Twister: 4K UHD Review
The 90’s were filled with natural disasters on the big screen. In 1997 we had dueling films about volcanos, and the following year two movies about Earth being hit by a major meteor duked it out at the box office. However, Jan de Bont’s 1996 tornado film, Twister is without question, the best of them all. Last week Warner Bros released Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt starring thrill-ride on 4K UHD just in time for the release of the upcoming remake hitting theaters next weekend.
Jo Harding (Hunt) has been chasing storms her whole life. When she was a little girl, her family experienced a devastating tornado which claimed the life of her father. She has been obsessed ever since. That obsession also helped cause the end of her marriage to storm chaser turned TV weatherman Bill Harding (Paxton). Bill is ready to start a new chapter in his life with his fiancé Melissa (Jami Gertz), but needs Jo to sign the divorce papers first. This brings the couple out to Oklahoma, so that they can obtain the signed divorce papers.
While Bill had no intention of staying, once Jo shows him that his tornado research invention “Dorthy” has actually been realized, he goes along for one last ride, just to see it actually work. The device is a large drum filled with hundreds of weather sensors that can map the inside of a tornado, which can potentially lead to predicting tornadoes and saving countless lives in the future. The catch, you have to be dangerously close to a tornado to deploy “Dorthy”. The movie also has a villain. Cary Elwes plays Jonas Miller, a competing storm chaser that stole Bill’s invention and plans to launch his device into the storm first.
Twister is a big, dumb summer popcorn movie that actually holds up quite will nearly three decades later. While obviously much of the CGI looks quite dated, there are plenty of sequences that still look incredible. Two of my favorites would be the tornado at the drive-in and of course driving through a house that rolled onto the road. There are a lot of familiar faces on hand as well. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck, Joey Slotnick and Sean Whalen help make up Jo’s rag-tag storm chasing team and they are fun to watch.
The new 2160p/ HDR10 presentation is such a vast improvement over the previous Blu-ray that upgrading to 4K feels more like a requirement than a suggestion for any fan of Twister. Often, when I watched a CGI filled film from the 90’s, the dated f/x were more distracting in 4K, thanks to the increase in detail and clarity. While there are some instances of that here, for the most part, everything looks better, event the major storms in the final act. The locations look incredible here. A perfect example would be when the team drive through the wreckage of Aunt Meg’s town after being destroyed by a massive tornado. The detail is striking, especially for a nighttime shot.
The biggest improvement with the new 4K release is actually the brand-new Dolby Atmos track which will blow you away. If you really want to experience the terrifying sounds of what it feels like to be in a beast of a storm, this one delivers. Living in South Florida, I have been through numerous hurricanes, and it can be scary as hell. If you have the right setup, this track could shake up your room. Aside from The Legacy of the Twister, the rest of the bonus features have been brought over from the older Blu-ray. Warner Bros. has delivered a great presentation here and this disk is definitely worth adding to your collection.
Bonus Features:
- The Legacy of Twister – Taken by the Wind (NEW)
- Chasing the Storm: Twister Revisited
- Anatomy of a Twister
- The Making of Twister
- Van Halen Music Video – Humans Being
- Commentary by director Jan de Bont and visual effects supervisor Stefen Fangmeier
By: Marc Ferman