Twister

Twister Information

Twister is a 1996 American epic disaster adventure film starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as storm chasers researching tornadoes. It was directed by Jan de Bont from a screenplay by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin. Its executive producers were Steven Spielberg, Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald and Gerald R. Molen. Twister was the second-highest-grossing film of 1996 domestically, with an estimated 54,688,100 tickets sold in the US.

Plot

In Oklahoma in June 1969, 5-year-old Jo Thornton (Alexa Vega), her parents (Richard Lineback) and (Rusty Schwimmer), and their dog Toby seek shelter in their storm cellar as a dangerous F5 tornado strikes one night. The tornado is so strong that the storm cellar door is ripped off, which causes Jo's father to be pulled into the storm to his death. Jo, her mother, and Toby survive.

27 years later in the present day in March 1996, 32-year-old Jo (Helen Hunt), now a meteorologist, is reunited with her estranged husband, Bill "The Extreme" Harding (Bill Paxton), a former weather researcher and storm chaser, who has since become a weather reporter. He is planning to marry sex therapist Melissa Reeves (Jami Gertz). They need Jo's signature on the divorce papers and have tracked her down during an active bout of stormy weather. Jo has built four identical tornado research devices called DOROTHY, based on Bill's designs. The device is designed to release hundreds of sensors into the center of a tornado to study its structure from the inside, with the purpose of creating a more advanced storm warning system. Bill and Melissa join Jo and her team of storm chasers, and the team encounters Dr. Jonas Miller (Cary Elwes), a smug, corporate-funded meteorologist and storm chaser. When Bill discovers that Jonas has created a device based on DOROTHY, called DOT-3, he vows to help Jo deploy DOROTHY before Miller can claim credit for the idea.

During the F1 tornado, Jo's truck and DOROTHY I are both destroyed. They continue storm chasing in Bill's truck, with Melissa in the back seat. They find the second tornado, a confirmed F2 tornado, and head off on a back road when the twister shifts its track. They soon find themselves driving through heavy rain, and instead run smack right into a cluster of two tornadoes, spinning them around on the highway until the tornadoes dissipate. They're fine, but Melissa becomes hysterical from the ordeal, and Bill has to calm her down.

The team visits Jo's aunt Meg's house in Wakita for food and rest. Whilst Jo is busy showering Bill tells Melissa about his relationship with Jo and reflects on the night Jo's father got killed.

They soon learn that an F3 tornado has formed near some hills, but they have trouble finding it. Jo drives ahead of the team to intercept the oncoming tornado, but a telephone pole falls on the back of Bill's truck and knocks DOROTHY II out onto the road, disabling it. As the tornado lifts and touches down closer, Bill pulls Jo into the truck and moves to safety. The two confront each other over their marriage and Jo's obsession with stopping tornadoes, due to being upset about her father's death.

The following night, an F4 tornado devastates a drive-in cinema during the showing of the 1980 horror film The Shining, forcing everyone to take shelter in a pit in a car repair shop warehouse. By this time Melissa has been traumatized by the experiences and recognizes the unresolved feelings between Bill and Jo. In desperation for her own safety, she peacefully breaks off the engagement with Bill. The tornado continues on to Wakita, devastating the town and injuring Meg while destroying her house. Bill and Jo rescue Meg and her dog from the collapsing house. Meg's injuries are not serious, but she is taken to the hospital for safety while her dog stays with the group. The team then hears that an F5 is forming 25 miles south of their position. Inspecting Meg's wind chime sculptures, Jo realizes that the most likely method to successfully deploy DOROTHY's sensors into a tornado would be to add additional body surface to catch the wind.

As they reach the F5, the team adds aluminum from soda cans to work as wind flaps, but the deployment of DOROTHY III is a failure. Meanwhile, Jonas attempts to deploy DOT-3 and in the process he ignores Bill's warnings to turn around. Moments later, a piece of metal comes flying through the windshield, Jonas's truck is caught by the tornado, exploded and he and his driver Eddie (Zach Grenier) are killed. Jo and Bill set out on their own and are able to deploy the last DOROTHY successfully, using Bill's truck as an anchor. From miles away, the research team sees immediate results on their computers from the sensors. Bill and Jo's celebration is cut short, however, as the tornado shifts course toward them. They take shelter in a shed where they anchor themselves to irrigation pipes with leather straps. The tornado destroys the shed and Jo and Bill find themselves in the vortex of the super-massive funnel, securely floating in air.

After the F5 dissipates, Jo and Bill find themselves alone on the floor of the former shed. They decide to run their own lab and rekindle their marriage.

