy” but never finished it before they split up. Bill tracks down Jo one last time to get her to sign her divorce papers so he can start his new life as a humble TV weatherman. He even brings his new fiancée, Melissa (Jami Gertz), along.

Jo is particularly obsessed with tornadoes because they took her father’s life when she was a child – a tragic backstory that is portrayed in surprisingly intense detail throughout Twisters‘s opening sequence. Hoping to get Bill to help her finally get Dorothy airborne, she procrastinates and tries not to sign the papers. She also shows Bill a working prototype of Dorothy that her team is about to deploy during a series of violent storms. In the excitement of getting Dorothy to fly, Bill returns to the crew and inevitably runs into Jo again as the storms swirl around them.

It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s amazing how novel a big-budget movie about adults with adult problems (marital disputes, documents needing to be signed, tornadoes destroying the aunt’s house) feels today. Yes, Twisters focuses primarily on ILM’s digital tornadoes, and yes, the dialogue rarely rises above the level of monosyllabic exclamations shouted over the noise of the wind machines (“Right! Left!”). Debris!!”) Nevertheless, the mere fact that Twisters is about a quarrelsome couple in a difficult marriage and makes the film seem cheeky and grown-up compared to the simplistic stuff that comes out every week in the summer.

But Bill and Jo do not just argue; like Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns from His girl for special occasionsThey are obviously still keen on each other, another element that Twisters feel like a product of a bygone (and dare I say better) era of filmmaking. Modern blockbusters are so sexless that they could offend no one or limit the film’s potential appeal to every possible age and demographic. Twisters is a cool Movie. Hunt spends most of the movie running through the rain in a thin white tank top. There are unnecessary shower scenes. In virtually every scene, Bill and Jo are physically crammed close together and they do that thing that happens in movies where two people who don’t want to admit they want to make out end up with their faces very close together and then have to awkwardly separate without exchanging spit.

Like this!

Note Paxton’s deeply suggestive delivery of the line “I want that” right after he and Hunt almost kiss. He’s talking about a plate of home-cooked food. But he’s also not to talk about food at all. It’s all so shameless… but Hollywood movies have forgotten how much fun it is to be so shameless.

It helps that Twisters has actors of the caliber of Paxton and Hunt delivering those lines. Neither were big names when they were cast in the film’s lead roles; Paxton was a consistent supporting player and Hunt was known as one half of the sitcom’s central couple. Crazy about you. The real stars here were the tornadoes themselves, who overshadowed Paxton and Hunt on the film’s poster, and to a lesser extent Spielberg and Crichton, who, after the success of Jurassic Park and the successful TV drama HE. Twister was also heavily promoted as a product of de Bont, the director of speedwhich had become a surprise hit two summers earlier with a similar formula of attractive B-list celebrities with simmering sexual tension, an ingenious high concept as well as first-class effects and practical stunts.

With Spielberg, Crichton, de Bont and ILM’s magic as the main attractions, Twisters was able to surround Paxton and Hunt with a great cast of supporting actors. Cary Elwes, who has already made a name for himself in comedies such as The Prince’s Bride, Hot Shots!And Robin Hood – Heroes in Tightsplayed the non-meteorological villain, a rival storm chaser named Jonas. Veteran character actress Lois Smith took on 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 Hoffman, who steals most of the film with his youthful enthusiasm for everything happening on screen.

All these elements make for a clever formula: good actors and impressive special effects from ILM. Some of the twisters look a little less convincing than in 1996, but after seeing this film in the cinema, I can personally confirm: Back then, Twisters was a real eye-catcher on the big screen.

And yet I did not love Twisters when I saw it in 1996, and I’m not particularly fond of it today. Paxton and Hunt’s quips and the endless parade of thunderstorms get a little tedious and repetitive. (Plus, for all the supposed sexual tension between the characters, the actors supposedly had a lot more actual tension off camera.) Even with this great cast Twisters feels like a film that was first conceived as a showcase for new effects technology. It has memorable moments, but it’s one of those films that feels like a souped-up B-movie, both in terms of the type of film and its quality.

Nevertheless, I completely understand why many people love Twistersespecially today. It doesn’t look or sound like the kind of blockbusters we get today. Even if Twisters is not a true classic, but we could certainly use more films like this – perhaps with a little more emphasis on the story and less on particle physics.