Its a Disaster

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It's a Disaster

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By Ben Elliott

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I’ve only walked out of a movie once. I was nine years old and, after watching Helen Hunt’s father get sucked out of a storm cellar in the opening scene of Jan De Bont’s Twister, I asked my mom if we could leave.

Twister came out on May 10th, 1996, nearly a year after a tornado had torn through Great Barrington and I spent an anxious day watching the sky turn green and listening to updates on WSBS in my grandparents’ kitchen. So when the lights went down and Twister started, it felt too real to be fun.

But let me be clear: Twister is fun. A cow flies. Philip Seymour Hoffman waxes poetic about the “Suck Zone.” And when I did eventually go back to watch again, I remember the collective gasp let out when Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt sought shelter in a barn full of sharp farming instruments. It was big and loud, and I felt a giddy relief when it was over.

Twister, 1996

Twisters, 2024

But in the lead up to its sequel Twisters, which opens at the Triplex this week, I’ve been wondering; is it still fun to watch a natural disaster movie?

In a world where climate change is fueling extreme weather at a rapid pace, the events of these movies are no longer escapist, what-if scenarios: 22 tornadoes have killed 40 people in America this year alone. Hurricanes and “super” storms are increasingly prevalent. Being sucked up into the sky or washed into the sea feels that much more plausible than it did 30 years ago.

The fun has shifted into the macabre — Twisters is as big, thrilling, and fun as its predecessor, but there’s a darker pall to the destruction. As these spectacle-filled blockbusters align with our day-to-day lives, it feels like we’re whistling past the graveyard every time the lights go down in the theater.

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