Cast

Bill Paxton as Bill "The Extreme" Harding
Helen Hunt as Dr. Jo Harding
Alexa Vega as Young Jo
Jami Gertz as Dr. Melissa Reeves
Cary Elwes as Dr. Jonas Miller
Philip Seymour Hoffman as "Dusty" Davis
Alan Ruck as Robert "Rabbit" Nurick
Jeremy Davies as Brian Laurence
Joey Slotnick as Joey
Todd Field as Tim "Beltzer" Lewis
Scott Thomson as Jason "Preacher" Rowe
Wendle Josepher as Patty Haynes
Lois Smith as Aunt Meg Greene
Zach Grenier as Eddie
Richard Lineback as Mr. Thornton
Rusty Schwimmer as Mrs. Thornton
Jake Busey as Mobile Lab Technician
Abraham Benrubi as Bubba, the Mobile Lab Driver

Production

Twister was produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, with financial backing from Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures. In return, Warner Bros. was given the North American distribution rights while Universal's joint venture distribution company UIP got the international distribution. The original concept and 10-page tornado-chaser story were presented to Amblin Entertainment in 1992 by screenwriter Jeffrey Hilton. Steven Spielberg then presented the concept to writer Michael Crichton. Crichton and his wife, Anne-Marie Martin, were paid a reported $2.5 million to write the screenplay.

After spending more than half a year of pre-production on Godzilla, director Jan De Bont left the project after a dispute over its budget, and quickly signed on for Twister.

The production was plagued with problems. Joss Whedon was brought in to do rewrites through the early spring of 1995. When he got bronchitis, Steve Zaillian was brought in. Whedon returned and worked on revisions right through the start of shooting in May 1995, then left the project after getting married. Two weeks into production, Jeff Nathanson was flown in to the set and worked on the script until principal photography ended.

Halfway through filming, both Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were temporarily blinded by bright electronic lamps used to make the sky behind the two actors look dark and stormy. Paxton remembers that "these things literally sunburned our eyeballs. I got back to my room, I couldn't see". To solve the problem, a Plexiglas filter was placed in front of the beams. The actors took eye drops and wore special glasses for a few days to recuperate. After filming in a particularly unsanitary ditch, Hunt and Paxton needed hepatitis shots. During the same sequence, Hunt repeatedly hit her head on a low wooden bridge, so exhausted from the demanding shoot that she forgot not to stand up so quickly. During one stunt in which Hunt opened the door of a vehicle speeding through a cornfield, she momentarily let go of the door and it struck her on the side of the head. Some sources claim she received a concussion in the incident. De Bont said, "I love Helen to death, but you know, she can be also a little bit clumsy." She responded, "Clumsy? The guy burned my retinas, but I'm clumsy ... I thought I was a good sport. I don't know ultimately if Jan chalks me up as that or not, but one would hope so".

Some crew members, feeling De Bont was "out of control", left the shoot five weeks into filming. The camera crew led by Don Burgess claimed De Bont "didn't know what he wanted till he saw it. He would shoot one direction, with all the equipment behind the view of the camera, and then he'd want to shoot in the other direction right away and we'd have to move [everything] and he'd get angry that we took too long ... and it was always everybody else's fault, never his". De Bont claims that they had to schedule at least three scenes every day because the weather changed so often, and "Don had trouble adjusting to that". When De Bont knocked over a camera assistant who missed a cue, Burgess and his crew walked off the set, much to the shock of the cast. They remained one more week until Jack N. Green's crew agreed to replace them. Two days before the end of filming, Green was injured when a hydraulic house set, designed to collapse on cue, was mistakenly activated with him inside it. A rigged ceiling hit him in the head and injured his back, requiring him to be hospitalized. De Bont took over as his own director of photography for the remaining shots.

Because overcast skies were not always available, De Bont had to shoot many of the film's tornado-chasing scenes in bright sunlight, requiring Industrial Light & Magic to more than double its original plan for 150 "digital sky-replacement" shots. Principal photography was originally given a deadline to allow Hunt to return to appear in another season of Mad About You, but when shooting ran over schedule, series creator and actor Paul Reiser agreed to delay the show's production for two-and-a-half weeks so Twister could finish. De Bont insisted on using multiple cameras, which led to the exposure of 1.3 million feet of film, compared to the usual maximum of 300,000 feet.

