Hey everyone, it’s Kern here with another movie review. In simple terms, the 1996 movie Twister is a PG-13 disaster film about a series of tornadoes and the storm chasers that study them. This is not a typical movie review. It isn’t based purely upon the quality of the movie, or if you should watch it or not. Rather, I want to talk about what sets Twister apart from others in its genre, and why the movie is so fundamental to the cultural zeitgeist of films dealing with natural disasters as a core premise.

I thought long and hard about going down this path, as reviewing this film will surely lead to an in-depth looks at others. That’s my own nature talking. You see, typically the rule for disaster films is watch, but don’t think. If you do, you’ll tend to ruin the enjoyment of the film… but, I am a thinker, and I do like to ponder the films I watch. This led me to the conclusion that Twister is a “thinkers” disaster movie, at least for the general layman. I’m not saying Twister is at all perfect, only that it stands up to scrutiny better than other films based on naturally occurring disasters.

You can be slightly more critical of it, while equally enjoying it. The film is not going to be quite as problematic as 1997’s Volcano, or Day After Tomorrow. I’m not saying that Twister is scientifically hitting home-runs all of the time, but Twister wasn’t trying to hit home runs all of the time, either. That wasn’t the main aim of the film.

Its corresponding themes makes it fundamentally different.

Under the hood of bog-standard mayhem and destruction found in movies like these, there’s a little something more and that’s really what this particular review is centered on. So, what is that magic element? What makes this classic film stand out from the likes of its more ciaos-driven brethren?

This is likely a topic for a much larger blog post, and I do plan to do that. Without examples to point to, and more in-depth looks at each movie I plan to bring up, that would be very hard to accomplish.

What makes Twister so special is that beyond the bombastic carnage expected of a disaster film, we have rational human beings. We’re not surrounded by complete idiots. At least, not usually. The reasons for stupid decisions taking place on screen usually come naturally to panic, fear, or some logical frame of reference; such as trying to launch a few sensors into the heart of a tornado. The characters don’t act with raw ignorance, or think themselves to have an impunity to danger. To them, it’s not just a game or thrill seeking. While these storms are dangerous, they aren’t world-ending either. That’s the first key element, I’d say.

There are spoilers for Twister ahead, so if you care about that, go watch the movie first. It’s worth your time, if you like natural disaster movies.

As the core risks in Twister themselves aren’t larger than life, or threatening to decimate entire cities to rubble in the blink-of-an-eye, the characters can be thrust into peril without being thrust into trying to justify Twister’s narrative on top of it. Frankly, the most threatening tornado encounters in the movie are the ones that directly threaten family dynamics in the film. One of our main characters is a woman named Jo, short for Joanna. There are three notable tornadoes in the movie that she needs to face. One that takes the life of her father when she’s a little girl. It leaves her home in shambles, and the twisted wreckage itself is as unsettling as it is depressing, seen below.

The second tornado of particular merit completely obliterates her aunt’s home near the end of the film, although her aunt survives. The final tornado she faces is a success story just as much as it is a fight for her own survival. She did accomplish her goal, more on that later. However, she also manages to get herself trapped between the storm and a wide open farmland. Her only means of protection comes in the form of ropes, water pipes, and a prayer.

The key point to make here is that Twister isn’t a story about humanitarian efforts, saving an entire city, or even the entire world. It’s about the family, friends, and close bonds threatened by these disasters. More than that, it’s a film about deeply buried grief and overcoming a sense of feeling powerless. In a way, Twister may have more in common with super hero movies than the natural disaster genre itself. While super powers themselves aren’t in the movie, aiming to face down an all-consuming foe lingers in the backdrop of the plot.

The enemy they’re up against is nature itself.

Jo even admits this towards the middle of the film, claiming that the twister that took her father and her home away missed “this house” and “that house” all in an attempt to go after her and her family instead. You get a very real sense of just how frustrated and angry she is at nature’s brutality. She’s equally amazed and horrified at the raw power of tornadoes, while still attempting to make strides in understanding them. It’s almost as though she feels nature itself is against her personally. Truly, you can feel that her drive to chase them down and research them comes from that very inward and internal place of motivation… and this is why I equate Twister to a heroes film more than that of a disaster movie.

I’m reminded of Spider Man. Although cliche, it’s not a question that with great power, comes a great responsibility. In Twister, the so-called power comes in the form of science. If no one is willing to get up close and personal with a tornado, that scientific study can’t take place. Jo feels that immense sense of responsibility… this mission of hers is strictly personal.

