The 1990s was the decade of the disaster movie. Natural disasters must have had some pretty good agents back then, because they were all getting their own movies. Volcanoes got two of them – “Volcano” and “Dante’s Peak.” Even rain got in on the action with Christian Slater’s “Hard Rain,” about as dumb a title as any could imagine.
Of course one of the big ones was 1996’s “Twister,” which comes out Tuesday in a two-disc special edition DVD. Yes, I’m giggling too. Seriously, does anyone even watch these movies anymore? It’s a cold hard fact that the majority of movies do not age well, but disaster movies tend to have an even shorter shelf life than most. The problem is that most of their entertainment value lies in the special effects, which in 1996 were just not that special compared to technology we have today.
Therefore the site of a flying cow caught in a twister does not pack the same kind of punch today as it might have 12 years ago. And it’s not like people will be buying this special edition DVD to revisit the romantic chemistry of Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton.
Pretty much all the disaster movies from the 90s have disappeared from society’s collective memory, and we’re all ok for it. I’m sure some people might find some sentimental value in revisiting “Twister”, much in the same way an adult finds sentimental value in re-watching some of the cartoons they watched when they were little and discovering they were horrible. But to expand it to a 2-disc special edition DVD complete with behind-the-scenes featurettes and all that jazz seems a bit much, no?
