Hacker Cinema
Twister
1996 · Film · 113 min
Part of Twister Collection
Directed by Jan de Bont
An unprecedented series of violent tornadoes is sweeping across Oklahoma. Tornado chasers, headed by Dr. Jo Harding, attempt to release a groundbreaking device that will allow them to track them and create a more advanced warning system. They are joined by Jo's soon to be ex-husband Bill, a former tornado chaser himself, and his girlfriend Melissa.
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17 comments on Hacker News
Maybe my single least favorite thing about modern cinema is that movies across the cost spectrum have stopped giving a shit about original soundtracks. That’s how we can have 30+ damn Marvel movies and nobody remembers anything about the original music except one run of like seven or eight notes. It’s why the ones with the most style and most-effective soundtracks just used existing friggin’ pop rock songs.
It has to do with modern very-flexible digital editing (don’t want to lock in a Final Cut early enough to allow for production of a quality score timed to the edit) and editors/directors extensively using placeholder music, editing to that exactly, then just asking for a clone of whatever lame tune that was, as I understand it. Basically, having a shitty soundtrack just lets them get done with post-production faster, and keeps them more flexible until closer to release
Middling 90s movies like Twister and The Ghost and the Darkness punch way above their weight thanks to the soundtrack. You almost never see that any more.
God, does 5.1 or better really shine on 90s surround sound movies. And occasionally newer ones, but a lot more back then.
They also hadn’t given up on original music. It’s crazy how much the soundtrack elevates otherwise-not-amazing films like Twister. I desperately wish they’d at least go back to caring about that.
Most non-American movies are slop, melodramatic vaudeville, or tear-jerking gut-punches. Most American movies are slop too, but America can afford to swing at more pitches and consequently get more hits.
Have you ever tried to watch Korean movies from the last 20 years? It's all melodramatic romance-crime-poverty slop, with the rare Kim Ki-duk or Bong Joon Ho in there to balance it out. And that's a country with a wonderful reputation for quality film-making.
I mean you get zombies on a train and that's a fun popcorn flick, but it's forgettable. It's no Tremors, Twister, or Independence Day.
In Indonesia for every The Raid there's 999 poorly acted, poorly shot melodramas with a thin well-trodden story.
And don't get me started on "let's yell at each other for 120 minutes" Russian cinema.
American movies are by far the most watchable, especially when you don't feel like going on a heart-wrenching journey of despair, which is all international cinema excels at.
Can you name a good apocalyptic movie? I'm really struggling to come up with one. Twister, sort of, and that's neither good nor apocalyptic really.
Edit: Twelve Monkeys. I think that counts.
Some have built portable setups with an Indy and an Indy presenter. I remember 25 years ago someone showing off with such a custom portable configuration, with an Indy motherboard and PSU, a keyboard and track ball and an Indy presenter crammed inside a small metal suitcase, very chic (but required external power).
Fake versions were made for the movies "Twister" and "Congo" but AFAIK these were completely fake (the actual Indy driving the screen was off camera somewhere).
I think this is the result of narrative structure falling by the wayside in lots of popular canons. You can tell a million variations of the odyssey because Odysseus is nobody. You can plop just about any set of characters into the story and it works. We still have stories like this, the Mission Impossible series is the same story told differently, the new Twister is a retelling, anyone can be James Bond. But if you want a long running series you need an interesting universe to explore (which requires rules and consistency) and/or compelling characters people want to put in situations. It's why Family Guy can do a Star Wars episode but Star Wars can't do Family Guy, it's why the Ghost Buster's retelling flopped because they thought it was a narrative story but it was actually a character story.
Wow, are the cars tornado chasers like those in the movie Twister? I'd love to read more about those, but really cool to see how all these are moving. Way more things out there then I thought.
> why […]?
Their world-view (and knowledge) of disaster response was shaped by steady diet of 90’s disaster films — Volcano, Dante’s Peak, Armageddon, Twister, etc.
This always makes me recall the trailer for the movie Twister in which a large tractor tire smashes through one of the truck's windshields - the scene wasn't actually in the movie, but I was on the edge of my seat any time they were in a truck with high winds around.
> they are (to me) surround sound as that was becoming a consumer product around when Twister came out.
No, DVD caused rapid consumer adoption specifically of Dolby Digital - which isn’t surprising since DVD was the first widely used digital movie medium in the West, but Dolby surround sound dates to 1976 in theaters and the 1982 as a consumer home video offering so nearly 20 years prior to DVDs. Most major movies throughout the 80s (thousands before Twister) were mixed in surround sound which was the mix available on the home video (ie both VHS and Laserdisc).
Here's a video tape from 1989 (look on the right side of the label): https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/G6MAAOSwgiZiWk2a/s-l1600.jpg
> In the 90s people weren’t hyping Dolby tape tech, it was already the standard.
As was Dolby surround. In fact if anything the 90s is when Dolby got some serious competition from DTS and SDDS.
So I'm still not sure what the significance of 1996 is other than a personal one. I assume if you were 2 years older you'd say 1994 (and maybe Speed)?
Twister the movie? That came out in 1996. You're off by about a decade and a half. Perhaps this is more that 1996 is around the time you were old enough to know/care about these things? Dolby Surround was always a consumer product (in movie theaters the multichannel/surround system was called Dolby Stereo and was released in 1976) and was released in 1982 as a fully analog 3 to 2 channel down-mixing encoding technique. It was commonly used on VHS and Laserdisc releases throughout the 1980s and 90s. The upgraded Dolby Pro Logic system was released a few years later -- and home receivers with this capability like the Pioneer VSX line were pretty popular sellers in late 80s/90s. By the time Twister came out, Dolby Digital 5.1 aka AC-3 (which is still in common use today) was already in consumer laserdisc releases. Rapid uptake of Dolby Digital coincided with adoption of the DVD a few years later, since Laserdiscs were always a more niche/enthusiast/yuppie product (at least outside Japan).
If you were born in the 80s, yes, Dolby and it's Double D logo was already a well established and recognizable brand on movie credit rolls and movie posters well before you were born.
https://logo-timeline.fandom.com/wiki/Dolby_Stereo
https://alchetron.com/cdn/dolby-stereo-55fcc7c8-8e9c-414b-b9ce-67add76d228-resize-750.jpeg
I wonder how much Twister, the movie, helped with there knowledge share.
I think some of the commentary / additional data said they were trying to raise awareness or something?
lol. It reminds me of the that instrument used to study tornado's in the movie Twister, except this one has people inside instead of sensors.
Might've been "smart" chaff to achieve this same thing.
Kinda like that fake tech they used in the movie Twister to map tornados.
I get a generic error for "Mansard roof" -> "Twister (1996 film)", otherwise very cool!
I wonder if this team could be a prototype for the characters in the movie Twister.
"On the other hand, things like climate science seem (to me at least) to rely much more on the argument from authority for gaining lay support."
Have you looked at any of the actual research? It sounds more like you're criticizing the very pseudo-science that the climate science community is battling.
The actual researchers are using a combination of meteorological models, telemetry (if you've seen the film "Twister" you've seen a Hollywood-ized version of an actual piece of science in their flock of birds), and empirical observational evidence (e.g. presented in "Planet Ice").
A lot of organizations that fund a lot of the climate research, including NOAA, have been going to great lengths to stifle it and obfuscate the actual message that they send out to the public.