Even though everyone in the movie theater knew it was coming, when the tornado hit we felt it all over our bodies. We braced ourselves against the vibrations as our seats began to shake, but we knew things were serious as pieces of the ceiling began to fall and someone shouted, “This room is not made for this kind of weather!” Suddenly the screen itself was completely torn apart by the terrible forces of nature, and with stunned eyes we saw the people swept into the whirling maelstrom, never to be seen again.
Lucky, then, that at the time I was in the (relative) safety of the 4DX theater inside London’s Cineworld Leicester Square watching the recently released film Twisters in which a tornado tears through a movie theater. Seeing and experiencing it delivers a well-crafted game-within-a-game moment that for me seals the deal for 4DX, going from a silly but fun gimmick to an amazing way to watch a movie – if only if it’s the right movie .
If you don’t know, 4DX turns watching movies into a theme park-like experience, with sensory effects happening in sync with the action on screen. The seats move and sway, the wind whips at your neck, you feel bumps on your back and flashes of lightning appear from the sides of the screen. There are smells, smokes and even water sprays, which on a wet night I quite appreciated. I noticed that this effect could be turned off via a button on the seat armrest. But why do that? As our heroes jumped out of their cars to escape the rushing sound and fury, the splash of water made me feel the danger – a little more.
Twisters in 4DX will… trick you. (Geddit? Oh yeah, I went there…)
A technology originating in South Korea and, at the time of writing, on 35 Cineworld screens in the UK and up to 800 worldwide, 4DX custodians must have been thanking the gods when they realized that Twisters was spinning towards them in the schedules. On the subject of extreme weather, there couldn’t be a more perfect movie for the 4DX treatment than Twisters, the “standalone” sequel to the 1996 Twister movie, which I have to admit I’ve never seen.
Now I’ve seen a lot of movies in 4DX, with mixed results. Way back in 2015, the first one Ant man The movie was my first encounter with her, and I enjoyed it: I remember feeling like I was pulled out of a bathroom hole with our youngest superhero. Rogue One 2016 didn’t work out so well for me, but Jumaji: The Next Levelit was great: Fast and Furious 9 it was a terrible film that made me cross, with a student spending the entire time on his phone, even though he has paid for a 4DX experience. Maybe he was the wise one.
Twisters in 4DX, however, was something else. The show was packed, which is saying something when each ticket is in the £20/$25 range. They probably have to charge that much to make up for the reduced popcorn sales, since once the movie starts and the seats start leaving, anyone who takes a full bucket to a 4DX screening will wipe most of it off the floor.
The film, especially in this format was definitely a crowd pleaser. The opening salvo was so intense that there was a ripple of nervous laughter when it landed, while much of the film was accompanied by screams and gasps from the audience – even during the quiet parts. This was probably due to the effect on relatively young audiences of the chemistry between Daisy Edgar Jones’s somewhat over-charming meteorologist/Twister-chaser Kate and amateur storm-chaser Tyler, played by compulsive chaser Glen Powell. I think they needed the water spray to calm them down.
As someone who usually champions the pursuit of ultimate sound and picture, it has to be said that the digital picture was noticeably soft, the sound was front-heavy, and the screen itself seemed to have some texture or scratches that affected the picture that could be seen in shots of the sky – of which there were quite a few. However, we all enjoyed being thrown around for it to matter.
OK, 4DX is not for purists or filmmakers. It’s unabashedly designed to be fun – and when the film and the motors on the seats match as they do with Twisters, you’d be hard pressed not to let a smile cross your face.
That seems a shame then Twisters it will lose its place in 4DX after just one week from the juggernaut ie Deadpool vs Wolverine and while I’m sure it will have its charm in 4DX it is Twisters which deserves to have the longest duration in the format. Just as the BFI is putting the Nolan films back on film in IMAX to meet the demand for IMAX 15/70, I hope Cineworld has sense and lets Twisters spin again in 4DX so more people can experience the silly but fun, visceral of. insanity.
