Here’s Our 1996 Review of Twister From the Archives

Twisters hurtled out of the gate like gangbusters, emerging from its first weekend in theaters with $81.5 million in the bank and the title of Best Box-Office Breakout for a Disaster Movie (albeit in the not-adjusted-for-inflation division).

As you're no doubt aware, Lee Isaac Chung's 2024 summer smash is a standalone sequel to the 1996 early summer blockbuster Twister, which was no slouch at the box office either. Twister — which was helmed by the contemporaneously formidable trio of Steven Spielberg, Michael Crichton, and Jan De Bont, and which starred Helen Hunt and the late Bill Paxton — pocketed $41 million in its first weekend.

That comes out to $82 million in today's legal tender. Take that, Twisters.

Odious as they may be, comparisons are the order of the day where sequels are concerned, be they standalone or joined at the hip. So let the record show that Twisters currently holds a 77 percent critics score coupled with a 92 percent audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while RT aggregates Twister at 66 percent (critics) and 58 percent (audience).


In retrospect, Twister's less-than-gleaming reputation has been progressively burnished to a mirrorlike finish. A July 20 morning newsletter from the New York Times' Melissa Kirsch provides a representative sample.

But back in 1996, when New Times staff writer/film critic Todd Anthony screened Twister. he didn't find a whole lot to like about the movie. And you might note that his review below fails to single out what's now considered a star turn by Philip Seymour Hoffman as carefree storm chaser Dusty Davies.

Melissa Kirsch all but led with Phil, and a Variety list of Hoffman's best performances published in 2022 tabbed Twister at number 14.
Yet back in '96, no one appears to have noticed him at all. Not Janet Maslin (New York Times). Not Mike Clark (USA Today). Not Kenneth Turan (Los Angeles Times). Not even Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times).

It Blows

Todd Anthony's Twister review
(Miami New Times, May 16–22, 1996)

In the summer of 1993, director Steven Spielberg and author Michael Crichton collaborated on the highest-grossing movie of all time a distinction formerly held by Spielberg's own E.T.), excavating dinosaur-size box-office returns with Jurassic Park. The movie suffered from a contrived plot and paper-thin characters, but all was forgiven once the first majestic dinosaur appeared on the screen. The following summer former cinematographer Jan De Bont hauled in busloads of cash with his directorial debut, Speed. The movie suffered from a contrived plot and paper-thin characters, but all was forgiven as long as De Bont kept the adrenaline pumping. Now, the three of them have teamed up to make Twister (Crichton as coauthor, Spielberg as executive producer, De Bont as director), the first of this summer's crop of potential blockbusters to touch down at area theaters.

Expectations run high for the film to unleash a maelstrom of dollars. Unfortunately for Twister's backers, this tame little puff of celluloid wind does no serious damage. Surprise, surprise: The movie suffers from a contrived plot and paper-thin characters, and its makers no doubt hope that all will be forgiven once Industrial Light and Magic's first computer-generated whirlwind spirals into view. But this time, the formula fizzles out.
Simply put, nothing in this movie approaches the awe-inspiring visual impact of Jurassic Park's lifelike dino stars, nor does De Bont generate the kind of vertiginous thrills that came at you in bursts during Speed.

The plot could have been cloned from Jurassic Park's DNA: A team of scientists led by one macho expert (Sam Neill in JP, Bill Paxton playing a storm-chaser turned TV weatherman named Bill here) risk their lives to study a larger-than-life natural phenomenon. A romantic entanglement linking said buck researcher with a feisty blond lady scientist (Helen Hunt taking the reins from Laura Dern) complicates matters. Technical jargon, lots of shots of computer models at a central command center, and dashes of forced comic relief complete the mix.

Just as Sandra Bullock gave Speed a welcome boost, so too did Helen Hunt's smirking presence as Bill's estranged but still smoldering wife Jo, adding a grace note to the by-the-numbers script written by Crichton and his wife, erstwhile actress Anne-Marie Martin. Martin spent three years as a cast member on the TV serial Days of Our Lives; her soap opera background informs this film's perfunctory yet melodramatic romantic triangle pitting Jo against Bill's new love Melissa (Jami Gertz), a wide-eyed, overdressed, cell-phone-toting "relationship therapist." Gertz's role is the film's most thankless; Melissa accompanies Bill to his old stomping ground while he tries to persuade Jo to sign their divorce papers. The displaced Melissa has nothing to do but hang around the periphery until Paxton's tornado chaser realizes that he still loves kindred spirit Jo. Luckily, the twisters prove more difficult to predict than the outcome of this trite threesome's romantic bobbing and weaving.
Additionally, Crichton's tone-deafness for dialogue and his time-tested willingness to embrace clichés merely exacerbate Martin's sudsy tendencies. Bill's nickname, from the good old days before he met Melissa and mellowed out, was Extreme. Why? "Because Bill's the most extreme SOB in the game!" chortles one of Bill's colleagues. Duh. The movie is full of scintillating wordplay like that. Crichton reserves his characters' most insipid remarks for their descriptions of Bill's legendary twister-tracking prowess, presumably because we see so little of it actually demonstrated. Through such exchanges, we learn that Bill "actually knows what a storm is thinkin'!"
Jonas, a corporate-sponsored rival storm chaser played by Cary Elwes, appears on the scene to challenge Bill's authority. We know he's the bad guy because his team tools about in sleek, modern, black vehicles while Bill's ragtag crew drives a brightly colored assortment of run-down jerry-rigged cars, vans, and pickups. In case you still don't get the point, one of Bill's mates steps up to spell the situation out: "He (Jonas) has got a lot of high-tech gadgets, but he doesn't have the instincts." Funny, he could be describing the filmmakers.

But you expect bad dialogue, an imbecilic narrative, obvious good guy/bad guy conflict, and cursory characterization from Crichton. What is unforgivable is Twister's absence of inspired, heart-stopping moments. Until its final man-versus-nature confrontation, the movie boasts neither Jurassic Park's breathtaking effects nor Speed's escalating watch-me-top-that-one rush. Prior to the impressive finale, director De Bont focuses less on the twisters than on their fallout: cows, trees, a tanker truck, and even a house rain down from the sky. (Guided by the same deity who watches over all action pictures and ensures that bad guys' bullets always miss while good guys with a one-in-a-million shot are guaranteed to hit their target, none of the deadly debris actually strikes any of this film's heroes, no matter how close or vulnerably exposed to a twister they find themselves.)

Gale-force winds of hype swirl about this blustery Spielberg-Crichton-De Bont offering. Don't get sucked into their vortex. Twister huffs and puffs, but it never blows the house down.

Twister. Written by Michael Grichton and Anne-Marie Martin; directed by Jan De Bont; with Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Jami Gertz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Gary Elwes.