Twisters Turned Me Into a 4DX Believer (Sort Of)

Editorials /

If you’ve read Shea’s roundup of Dune: Part Two in every format, you might have gathered that we’re not the biggest proponents of the more gimmicky formats offered by theatres these days over here at Screen Love Affair. Personally, I find most of them to be unnecessary and distracting. I actively dislike gimmicks like 3D, no matter how hard James Cameron tries to sell me on it, and DBox, which I found mildly amusing but highly distracting. These gimmicks tend to have the opposite of their intended effect and break my immersion, rather than add to it. A good movie, I believe, doesn’t need any extra effects to be transportive and fun. It just needs to tell a compelling story. I’ll admit, the first and only time I’ve seen a movie in 4DX was when we saw Dune Two. The novelty of the experience was fun at first, but it quickly wore out its welcome and made me wish I had just gone to see the movie in IMAX again. It was amusing, and I didn’t regret trying it out, but I didn’t feel the need to ever try it again. Ultimately, it was just too distracting for me to really justify the cost of admission (especially when the theatre-going experience today is already so expensive, among other things). But Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters (2024) may have converted me. 4DX is the most maximalist of movie gimmicks. Here, have a little bit of everything, it says, practically turning a trip to the movie theatre into an amusement park ride. Twisters, however, is the perfect 4DX movie—it feels almost as if the 4DX experience was invented for it. I realize now how mismatched Dune: Part Two was to what 4DX promises. Yes, there’s action in Dune, but most of the 4DX tricks felt superfluous to it and didn’t add anything except an amusing distraction from what was happening on screen. But with Twisters, the 4DX effects felt perfectly suited to what was happening on screen. Every time the wind machines picked up or I felt droplets of mist on my face, while faced with the gusts of wind and rain unfolding on the screen, it felt as if the fourth wall was breaking, and I could pretend just a little bit that I was in the movie. While the strobe lights were one of my least favourite effects during Dune—flashing during sequences of artillery fire in a way that felt out of place and irritating—here, the strobes were used sparingly but to fantastic effect, flashing in time with the occasional lightning strike on screen to make me feel as if I was watching a real, live thunderstorm. The fact that there was a real, live thunderstorm happening outside the Cineplex at the time of my screening (and, in fact, a tornado touched down in nearby Perth, ON that same night) was just icing on the immersive experience cake. The opening sequence of Twisters is a particularly fun, and surprisingly brutal, way to throw us right into the action. As the devastating EF 5 tornado built up, and the storm grew more intense, and the 4DX chairs started to move and rumble, and the wind machines picked up, and drops of water started hitting my face, I couldn’t help but feel giddy. I had already seen Twisters in IMAX before seeing it in 4DX, and I felt pretty giddy then too, but mostly due to the thrill of having a fun time at the movies with a whole bunch of my friends. But at 4DX, it was the same sort of giddiness you might feel on the upward slope of a rollercoaster. When the action in that opening sequence builds up to its most intense moment, holding on Daisy Edgar Jones’s Kate as the storm gusts around her, sound building to the point of being almost unbearable, and then the wave of tension finally breaks and the sound cuts out—and all of the 4DX hustle and bustle stops with it—the entire theatre let out a collective chuckle of nervous laughter and relief. That has got to be one of my favourite movie theatre moments so far this year, because it reminded me of why I love going to the movies in the first place, of how, throughout the whole history of cinema, going to the theatre was always a communal experience. In that moment, we were all feeling the same thing at the same time. The joy and excitement at what we were collectively getting into was palpable, and I felt a little more connected to everyone in the room because of it. It sounds a little silly to say I had a profound moment of shared humanity during a big, dumb blockbuster disaster movie about people trying to tame tornadoes. But Twisters is also deceptively deep. Chung’s feature debut, Minari, was a beautifully small-scale story about a family of immigrants trying to make the American Dream a reality. Twisters, on the other hand, is big in every sense of the word, but it, too, is concerned with the ways that people come together and help one another survive. The answer lies in collective action and care. We have to take care of each other, and the only way to tame a tornado is together—with a rag-tag group of storm chasers, led by Glen Powell. I keep coming back to a sequence around the middle of the movie, in which Glen Powell’s Tyler Owens and Daisy Edgar Jones’s Kate Carter are intercut, explaining the science and mystery of tornadoes—how we don’t actually know precisely what makes them form. There’s an element of unknowability and unpredictability in these major natural phenomena that have the power to both shape and destroy our world as we know it. We can’t really know what goes on inside a tornado, and yet we keep trying to figure it out anyway. Maybe it’s cheesy, but I find that kind of beautiful. What I’m really trying to get

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We Saw Dune: Part Two in Every Format So You Don’t Have To!

