In the marketing of Jan de Bont’s 1996 film twister, There was absolutely no question: The star of the film was not Helen Hunt or Bill Paxton, who play two storm chasers chasing one last tornado before finalizing their divorce. The star of the film was the damn tornado.
Sold as a special effects spectacle that caused such a stir that it formed the basis for an attraction in a theme park, Twisters combines CG tornadoes and disaster movie effects so well that the visual effects are still impressive today. (Viewers can see this thanks to a new 4K Blu-ray release of the blockbuster.) To commemorate the film’s re-release, director Jan de Bont spoke to Polygon about the film’s still-remarkable mix of digital and practical effects, and how he wanted his actors to stop acting and just feel how terrifying the storms are.
Polygon: When Twisters When the film came out, the computer-generated tornadoes were a big part of the advertising. But when I watch it now, I’m amazed at how practical the effects are. They throw so many physical objects at Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt!
Jan de Bont: My favorite memory was when the actors were confronted with a fake storm – with this huge amount of wind machines and jet engines and all this debris coming right at them. Suddenly it’s not acting anymore. Now they actually have to react to real things coming at them. That was so funny, of course – the very first thing actors complain about is: My hair is wrong, look at my hair! Or, My shirt is torn! It was so hard to convince her.
That’s exactly how it should be! That’s how it would be in real life. It was really hard to convince the actors not to worry about their hair and costume, because if it looked bad, I took it out. I just did another take. But for them, it was kind of weird. Because [without] Hair and make-up, they lose a bit of their identity. That was exactly the goal, of course.
Are there things you think directors should use to make digital effects look more realistic?
At the moment, technology has improved so much – I’m sure you can make them look better and more realistic now. But that’s not so much the point. The thing is, for me, effects themselves are soulless. It’s hard to make a connection with [them]It is Really It’s hard for actors to connect. How can they respond to something so big when they have no idea of the scale?
I really wanted to make sure that all the actors really felt what that was like, and that they all had to be in these huge wind machines and muddy fields and be constantly hit by this stuff. So they could get a sense of what it really means to be a storm chaser and also feel the danger that tornadoes pose. And I don’t think you can do that with just visual effects. I think the practicality of it brings the actors back to reality.
Do you think people have forgotten that this film is a whole His girl for everything-Style premise that involves this couple realizing they don’t want a divorce?
The way the whole project started [Jurassic Park author] Michael Crichton saw a PBS documentary about storm chasers, and he and [Crichton’s spouse and co-screenwriter] Anne Marie Martin found it exciting – and he said: “But what then?” Then he thought: If I follow the plot of His girl for special occasionswhere basically a few [are] on the way to divorce, but they still have one thing to do together – this would fit perfectly. And I’m glad he did that because it was a perfect opportunity [Paxton and Hunt’s characters] together, then separate, then combine and separate [again]. I thought that was a really good idea.
