Why People Love ‘Twister’ Has Little to Do With the Actual Movie

For decades, I’ve heard moviegoers dismiss blockbusters as nothing more than excuses for elaborate visual effects. Most of the time, that’s hyperbole. In the case of Twister, it is 100 percent true.

As detailed in a 2020 feature from The Ringer, Twister did not begin its life as a story about daredevil storm chasers. Director Jan de Bont didn’t grow up dreaming of capturing the majesty and terror of tornados onscreen. The whole film started when Steven Spielberg wondered in the mid-1990s if computer effects had progressed to the point that they could convincingly create a CGI tornado.

Spielberg commissioned the effects wizards at George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic to shoot a test. At that time, "the company had never attempted anything like replicating 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, just a test reel of a tornado throwing farm equipment at a truck.

"The minute we took that shot into the studio and they saw it, they said, ‘Done. We want to make it,’" said Twister producer Kathleen Kennedy in 2015. "We didn’t even have a script yet!"

This does not sound like the origin story of a cinematic classic, but Twister was an immediate hit upon its release in the summer of 1996. It was the second-biggest hit of the year, behind only Independence Day. In the years since, it has become a favorite of its era, not to mention a cable television staple with a loyal fanbase that earned it a sequel almost 30 years later.

Looking at the film today, Twister stands in stark contrast to the modern breed of big-budget movies. It’s not hard to see how a movie conceived as a special effects demo reel became a beloved generational favorite.

Ironically, the film’s lack of inspiration beyond a Spielberg daydream gives Twister a unique quality that makes it stand out from most modern films of its scale. Today’s summer blockbusters are typically sequels, remakes, or adaptations. They’re based on existing material or inspired by something. They pander to an audience and play with viewers’ knowledge of existing source material, tapping into nostalgia — like feelings for the original Twister in 2024.

Twister, on the other hand, is based on nothing. Its co-screenwriter Michael Crichton later said he and collaborator Anne-Marie Martin took cues from a PBS documentary about tornado chasers and the plot of Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday. But you don’t need to know anything about those films, or about tornados, to understand Twister. At a time when many blockbusters feel like quizzes, Twister remains a film whose entire plot can be summarized by its one-word title.

If you need more than "twister" to synopsize the plot: Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt star as Bill and Jo, estranged husband and wife storm chasers who collaborated on a new tornado-measuring gadget called "Dorothy". They never completed it before they broke up. Bill tracks down Jo one last time to get her to sign their divorce papers so he can start his new life as a TV weatherman, even bringing his new fiancée Melissa (Jami Gertz).

Jo is obsessed with tornados because they took her father’s life when she was a child — a tragic backstory rendered in surprisingly intense detail during Twister’s opening sequence. Hoping to get Bill to help her finally get Dorothy off the ground, she hems and haws and tries not to sign the paperwork. She shows Bill a working prototype of Dorothy that her team 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 inevitably reconnects with Jo as the storms swirl around them.

It ain’t Shakespeare, but it’s astounding how novel a big-budget movie about grownups with grownup problems (marital strife, needing to get documents signed, tornados destroying your aunt’s house) feels today. Yes, Twister mostly focuses on ILM’s digital tornados. Yes, the dialogue rarely rises above single-word exclamations screamed over the sound of wind machines ("Right! Left! Debris!!"). Still, the mere fact that Twister is about a squabbling couple in a rocky marriage makes it look boldly adult compared to the simplistic stuff released every week during the summer now.

Bill and Jo don’t just squabble, though; like Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns from His Girl Friday, they clearly still have feelings for each other. This element makes Twister feel like a product of a bygone era of filmmaking. Modern blockbusters are so sexless, lest they offend someone or limit the film’s potential appeal. Twister is a movie filled with palpable sexual tension. Hunt spends most of the film running through the rain in a thin white tank top. There are unnecessary shower scenes. In many sequences, Bill and Jo get tossed into close physical proximity, doing that thing where two people who don’t want to admit they have feelings wind up with their faces close together and then awkwardly separate.

Note Paxton’s 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 talking about food at all. It’s all so shameless, but Hollywood movies have forgotten how much fun it is to be this shameless.

It helps that Twister has actors of Paxton and Hunt’s caliber to sell those lines. Neither were huge names when they were cast as the film’s leads; Paxton was a perennial supporting player, and Hunt was known from the sitcom Mad About You. The true stars here were the tornados, which dwarfed Paxton and Hunt on the film’s theatrical poster, and to a lesser extent Spielberg and Crichton reuniting after the success of Jurassic Park.

Twister’s marketing also heavily promoted that it came from de Bont, the director of Speed, which became a surprise smash two summers earlier. With Spielberg, Crichton, de Bont, and ILM’s wizardry as primary draws, Twister surrounded Paxton and Hunt with a great cast of supporting players. Cary Elwes, known for comedies like The Princess Bride, played the main non-meteorological villain, a rival storm chaser named Jonas. Veteran actress Lois Smith played Jo’s Aunt Meg. Jo and Bill’s team included familiar faces like Jeremy Davies, Todd Field, Alan Ruck, and a young Philip Seymour Hoffman, who steals most of the movie with his youthful enthusiasm.

These elements add up to a canny formula: good actors and impressive special effects from ILM. Some of the twisters look less convincing today, but back in the day, Twister packed a punch on the big screen.

Yet, I didn’t love Twister when I saw it in 1996, and I don’t particularly love it today. Paxton and Hunt’s banter and the endless parade of thunderstorms get wearisome and repetitive. Even with the amazing cast, Twister feels like a film conceived as a showcase for emerging effects technology. It has memorable moments, but it’s like a glossed-up B-picture.

Regardless, I totally understand why many people love Twister, especially today. It doesn’t look or sound like the kinds of blockbusters we get anymore. Even if Twister isn’t a classic, we could use more movies like it — perhaps with a bit more emphasis on the story and less on the particle physics.

Source: The Ringer