De Bont claims that Twister cost close to $70 million, with $2-3 million going to the director. It was speculated that last-minute re-shoots in March and April 1996 (to clarify a scene about Jo as a child) and overtime requirements in post-production and at ILM, raised the budget to $90 million. Warner Bros. moved up the film's release date from May 17 to 10, to give it two weekends before Mission: Impossible opened.

Twister is known for its successful product placement, featuring a Dodge Ram pickup truck and several other new vehicle models.

Prints of Twister came with a note from De Bont, suggesting that exhibitors play the film at a higher volume than normal for full effect.

Soundtrack

Twister featured both a traditional orchestral film score by Mark Mancina and several rock music songs, including an instrumental theme song composed and performed for the film by Van Halen. The film's music was released on compact disc.

Twister: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack

Van Halen - "Humans Being"
Rusted Root - "Virtual Reality"
Tori Amos - "Talula" (BT's Tornado Mix)
Alison Krauss - "Moments Like This"
Mark Knopfler - "Darling Pretty"
Soul Asylum - "Miss This"
Belly - "Broken"
k.d. lang - "Love Affair"
Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories - "How"
Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Melancholy Mechanics"
Goo Goo Dolls - "Long Way Down" (Remix)
Shania Twain - "No One Needs to Know"
Element Ethan & 666 - "Downward Spiral" (Remix)
Stevie Nicks & Lindsey Buckingham - "Twisted"
Edward & Alex Van Halen - "Respect the Wind"

There is also some other music, such as Deep Purple's "Child in Time" (heard when the team takes the road at the beginning and the assistant maxes the volume in his truck).

The song queued up on a TV in Dusty's van is Eric Clapton's "Motherless Child".

Twister: Motion Picture Score

Oklahoma: Wheatfield
Oklahoma: Where's My Truck?
Oklahoma: Futility
Oklahoma: Downdraft
It's Coming: Drive In
It's Coming: The Big Suck
The Hunt: Going Green (feat. Trevor Rabin on guitar)
The Hunt: Sculptures
The Hunt: Cow
The Hunt: Ditch
The Damage: Wakita
Hailstorm Hill: Bob's Road
Hailstorm Hill: We're Almost There
F5: Dorothy IV
F5: Mobile Home
F5: God's Finger
Other: William Tell Overture/Oklahoma Medley
Other: End Title/Respect the Wind - written by Edward and Alex Van Halen

There are some orchestrated tracks that were in the movie but were not released on the orchestral score, most notably the orchestrated intro to "Humans Being" from when Jo's team left Wakita to chase the Hailstorm Hill tornado. Other, lesser-known tracks omitted include an extended version of "Going Green" (when we first meet Jonas) and a short track from when the first tornado is initially spotted.

Twister: Expanded Archival Collection

In January 2017, La-La Land Records released a limited edition remastered and expanded album containing Mark Mancina's entire score plus four additional tracks.

Wheatfield (Film Version)
The Hunt Begins
The Sky
Dorothy IV (Film Version)
The First Twister
In the Ditch / Where's My Truck?
Waterspouts
Cow
Walk in the Woods
Bob's Road
Hail No!
Futility (Film Version)
Drive-in Twister
Wakita (Film Version)
Sculptures (Film Version)
House Visit
The Big Suck (Film Version)
End Title
Wheatfield (Alternate)
Waterspouts (Alternate)
The Big Suck (Alternate)
End Title / Respect the Wind

Reception

Critical response

The film holds a 57% score at Rotten Tomatoes based on 54 reviews. The critical consensus states "A high-concept blockbuster that emphasizes special effects over three-dimensional characters, Twister's visceral thrills are often offset by the film's generic plot." , it held a score of 68 at Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "You want loud, dumb, skillful, escapist entertainment? Twister works. You want to think? Think twice about seeing it". In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "Somehow Twister stays as uptempo and exuberant as a roller-coaster ride, neatly avoiding the idea of real danger". Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B" rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, "Yet the images that linger longest in my memory are those of windswept livestock. And that, in a teacup, sums up everything that's right, and wrong, about this appealingly noisy but ultimately flyaway first blockbuster of summer". In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, "But the ringmaster of this circus, the man without whom nothing would be possible, is director De Bont, who now must be considered Hollywood's top action specialist. An expert in making audiences squirm and twist, at making us feel the rush of experience right along with the actors, De Bont choreographs action and suspense so beautifully he makes it seem like a snap." Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "when action is never shown to have deadly or pitiable consequences, it tends toward abstraction. Pretty soon you're not tornado watching, you're special-effects watching". In his review for the Washington Post Desson Howe wrote, "it's a triumph of technology over storytelling and the actors' craft. Characters exist merely to tell a couple of jokes, cower in fear of downdrafts and otherwise kill time between tornadoes".

