The Cycle of Twister

 “Dennis Quaid wasn’t even IN Twister….but he knows I don’t know that.”

-Ray Smuckles

When the Question is put to you, you will realize that it (a version of it) has been asked of every generation that has coexisted with film. This, the question’s persistence, is the truth, the reveal-- both the specific text of the Question (which must change), and even the Answer (which will always be the same) are completely unimportant. 

My generation has now been asked the Question: is Hollywood so out of ideas that another version of fucking Twister(FUCKING TWISTER!!!) is all They could come up with?

The Answer is They are not, but, They decided to make another fucking Twister anyway. This has always been true. Making a new movie is always a bigger pain in the ass, and a bigger exposure to risk, than making the same fucking movie over and over again.

To the Last Man is a pre-code Western that raises questions about just how bad and inept it is possible to be in 90 odd minutes of screen time. Some movies are bad because there wasn’t really anything to work with, a stupid story performed by bad actors (films like, off the top of my head, fucking Twister) but this is not To the Last Man. The story is Romeo and Juliet; the leads are Randolph Scott and Esther Rolston-- who turns in an absolutely spectacular performance that simply radiates through the garbage. (she then promptly got kicked out of Hollywood because she didn’t want to sleep with someone) Rollston is so good that when she is on the screen, it they can’t actually fuck up: it’s good no matter how hard they try. But they really try-- the pacing, the shot selection, and how the story unfolds are all so wooden and terrible that the film is barely possible to watch. It’s not possible to be that bad anymore because watching fifteen minutes of television commercials points to a more competent approach to visual story telling than was used in To The Last Man.

To the Last Man was a REMAKE. They were already remaking movies, before They had even figured out HOW TO MAKE MOVIES. 

No one thought To the Last Man wasn’t the best idea they could come up with-- they thought it was the cheapest, because they had already done some of the work, and it would remind people of a movie they had already gone to see, providing it with a theoretical leg up on something no one had heard of. 

This is the government bond approach to film making. No one thinks another Twister will be a good idea; no one thought the first Twister was a good idea. They think people will go to see Twister because they can’t agree on anything else, and it will persist because it can kill two hours of anyone’s life, at any time, with no intellectual or artistic consequence. It will survive in moments of depression, of awkwardness, on airplanes, on cable channels where they need something that takes some time and won’t bother anyone. 

If it wasn’t obvious, this is personal: I saw fucking Twister in a movie theater because either our parents or the theater personal wouldn’t let me and my friend see the R rated movie that we wanted to. [I would like to say that this was the post-apocalyptic Pamala Anderson vehicle Barbwire-- recently re-released by the Criterion collection**-- but it was probably something with Schwarzenager]

The natural-disaster-as-bad-guy genre sticks around because who can root for the natural disaster? 

I can, you sons of bitches, because you went and re-made fucking Twister! I hope you die in a goddamn tornado! I hope I die in a tornado. I hope all the innocent children, nuns, cripples and humanitarians get blown into oblivion, swallowed by earthquakes, crushed by boulders, or suffer death-by-lava. 

Because the only remaining option is living in a world where the best idea for what to do with a multi-million dollar film budget is remake FUCKING TWISTER. To hell with that: I’ll take the actual tornado. 

** Admittedly, the Criterion Collections was examining candidates for the worst movie ever made. But I maintain, very seriously, that a film that poses any question-- even if the question is ‘is this the WORST MOVIE EVER’ ?-- is a better use of your time than watching fucking Twister, even if, by many metrics fucking Twister actually a ‘better’ movie. Garbage raises questions about why it is garbage, and what it says about us that we sat through it anyway. Twister simply exists, it asks NOTHING. Special effects, ‘human’ ‘interest,’ Special Effects! THE END-- now go do something that makes money for a different corporation.