4K ULTRA HD REVIEW HDR SCREENSHOTS
Helen Hunt stars as meteorologist/storm chaser Dr. Jo Harding, from the fictional Muskogee State College in Oklahoma. Her estranged husband Bill Harding, a known storm chaser and soon-to-be TV weatherman, is played by the late Bill Paxton. On occasions, the sky turns greenish-blue as a supercell storm develops.
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“TWISTER”
4K Ultra HD; 1996; PG-13 for profanity; Digital copy via Amazon Video (4K), Apple TV (4K), Fandango Home (4K), Movies Anywhere (4K), YouTube (4K)
Best extra: “The Legacy of ‘Twister’ – Taken by the Wind,” a new featurette
IT’S NO accident that Dutch director Jan de Bont’s 1996 boisterous summer blockbuster “Twister” arrived on 4K Ultra HD from Warner Bros. and Amblin Entertainment, just days before its reboot “Twisters,” starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell, hit theaters July 19.
When the DVD format was first unveiled in seven U.S. metropolitan test markets in the spring of 1997, De Bont’s “Twister” was in the first batch of movies.
I drove 300 miles roundtrip from Virginia Beach, Va., to a Best Buy in the southern suburbs of Washington D.C., to purchase three five-inch discs to play on my new Toshiba DVD player. Honestly, I considered “The Fugitive” (1993) and “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) – possibly the greatest musical of all time – the prized discs that day. While “Twister” felt more like a guilty-pleasure watching on our 50-inch rear projection TV, attached to a Dolby Surround system and five well-thought-out speaker placements, and a 12-inch subwoofer.
The previous summer, my 11-year-old son and I saw “Twister” on its opening weekend. It was a perfect popcorn flick, but that first “Twister” DVD struggled, plagued by pixel breakdown during the most intense scenes.
(1-4) In the summer of 1969, little Jo’s family farm is hit by a F5 tornado, the most powerful of them all. Alexa Vega plays six-year-old Jo Thornton, Richard Linemark plays her father, who is sucked into the tornado, and Rusty Schwimmer plays her mother.
De Bont’s career in Hollywood had many twists and turns, starting out in the Netherlands as a cinematographer and directing a short film during the 1970s. Once in the U.S., he continued behind the camera as a cinematographer with the comedy “Private Lessons” (1981), the Stephen King adaptation “Cujo” (1983), and in the same year, Tom Cruise’s second leading role in “All the Right Moves,” two months after “Risky Business.”
He also filmed the majority of Madonna’s music videos from 1985 through ‘87, including her first feature film “Who’s That Girl” (1987). He next attached himself to action director John McTiernan, providing the imagery for the highly successful “Die Hard” (1988) and “The Hunt for Red October” (1990).
In the early ‘90s, he continued as a top-tier cinematographer filming cult classics “Flatliners” (1990) and “Basic Instinct” (1992), while still confident of becoming a director himself. “Generally, it’s very difficult to move up in Hollywood,” he says in a 2000 carryover featurette. “The best way to start was to be a cinematographer.”
Then he stumbled upon the script for “Speed” (1994) convincing producer Mark Gordon (“Saving Private Ryan,” “The Day After Tomorrow”) that he was the right guy to direct the action-packed film. It starred Keanu Reeves as bomb squad expert Jack Traven, and Sandra Bullock in her breakout role as bus commuter Annie. It finished as the No. 7 domestic box office film of 1994.
(1-3) Bill Harding and his fiancée Dr. Melissa Reeves, played by Jami Gertz. The couple plans to marry, but need Jo to sign divorce papers first. Melissa meets the wild Dusty Davis, played by then-newcomer Philip Seymour Hoffman. (4&5) Dr. Harding and her team of storm chasers race off to a possible tornado. Left, Dr. Jonas Miller “The Nightcrawler” played by English actor Cary Elwes, and his team of chasers have corporate sponsors.
Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment had attached itself to a possible hyper-kinetic thriller about tornadoes and a gang of storm chasers written by Michael Crichton (“Jurassic Park”) and his wife Anne-Marie Martin. Their script was inspired by a PBS documentary on chasers and the 1940 screwball comedy “His Girl Friday.”
De Bont became Spielberg’s choice after James Cameron, John Badham, and Robert Zemeckis turned it down. The challenge the sophomore director and Spielberg faced was, “To make a movie in the middle of nowhere [rural Oklahoma], outside, with technology that didn’t exist,” the director says during the new featurette.
George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic was recruited to develop new software to create the cyclone, hoping to recreate the success ILM had with Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park.” Months later, they provided a screen test with studio executives and, “They [Warner] loved it,” De Bont says. The effects received an Oscar nomination, but lost to the sci-fi blockbuster “Independence Day,” which topped the 1996 box office, with “Twister” finishing at No. 2 grossing nearly $500 million.
