I was just four years old when the original Twister came out, and yet I can remember the buzz around the disaster film like it was yesterday. Written by Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, and Anne-Marie Martin, the Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton-led film was the second highest-grossing film in 1996 and received Academy Award nominations for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound. It is a no-brainer that a film that made almost 500 million dollars would receive a sequel. So why did it take nearly 30 years for the aptly named Twisters to arrive in cinemas across the globe?
Directed by Lee Isaac Chung (Minari, The Mandalorian), Twisters stars current Hollywood heartthrob Glen Powell (Hit Man, Anyone But You), Daisy Edgar-Jones (Where the Crawdads Sing, Normal People), and Anthony Ramos (Hamilton, In the Heights, Transformers: Rise of the Beast). With a story from Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick, Oblivion) and a screenplay by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant, The Boys in the Boat), it hopes to capture the original’s magic, but does it?
Not only was I able to see Twisters early, but I also experienced it on ScreenX, a technological advancement in moviemaking! MJR Waterford is the first in the state of Michigan to debut this new way of storytelling, which brings audiences right into the middle of the movie with screens that wrap 270 degrees around you. While Twisters wasn’t precisely my cup of tea, it is the perfect film to experience on ScreenX, as it takes an already intense film and cranks it to an eleven. Continue for more thoughts on Twisters and the new cinematic experience that is ScreenX at MJR Waterford!
[Warning: spoilers from Twisters are below!]
Getting up, close, and personal with disasters in Twisters
Kate Carter (Edgar-Jones) once dreamed of saving the world, but that hope to do good is long gone. Thanks to a tragedy that she can’t seem to escape from, she no longer chases severe storms in hopes of stopping them. Instead, she has turned to a life of meteorology for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, sitting behind a desk and controlled by her anxiety. When a friend from her past, Javi (Ramos), asks for her help, Kate is once again thrust back into the dangerous world of storm chasing.
Thanks to military-grade technology, Javi plans to predict weather patterns better, ultimately saving lives and putting some money in his pocket. But doing so is a challenging task, as it requires placing three probes strategically around tornadoes to better study them, which also puts them all in danger. Kate’s trauma rears its ugly head, causing her to almost drop out of the job because she can’t confront the harsh realities of her past. That is, until she meets Tyler Owens (Powell), a complete wildcard.
Tyler is messy in a fun way. He’s a storm chaser on the internet that has amassed a following. He’s turned tornado wrangling into a sport, perhaps even an art, depending on who you ask. Tyler’s a spectacle on the surface, but there’s an incredible mind encased in that Greek God exterior. He recognizes that Kate’s plan to break up tornadoes is valid but needs some fine-tuning to achieve it.
Together, Kate and Tyler develop a new plan for attacking the problem, which requires finding a tornado and making war with it. Will these two achieve their goal and make it out unscathed, or will nature take them down? You’ll have to watch Twisters to find out!
High-intensity action makes Twisters the perfect ScreenX experience
Unfortunately for me, Twisters was a mixed bag when it came to its story, which was a sentiment that others who’ve seen it shared. When it’s good, it’s fantastic; those who made Twisters knew how to make intense action scenes that got your blood pumping. However, story threads trickle slower than molasses in winter between the scenes of chasing tornadoes and impending doom.
Oddly, I love romance movies and rom-coms, but the romance between Kate and Tyler brings Twisters to a grinding halt multiple times in the film. That being said, it’s not the budding romance between our two stars that is bringing audiences into the theater; it’s the tornadoes, destruction, and action, which is absolutely what this film gets right.
Thanks to ScreenX, this Twisters experience is worth watching, as the audience truly becomes a part of the film. The screens extending down the theater’s sides are active for only a portion of the film, with about 60 minutes of Twisters utilizing them. Of those scenes, the ScreenX artists and designers implement unused footage or even scenes created digitally. The idea of the side screens is not to provide images you stare at, but to activate your peripheral vision, giving the feeling of being enclosed in the scene and present in the film.
This is achieved through multiple projectors placed around the theater, which project onto the side screens, seamlessly extending the film to surround the audience. Looking at them is funky on the eyes, as they appear primarily out of focus or don’t align well with the main screen in front of you. Instead, when you’re staring straight ahead, the full effect of the screen comes alive as your peripheral vision absorbs what is happening, heightening the excitement.
During the scenes with the characters chasing down tornadoes and driving straight into the twister, it’s truly a cinematic experience. I sometimes felt goosebumps rising across my arms because I felt so enveloped in the action, vastly different from a normal theatrical such as seeing Fast X or any other action film in a typical theater.
ScreenX is worth the experience, even if this Universal film might not be
While Twisters wasn’t my favorite film from this calendar year, I am incredibly excited to enjoy other upcoming films formatted for the ScreenX, such as Deadpool and Wolverine at the end of the month and Wicked in November. There is a marked difference between seeing a film on a traditional movie screen and witnessing cinematic magic on a ScreenX.
I hope we continue to see more of these screens in MJRs across Michigan, as it would be wonderful to have this ScreenX closer to home instead of driving over an hour to see it. Currently, ScreenX (thanks to CJ 4DPLEX, who has created the technology) has over 392 ScreenX auditoriums worldwide, and this is only the beginning. If you’re like me, once you see a film on ScreenX, it’ll be hard to return to a standard screen ever again!
Twisters is currently playing in theaters! Have you seen it or experienced a ScreenX film before? Let us know on social media @mycosmiccircus what you think of ScreenX as a moviegoing experience.
Twisters Review: A Rehash That Somehow Thrills
