The Tip Sheet is spinning off. Introducing Space Invaders, a newsletter about movies and pop culture that invades this space on Saturday. Arrives irregularly during this pilot phase.
As I’m writing this, I haven’t seen Twisters yet, but I have noted some fairly good reviews for it. I loath to make judgements based on something as deeply flawed as Rotten Tomatoes, but Twisters does have a 78 per cent “fresh” rating from critics. If you’re going to go back to the well, it should provide something that’s safe to drink.
I’ve been trying to remember my expectations around the first Twister in 1996. I was in high school and a baby cinephile, so anything at the movies, especially in the summer, was good enough. I had read articles in magazines like Cinescape and Entertainment Weekly about Twister, usually in relation to the Class of 1996 summer blockbusters like Independence Day and Mission: Impossible, but there was nothing written that said, “this looks like an important movie that will be remembered for decades.”
Now, almost 30 years later, despite having seen Twister in some way, shape or form about a hundred times between TV, video and streaming, I still can’t say for sure what’s made this movie stand the test of time. Some movies are like that. The Magnificent Seven is not a great western, or terribly original, but it is archetypal and has star power to spare. It’s notable for being Yul Brenner’s only cowboy role, and I’ve always assumed that because he sticks out so much in that oeuvre he was tailor-made to get hired as the head renegade robot in Westworld years later.
Of course, the real star of Twister was the same man behind Westworld, author Michael Crichton. At this point in his career, Crichton was a triple threat as a writer of best-selling books that became blockbuster movies (see Jurassic Park), and he had also recently created the TV hit ER. He had the touch, and his script for Twister ended up immediately attached to Steven Spielberg, who didn’t direct but he did produce. Jan De Bont, coming off his first directorial success with Speed, ended up behind the camera and completed the trifecta of Hollywood blockbuster makers who would bring this movie to life
Because the stars were going to be the CG tornados, along with three very bankable names in terms of writing, producing and directing, the cast was led by two capable and charismatic actors who didn’t normally get to play lead at his level. Helen Hunt was largely known for playing the straight woman to Paul Reiser on Must See TV in Mad About You, while Bill Paxton always offered dependable support in any number of movies but only rarely made it to the top of the call sheet. Other character actors like Cary Elwes, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Lois Smith, Alan Ruck, Jeremy Davies, Zach Grenier and future Tár director Todd Field provided support.
Bringing this kind of acting talent to bear was good because at its heart Twister is a workplace romantic comedy, it’s about an estranged couple who want to reconcile even if they don’t know that they want to reconcile. In essence, the titular tornadoes are a MacGuffin, and so is the quest for the team led by Paxton and Hunt to release an instrument pack into the heart of a tornado. This story point was based on a real-life experiment in the 80s so the cutting-edge science driving the plot was already a decade out of date. Not that it really matters.
Along with the romantic friction between Hunt and Paxton’s characters, there’s the friction between our ragtag heroes and a more corporatist group led by Elwes’ Jonas. How do you know that Jonas and his crew are bad news? They’re all driving the same sleek black model of SUV while looking down their nose at their plucky counterparts and their more eclectic collection of vehicles. “He’s in it for the money not the science,” Paxton’s Bill remarks. He’s practically spitting while he’s saying it.
To put it another way, in Twister the science is the treasure, but it’s also a means of overcoming childhood trauma. Hunt’s Jo is haunted by the powerful tornado that killed her father when she was a little girl, and although she’s not completely self-destructive in the best tradition of Ahab, Jo’s desire to fix the past makes her a risk taker with an above average level of recklessness. (Interestingly, the drive-in movie in Twister is playing a double-bill of The Shining and Psycho, horror films about being hunted and haunted by your parent respectively.)
Twister was also another one of those 90s movies that was essentially about the end of history, the only thing we had to left to fear was the uncontrollable, and everything would be controllable eventually with science. After the drive-in scene, the storm chasers race to save Jo’s Aunt Meg (played by Smith) after a tornado hit her town. Meg then tells Jo that she has to stop it before this disaster happens to someone else, but at the end of the day, aren’t tornados part of the natural systems of the Earth? You can get enough warning to get out of the way, but you can’t stop them from happening.
What’s interesting is that aside from the beginning prologue with Jo’s dad, the film is free of casualties until the third act when Jonas’ hubris ends up with his driver getting impaled by a radio tower and his car getting sucked up into the tornado. At that point, the tornado becomes a slasher movie monster chasing Jo and Bill as they race to complete their Sisyphean quest to launch their instrument pack into the monster tornado. There’s an interesting comparison to Ridley Scott’s Alien there too, how a day at the office becomes a fight to survive against a natural killing machine.
Now Twister doesn’t strike me as a movie that has a lot of subtexts, these are just thoughts I was having as I sat here watching it for the umpteenth time. It’s rewatchability, after all this time, may be the most remarkable thing about this movie, especially in this day and age when so much content comes and goes. We see it and we never think about it again.
Twister was about the right people at the right time coming together to create a certain kind of alchemy that can’t be recreated like a recipe or a science experiment, so you always have to go back to the source. A good example of that is another Jan De Bont movie, Speed 2: Cruise Control. Now, I’m one of those weirdos that kind of enjoys that sequel even as I concede its demerits, primarily that it’s preposterous to pretend that those characters have a life beyond the 116-minute runtime of Speed. What was next for part three? A tank? A dirigible?
It seems that the makers of Twisters have smartly admitted that they can’t do a standard legacy sequel, so they focused on a new story with new characters, but with the same sorta plot about scientists studying tornados in Oklahoma. However Twisters is received (and early indicators say that it’s going to be received very well), the original Twister will be allowed to stand on its own and be the kind of movie it’s always been, lightning in a bottle.
Twister is now streaming on Crave. Twisters is now playing in a theatre near you.
The Bookshelf:
Firebrand
MaXXXine
Galaxy Cinemas – Woodlawn:
Bad Newz
Barbie
Despicable Me 4
Fly Me to the Moon
Inside Out 2
The Iron Giant: 25th Anniversary (Sat)
The Lion King: 30th Anniversary
Longlegs
Oppenheimer
A Quiet Place: Day One
Twisters
Starting Thursday: Deadpool & Wolverine
Galaxy Cinemas – Clair:
Temporarily closed due to flood damage.
Mustang Drive-In:
Despicable Me 4 (early show)
A Quiet Place: Day One (late show)
Princess Cinemas – Twin:
The Bikeriders
Longlegs
Thelma
Touch
Staring Friday: Firebrand
Princess Cinemas – Original:
Before Sunset: 20th Anniversary (Sat, Tues)
Daddio (Sat-Tues)
Daisies (Fri)
Galaxy Quest: 25th Anniversary (Fri)
MaXXXine (Mon, Wed)
Short Cuts (Sat-Sun, Thurs)
The Small Back Room (Sun, Wed)
Apollo Cinema:
Darling (Sun)
Indian 2: Zero Tolerance (Sat)
Kalki 2898 AD (Wed)
Kinds of Kindness (Sat-Tues, Thurs)
Raayan (Thurs)
Swamp Thing (Sun)
Thelma (Sun, Tues-Wed)
This week on End Credits, Peter Salmon will co-host as we head out to Tornado Alley and join a new generation of storm chasers led by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell. Yup, we’re reviewing Twisters, and since that’s a movie about bad weather, we’re going to talk about some of our other favourite movies that are about, based on, or take place around bad weather.
And finally, feel free to reach out to me by email at adamadonaldson [at] gmail [dot] com, or find me on Facebook, Twitter, and, of course, GuelphPolitico.ca!