Over & Overs: Twister (1996)
Thursday, October 17, 2019 at 12:00PM In Over & Overs we ask Team Experience to share movies that they've seen countless times and tell us why.
by Tony Ruggio
As a kid growing up in Texas, with family in Oklahoma and Nebraska, I had a morbid fascination with tornadoes and the would-be thrill of storm chasing. My fascination was outweighed only by the sheer fear of death. The possibility of finding yourself at the mercy of mother nature was all too real in Tornado Alley, at least for a nine year-old. In the summer of 1996 in air-conditioned theaters an entire country (and myself) learned about the Fujita scale, from itty-bitty F1 tornadoes to mile-wide F5 monsters. Twister was a multiplex phenomenon and the first disaster film in decades to strike hot at the box office. With mixed reviews and Independence Day casting a big shadow, it was then somewhat forgotten...until cable came to the rescue.
Twister is simply one of those movies. More than twenty years later, it’s still on cable at least once a week on a Sunday night or Saturday afternoon. It’s dumber than hell, but more fun than it has any right to be.
It’s the quintessential 90s blockbuster, the sort of dumb fun that makes you wonder what happened to director Jan De Bont, the maestro behind Speed and this movie, the first time modern VFX were used to imitate weather on the grandest scale. With future Oscar winners Helen Hunt and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, not to mention a charming lead performance from the late Bill Paxton and a sniveling heel turn by former Princess Bride Cary Elwes, the cast of Twister is a combination of one-time 80s icons and actors before they were really famous.
Twister is a testament to the early days of CGI. Much of the Oscar-nominated visual effects work holds up to this day, putting to shame the inconsistency of bigger-scale blockbusters like San Andreas, the result of modern production encumbered by too many shots and too little time. There’s a visceral quality to the action, a willingness to allow silence and creakiness to induce fear. Watching Twister you realize how vulnerable our everyday way of life might be when 230-mile-per-hour winds are bearing down on it. The Oscar-nominated sound team’s emphasis on the noise of nails rattling or brick and mortar tearing apart is a message to all: our buildings and ourselves won’t hold in the face of “God’s finger.”
the famous flying cow shot
Intentionally or not, Twister’s script reads differently today. Be it via Paxton’s southern wariness or Hunt’s trauma-induced anxieties, their characters often exclaim something to the effect of “we’ve never seen anything like this before!” There’s a sense of escalation permeating the film, the idea that storm chasers and weathermen are up against increasingly volatile situations.
Sure enough, the weather is getting worse. Storms are more intense, tornadoes are more common cross-country, and maybe now's the right time for a sequel doubling down on the impending doom of it all, our changing climate. In the meantime, you can count on Twister on television every month for the rest of your life. Most of the time it’s a good time.
Reader Comments (12)
Interesting timing as Helen Hunt was in a terrible car wreck yesterday. She is OK.
The thing I always remember when Twister is mentioned is k.d. lang's song "Love Affair" (based on Morricone's score for the 1994 version of Love Affair with Beatty, Bening, Hepburn) featured in the film when Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton were talking about their troubled relationship. Also, I think it was featured during end credits. Not sure now. Weirdly, I don't remember other details from the movie, just that song.
I just ADORE Twister, but I just about adore any Disaster Movie, the dumber the better, they are my weakness. But speaking of the soundtrack -- Twister has a Tori Amos song, a really good one at that, so it wins.
It is an underrated film... pure popcorn, and excells in that. Rewatchable beyond belief and with one of the best disaster scenes (the drive in) and also one of the most thrilling endings and climax of the 90s.
Yeah, the Screenplay could have been better, but it was tons of fun. And still is, more than 20 years after
Shout out to Lois Smith’s fun turn in this movie! My first exposure to her.
Jason: thanks for pointing out the soundtrack and Tori.
Chunks of this were filmed in and around my hometown of Ames, Iowa, and there was a lot of chatter re: Helen Hunt sightings. Some friends and I stood in line for hours to audition as extras. No dice (at the height of my middle school Ugly Years), but what a rip-roaring movie experience when it came out later!
Ah, the film soundtrack that broke up Van Hagar.
The entire sequence at the drive-in remains the standard for disaster cinema in the modern age. It is peerless, top to bottom, from editing to sound (the SOUND), to the synthesis of practical and visual effects, and the performances of the cast and extras as they react to Nature’s wrath first hand.
Also, and this is more me, probably, I’m a fan of Jami Gertz in this. She plays the role more accurately than people give her credit for, and when she overhears her soon to be husband essentially declare his love for his soon to be ex-wife, her wordless work with her face breaks my heart. Ditto to her calm resignation after the drive-in disaster.
Jan de Bont and ‘90s blockbuster cinema at their best. Give or take a Speed.
Great writing.
It reminded me of when I first watched this fun, fun film.
I was very young and had just moved to a big city. It was a delight to be able to go to the cinema and watch such a rollercoaster of a film.
Great fun and great memories.
Twister is the big movie. The thing about the Oscars, they're thinking of Best Actor for THE WIND
I love this movie. I don't normally love the disaster genre, but this is disaster done well. Doesn't take itself too seriously. All of the actors are great, and the story/visual FX go down so nice and easy. A perfect mindless 90s blockbuster. I wish they made more like this these days instead of the endless onslaught of superhero flicks.
Jami Gertz is the scene stealer in this. Not just her famous "I gotta go, Julia, we got cows!" but from beginning to end. Melissa was A Very Real Type in the 90s, especially in the south and midwest, and Gertz nailed that.
@Owl, k.d. lang has a voice like butter, and her Love Affair ballad is beautiful (as is her rendition of Theme from Valley of the Dolls).
Twister is one of those blockbusters where all of the money is right there on the screen. God bless ‘em for that because it makes for a delightfully smashy, trashy movie-going experience.