Editorials /

If you’ve just woken up from a coma, you may not be aware that Dune: Part Two is currently out in theatres across the world! I’ve already published my spoiler free review here on Screen Love Affair. In that review I described Dune: Part Two as a generation-defining film the likes of which I haven’t seen since The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s a sci-fi epic that must be seen on the biggest screen and with the best sound possible, so you can be transported away to the spice fields of Arrakis and immersed in the world that director Denis Villeneuve brings to life.  After reading such overwhelming praise you’re probably already grabbing your phone right now to buy tickets. However, you’re now faced with a choice: What format should I watch this movie in?  Depending on where you live, there can be a lot of choices too. On top of a regular theatre, you also have 3D, D-Box, UltraAVX, ScreenX, 4DX, 70mm, IMAX, or some combination of those formats, and each one of them is advertised as the best way to immerse yourself in the movie.  I’ve realized that many moviegoers face the same dilemma of choosing the best format for their viewing experience, so in this article, I’ll give you a comprehensive guide to all of the non-standard formats and give you my personal recommendations! For reference, a ticket to a regular screening of Dune: Part Two is $14.00. All prices are shown in Canadian dollars and don’t include taxes or Cineplex’s predatory “online booking fee”. It does however include the extra $1 that Cineplex charges for popular movies. If you want to read more about my disappointment with Canada’s largest theatre chain over some of these practices, check out that article here. The Formats Ranked #6 – D-Box: $22.00 D-Box is a normal theatre in terms of screen and sound, but some rows in the theatre are special D-Box seats that move and vibrate. These seats can vary in size and looks depending on your theatre, but in Montreal they were just slightly comfier standard seats. Each seat has a settings pad where you can lower or raise the intensity of the experience. The movement isn’t significant even at the highest setting and just more or less can tilt the seat up, down, forward, backwards, and side to side. The movement and vibrations are set for each movie to try and match what’s happening on screen to offer a more “immersive” experience.  Given that this is last on my list though, I can’t say that this makes for a very immersive experience. In fact, I think it actively detracts from the movie.  A certain meme came to mind when reflecting on my D-Box experience: I’m not sure what I can say beyond this is just watching a movie in a vibrating chair that also occasionally tilts. It’s a pure gimmick and is so distracting that if you’re actually trying to watch the movie, you’ll just want to set it to low or move to a different seat. Unlike 4DX, though, which is also incredibly distracting, this doesn’t change the experience enough to justify doing this after you’ve watched the movie in a more ideal format.   Verdict: 💔💔 I can’t recommend D-Box to anyone for any reason and for $8 more than a normal ticket you should just avoid this at all costs.  #5 – ScreenX: $20.00 ScreenX is a unique theatre experience with two additional projections on the sides of the theatre as if it’s extending the screen. The walls were specifically designed for this projection too, so it’s not just projecting on the walls of a regular theatre. There are two projectors in the middle of the theatre projecting on the opposite walls so the whole theatre is much brighter than a normal screening would be too. I took a picture just before the movie started so you can get a sense of what this looks like: On the experience itself, I’m more mixed than I expected. Of all these new gimmicky formats, this is the one that has the most potential, I suppose, but also has the worst implementation.  The movie starts with the side screens in full use for the entire opening sequence of the movie and I was very distracted by it. It definitely makes you feel more surrounded, but I caught myself looking at the side screens a few times, and they definitely don’t look great. I’m not sure exactly how they do all of the visuals for the side screens, because the movie certainly wasn’t filmed this wide, but it was clear that they used some very low quality digital effects to try and simulate what would be there. The image quality on the sides is also noticeably lower too, so the image lacks detail and clarity. To make matters worse, the colours on the side screens were noticeably different as well. Shots of the desert in Dune: Part Two are a bit more white than the two side screens, which had a consistent orange tint to them that didn’t match up with the main screen most of the time.  The other issue I noticed right away was that there were noticeable gaps where the edges of the screens meet, which looked incredibly wonky. As people entered the frame on the main screen from one of the sides, there were noticeable misalignments and slight delays that made it feel off. Because the side screens are more squared too, there were issues with shots not being lined up. For example a shot of the planet Arrakis from space very early in the movie doesn’t line up properly so even in my peripheral vision I could see the planet looked jagged in a way it wasn’t supposed to. It’s not the best example, but you can even notice a similar issue on a picture I took before the movie started: In spite of all of these noticeable issues though, I started to

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