(1) The sky is "goin' green,” while Bill looks toward the stormy skies. (2&3) Bill and Jo team up in her Jeep transporting “Dorothy,” the device he designed, which houses hundreds of lightweight sensors they hope will provide research to create an earlier tornado warning system. (4) Jo’s Jeep is stuck in a ditch as a tornado spins the vehicle several hundred feet down the road. (5) Bill comforts Melissa after his near-death encounter with an F2. (6) Bill and Jo use his new Dodge Ram to carry “Dorothy” as they spot tornado “Sisters” spinning off a reservoir.
The opening sequence with young Jo Harding and her family racing for shelter is De Bont’s tribute to the “Wizard of Oz.” “The hero wasn’t an actor. The hero was the tornado,” he says.
“I didn’t want to give everything away,” he says during the carryover commentary recorded in 2000 for the remastered DVD. “Just wanted the audience to feel it, to hear it and to be pulled into the drama without seeing the tornado.”
The much-quoted dialogue between Hunt as scientist Dr. Jo Harding and Bill Paxton playing her estranged husband Bill Harding, and the rest of the ragtag team of storm chasers keeps us linked as the special effects soar across the screen. The ensemble cast included Cary Elwes, Jamie Gertz, Alan Ruck, Todd Field, and then-newcomer Philip Seymour Hoffman as rocker Dusty Davis.
The late Paxton, of Fort Worth, Texas, knew a lot about tornadoes since he grew up in its ‘Tornado Alley.’ For the role of Jo Harding, De Bont wanted a “very strong female talent.” The casting directors provided hundreds of actors, he said. But he focused on Hunt.
(1&2) Left, Robert ‘Rabbit’ Nurick (Alan Ruck), Dusty Davis (Hoffman), and Allan Sanders (Sean Whalen) need a meal, and there’s no better place than Jo’s Aunt Meg’s (Louis Smith) kitchen in the town of Wakita. (3) Jo tries to unload Dorothy in the path of another tornado. (4) Bill says, “Killing yourself won’t bring your dad back.” (5) Jo’s team races toward the next supercell.
EXTRAS
All of the bonus features are on the 4K disc and digital, along with the new 15-minute featurette “The Legacy of ‘Twister’ – Taken by the Wind.” It features a new interview with De Bont, intercut with archival behind-the-scenes footage. He remembers when Spielberg asked if he was interested in directing “Twister.” “What are you saying?” he asked Spielberg.
The rest of the extras are carried over from the previous edition including commentary from De Bont and visual effects supervisor Sefen Fangmeier; the 28-minute “Chasing the Strom” 2000 featurette with cast and crew interviews; HBO’s First Look featurette, “Anatomy of a Tornado,” and Van Halen’s music video.
VIDEO
Warner went back to the original 35mm camera negative (2.39:1 aspect ratio) captured on Panavision lens, and the first-generation CGI footage (1280x1024 resolution). It was transferred to 35mm film, and all elements were scanned in 4K. Natural film grain is evident throughout providing outstanding clarity – especially in footage without the effects. Obviously, the effects are of lesser quality, and looks softest during the closing credits, with three layers of imagery (helicopter aerial, CGI tornado-scarred landscape, and the scrolling credits).
“This new 4K, I think it is equally good as in the theater [originally], and maybe even a little bit better. I’m so happy with it. It’s exactly what I wanted it to be,” De Bont says. The HDR10 color grading is superb, plus Dolby Vision on digital platforms, adding a new richness, plus advanced color toning gives the sky a more greenish tint as the tornado approaches, mimicking the reality of the massive cloud formations found in Texas and Oklahoma.
Strangely, Warner only encoded the video and audio onto the smaller 66 Gigabit disc, which means the video bitrate varies wildly from 25 Megabits per second to over 100 Mbps. HDR10 peak brightness hits 995 nits and averages 693 nits.
AUDIO
Warner has also upgraded the Oscar-nominated Sound to Dolby Atmos and TrueHD 7.1 for a top-notch enveloping experience. The bass response is so strong we can feel the sound waves during the most intense tornado scenes.
Background radio tunes include “Humans Being” by Van Halen, “Talula” by Tori Amos, “Motherless Child” by Eric Clapton, “Twisted” by Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, “Darling Pretty” by Mark Knopfler, “How” by Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories, “Long Way Down” by The Goo Goo Dolls and “Respect the Wind” by Eddie and Alex Van Halen.
The “Twister” production had its difficulties. “At the time, so miserable and cold and wet,” De Bont says. But his final on-screen results remain a full-speed joyride – especially in 4K Ultra HD.
— Bill Kelley III, High-Def Watch producer
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