One Movie
Twisters, the latest attempt to make Glenn Powell a movie star and keep juicing an old piece of intellectual property, is a perfectly fine movie. But it was improved, and asked a few interesting questions about where cinema is at right now, by its use of 4DX. This new design for shaking theater seats and spraying cool mist did qualitatively intensify my sense that I was in the world of the movie, in a very blockbuster-y sort of way. Yet the technological glitches might have been the most entertaining part. No spoilers, only in the footnotes.
Nate Gallant: Most questions about a filmâs quality still, I think, are grounded in the visual construction of the medium. They often sound something like, did that one overuse classic Hollywood film grammar (establishing shot, shot-reverse-shot conversation, action scene, repeat)? Did it even know how to use these tools at all? How is it paced relative to its genre? How much do we see in between close-ups of pleasant-looking faces and kaiju exploding from ground-to-air lasers? Do we care?
This leads me to wonder what might we do with the emergence of 4DX and similar theaters, which offer the extension of a filmâs sensorial world to include the immediate, tactile biome of the theater seat. 4DX specifically, which advertises itself as Seoul-developed and field-tested, and is now installed at Regal Cinema outposts in the US, provides, in its words: three-axis seat rotation, vibration, something called âleg-ticklers,â airflow, water spray, water, rain, scent effects, hot air, bubbles, fog, wind, strobe, snow, and rainstorms.Â
Has the introduction of these new extra-visual elements in fact added a new âdimensionâ to film, announcing the end of cinema defined by the audiovisual dialectics of the cut? Or have movie studios merely created a new kind of theme park ride? Or, if art is defined as a certain relationship between sensation, beauty, and the malleability of form, then perhaps the 4DX experience should change nothing about cinemaâs potential status as as a medium other than what it smells like in 2024 (surely, it has always smelled like something, popcorn maybe)?
Outside of any specific sense memory, I can say my initial forays into 4DX moviegoing have been, on the whole, fairly enjoyable, although inconclusive to me as artistic endeavors. I never thought 3D visuals added much to my movie-going experience, so this has been a happy surprise â though happier still is that I havenât been made as ill as I would have expected by being jostled around in my seat after consuming a whole tray of theater nachos. 4DX also offers an argument from studios and theaters for the value-add of actually going to see new releases IRL even in the streaming era, rather than falling asleep while trying to watch The Irishman on three separate occasions.
The recent Mario movie aptly named The Super Mario Bros. Movie stands as the best 4DX âexperienceâ I have had so far, perhaps because it wasnât exactly trying to be a movie. I minded the bare plot and silliness of Mario and Luigi speaking in full sentences less and less as each new animated environment offered relatively disconnected moments of fan service. Mario leapt through various different gameplays from the â90s and early aughts Nintendo IP, with some fun action sequences here and there. The accompaniment of mild seat movement, some fake wind in my hair, and a bit of buzzing when someone was hit by a turtle shell combined to convince me, increasingly, that wherever this experience failed as a movie, the dynamism of shaking seats picked up the slack. It amounted to an enjoyably bumpy rollercoaster of nostalgic images specific to the animated screen. I felt more like I was in the video game because the 4DX mimicked a video gameâs tactile feedback of piloting the onscreen avatar â like adding a Rumble Pak to your N64 controller. I guess this was the point.
The new blockbuster Twisters was not entirely dissimilar to Mario, though it asked a few more questions about what a movie could be with the addition of pulsating seats and spewing water. A remake of the original 1996 environmental disaster slash rom com, this had all the ostensible trappings of a 2024 summer blockbuster: Action. Adventure. Some light technical dialogue to frame the moments of heroism. Big but indistinct leads in Glenn Powell, our new heavy-eyed hunk of chiseled Americana, and Daisy Edgar-Jones (of Normal People), the inescapably, obviously, London-bred waif who, though sporting a pretty good vague American accent, not even for a second passed to me as someone who grew up shaped by the hard brunt of farm life out in the Plains. Add in a deeply generic set of rom com plot points, unoriginal IP, and some ham-fisted attempts to address political issues (climate change, in this instance) while remaining jingoistic about America, and it checked nearly every box. Not to mention a solid eighth of the movie could pass for drone footage from a Dodge commercial. Still, it was kind of fun.