Box office

The film opened on May 10, 1996 and earned $41,059,405 from 2,414 total theaters, making it the number-one movie at the North American box office. It went on to earn a total of $241,721,524 at the North American box office. As of November 2012, it has earned a worldwide total of $494,471,524. It currently sits at number 76 on the all-time North American box office charts. Worldwide it sits at number 105 on the all-time earners list, not adjusted for inflation. It was the second-highest-grossing film of 1996 after Independence Day. It became Warner Bros.' most successful film at that time

Awards

Association	Category	Recipient
20/20 Awards	Best Sound Design	Steve Maslow Gregg Landaker Kevin O'Connell Geoffrey Patterson
20/20 Awards	Best Visual Effects	Stefen Fangmeier John Frazier Henry LaBounta Habib Zargarpour
Academy Awards	Best Sound Mixing	Steve Maslow Gregg Landaker Kevin O'Connell Geoffrey Patterson
Academy Awards	Best Visual Effects	Stefen Fangmeier John Frazier Henry LaBounta Habib Zargarpour
Award Circuit Community Awards	Best Sound	Steve Maslow Gregg Landaker Kevin O'Connell Geoffrey Patterson
Award Circuit Community Awards	Best Visual Effects	Stefen Fangmeier John Frazier Henry LaBounta Habib Zargarpour
BAFTA Awards	Best Special Visual Effects
Blockbuster Entertainment Awards	Favorite Actress - Action/Adventure	Helen Hunt
BMI Film & TV Awards	BMI Film Music Award	Mark Mancina
Cinema Audio Society Award	Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Feature Films	Steve Maslow Gregg Landaker Kevin O'Connell Geoffrey Patterson
Golden Raspberry Awards	Worst Written Film Grossing Over $100-Million	Michael Crichton & Anne-Marie Martin
Golden Raspberry Awards	Worst Supporting Actress	Jami Gertz
Golden Screen Awards
MTV Movie + TV Awards	Best Female Performance	Helen Hunt
MTV Movie + TV Awards	Best Action Sequence	For the truck driving through farm equipment
Nickelodeon Kid's Choice Awards	Favorite Movie
Online Film & Television Association Awards	Best Sound Mixing	Steve Maslow Gregg Landaker Kevin O'Connell Geoffrey Patterson
	Best Sound Effects Editing	Stephen Hunter Flick
	Best Visual Effects	Stefen Fangmeier John Frazier Henry LaBounta Habib Zargarpour
	Best Film Editing	Michael Kahn
Satellite Awards	Best Visual Effects	Stefen Fangmeier
Saturn Awards	Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film
	Best Actress	Helen Hunt
	Best Actor	Bill Paxton
	Best Special Effects	Stefen Fangmeier John Frazier Henry LaBounta Habib Zargarpour
The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards	Worst Picture
The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards	Worst Supporting Actress	Jami Gertz

Legacy

On May 24, 1996, a tornado destroyed Screen No. 3 at the Can-View Drive-In, a drive-in theater in Thorold, Ontario, which was scheduled to show the movie Twister later that evening, in a real-life parallel to a scene in the film in which a tornado destroys a drive-in during a showing of the film The Shining. The facts of this incident were exaggerated into an urban legend that the theater was actually playing Twister during the tornado.

On May 10, 2010, a tornado struck Fairfax, Oklahoma, destroying the farmhouse where numerous scenes in Twister were shot. J. Berry Harrison, the owner of the home and a former Oklahoma state senator, commented that the tornado appeared eerily similar to the fictitious one in the film. He had lived in the home since 1978.

Bill Paxton would later narrate storm chaser Sean Casey's 2011 documentary Tornado Alley. After the death of Paxton in February 2017, hundreds of storm chasers and users of the Spotter Network used their markers to spell out his initials across the states of Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma in tribute to the actor.

In other media

Pinball

Template:Main article On April 3, 1996, Sega Pinball released Twister, a pinball machine themed to the same name of the film. It features modes including Canister Multiball, Chase Multiball and more.

Theme park

Template:Main article The film was used as the basis for the attraction Twister...Ride It Out at Universal Studios Florida, which features filmed introductions by Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt. The attraction opened on May 4, 1998 and closed on November 2, 2015 to make way for Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Book tie-in

Crichton & his wife in 1996 Anne Marie Martin's original screenplay was released as a mass-market paperback in conjunction with the film.