In this case, the shaking and cool mist from the 4DX seat backs, say, foretelling of a swirling storm, did qualitatively intensify my sense that I was in the world of the movie, in a very blockbuster-y sort of way. Most of these movies rely on a particular sort of multimedia immersive escapism. Without much narrative or character depth, the sound and the fury of its CGI, headlong action-adventure pacing, and now, 4DX have to do most of the heavy lifting of drawing you into the journey â in lieu of an less generic narrative or depth of character. Take this movieâs opening fifteen or so minutes, a very intense storm sequence with four people who we do not know at all and about whom we learn very little other than that they seem to be heterosexual and like talking about the weather. When the movieâs drama asks us to follow the protagonistâs arc, we have to be pulled in via a more intense blurring of the actual sensory boundaries of the movie itself. The actorsâ being cardboard cutouts of humans does little to invest viewers in them as characters or convince us to tote their emotional baggage in service of forging concrete connection to the plot.  Â
4DX ultimately made Twisters better, but only in the way of improving my experience of Twisters â an important distinction. Leaving the theater, however, there was consensus that the best part was when the immersive technology failed. At one of the movieâs few slower moments, right when Glenn Powell was trying, successfully I would say, to be his most quietly sensual, standing in front of yet another scene of unimaginable devastation in Tornado Alley, a block of seats two rows in front of us unexpectedly began gyrating wildly. Apparently, one rogue row began to play out the sensory program for an entirely different movie for the final half hour or so. As Powell crooned lines of unexpected erudition and sensitivity, several patrons were wildly swung to and froâ, to their very loud surprise and displeasure, forcing at least one person in the row to walk out. Without the rest of the seats moving in coordinated chaos, the absurdity of the violent rocking was laid a bit too bare, the immersion broken, and the entire theater burst out laughing at what seemed to be one of the movieâs more important emotional beats. I was nearly in tears, myself. It was a great time, and I did not know how to feel.
In this sense, 4DX is inarguably entertaining, above and beyond its absorbing effect. In Twisters, the thematically appropriate shaking added a more intense framework to the main throughline of this movie of heteronormative rom-com staples: everything shook all the more wildly around the frailty of the slender feminine bodies, the strength of big masculine hands holding on tight to metal rails just below a half-rolled flannel sleeve. Love and can-do spirit emerging at the center of a mighty storm, while horses and cars are being pulled into the windy maw.Â
The rogue seats, however, made it obvious to the point of being weird, that is, very obvious, that there was no 4DX during any other kind of scene save tornado encounters.1 Iâm not sure if the smell of polyurethane or dust in the old barn where Jones occasionally delivered exposition would have added anything, but it might have been interesting. Might drinking in the odor of sweat and Axe body spray from Glenn Powellâs tornado-wrangling Youtube star have further improved the movieâs erotic palette?2 Thereâs no answer, in part because these add-on sensory experiences are still a fairly nascent medium. We have no Ozu of filmic smells â yetâŠ
SPOILER ALERT: There are no sex scenes or even a kiss, just a lot of tension, but wouldnât it have been kind of funny to have a bit of 4DX if there were?
SPOILER ALERT: It certainly would have done little for the disturbing racial dynamic of the film, which remains one of its deeper and more obvious issues. The plot ostensibly humiliates Javi (Anthony Ramos, who was also great) as the rom comâs pivot love object. At the climax of the movie, we watch him watch, at several uncomfortable moments, as his trauma-bound friend and obvious crush is tenderly cradled by Powellâs Tyler Owens. Why would the movie frame the transference of love-object from Javi to Tyler with Javiâs needing a job out of the military to pursue his dream career, if not to let the protagonist retreat guiltlessly back into an all-white world?