The core desire of the main cast is to mitigate the ability tornadoes have to damage society. At their disposal is new technology, which is able to study the inside of a tornado. There’s just one problem. They need to get close enough to the tornado to launch the device. The possible gains are insurmountable. With the information they gather, they’d be able to develop a new storm warning system, a revolutionary development that could possibly buy people more time to get away from these disasters before they strike… that single detail alone provides an enemy to face, and it’s not one that just goes away at the end of the movie. Tornadoes won’t just go away when the movie ends.

In the movie, Jo states that the current warning systems allow for a three minute reaction time. They aim to gain enough information to push that time to fifteen minutes. That might seem to be a rather boring premise, but the movie is far from it. After all, this isn’t a story about any singular catastrophe.

Rather, this is a story about nature and its inevitability. It lends a message of hope and mutual understanding more than anything else.

Twister isn’t warning us that weather is becoming more volatile, there is no environmentalist message strapped to this film to beat us over the head as an afterthought. Instead of spoon-feeding the viewer any sort of moral environmentalist message with all of the grace of a bulldozer, the movie simply showcases what we already know to be true. Tornadoes happen, and when they do, they can leave utter devastation behind. A lack of reaction time is our greatest threat.

That’s one thing Twister gets right, where so many other movies go so terribly wrong.

This cast of characters can’t stop tornadoes from happening, and it’s not because of baseline arrogance that these forces of nature take place. Humanity didn’t provoke this danger upon themselves, but they will have to endure the danger regardless. There is no one to blame, it’s only a circumstance that must be overcome. The brave few willing to do the research know the risks they’re taking, purely so that others don’t have to.

Besides, if seeing a little girl’s father getting sucked into a tornado didn’t drive the point home for you, nothing truly would anyway. The second tornado encounter is no less devastating to the area surrounding it than the first, although this one is less tragic and more action packed… exactly what you’d expect from a high octane storm chase… and that’s the mix of storm encounters you’ll get in Twister.

Some tornadoes are action packed, bombastic awesomeness cranked to eleven before the dial gets ripped off. Some tornadoes are secondary to the actual emotional impact they bring with them. In both cases, we’re given a front row seat to the costs these storms bring with them.

Yet, Twister isn’t a particularly dark or unrealistically gritty movie. It mingles themes of unfettered joy with its deeply held pains in a way that equalizes the film very nicely.

Before I continue, let’s briefly contrast Twister’s ideology with a few other movies, shall we?

A Few Observations about the “Disaster Film” Genre…

I want to caveat the next part of this analysis: I love all of the films i’m about to rip to shreds. I’m not saying they are bad films, I’m only highlighting a commonality, even if I do so a bit viciously, it’s only to truly drive the point home about what separates them from Twister. In their own reviews, they’ll get their own praise by the buckets full, but let’s not pretend these are perfect films. Twister certainly isn’t and I’m going to rip it to shreds too, but I’ll get to that a little later.

Truthfully, I wish I could say that Twister revolutionized the film industry and set a newfound standard in how we view disaster films. Twister uses its massive set pieces as a way to study the human condition. Sadly, it didn’t manage to inspire other films to act with any practicality in mind. The same sort of simple focus Twister offers can be very hard to find in movies that came after it. At the very least, it’s not an insult to say big film partook the wrong lessons from Twister’s success.

In 1997’s “Volcano” the entire city had time to issue a warning to evacuate. There was time to act before lava started flooding streets. No one issued that warning until the disaster reared its ugly head in earnest. By that time, it was too late for most people to escape safely. Thus action and dramatized lava escape scenes ensue. Tacked onto this problem is the way lava generally moves slowly, meaning it creeps along in a way that’s normally very easy to get away from in the movie. That’s not to say downed power lines and all of the buildings catching fire wouldn’t cause some level of shock and terror. I’m only saying that the baselines presented for why the danger happens come from human failures. It’s not the actual lava itself. Volcano only highlights an unfounded arrogance brought on by people who could have done something about it.

If Volcano focused on acting with Twister’s level of common sense, the characters would have done their best to evacuate the city before the lava started melting everything. As the setting in Volcano takes place in a big city, reasonably everyone wouldn’t make it out in time. That would change the baseline from arrogance and incompetence to an unpreventable, and unprecedented disaster. The movie becomes a battle of humans against nature in a very real, pragmatic way. The focus would then become about attempts at rescuing those who couldn’t have gotten out of the danger’s path on their own. The poor, the elderly, the sick, and the families with nowhere to go.

That would have been much more interesting than the complete mediocrity of one bureaucratic nightmare flowing into another, and the choice to ignore the scientist warning against suspicious underground activity in desperate need of investigation.

Volcano isn’t the only movie that would rather use incompetence as an excuse for everyone being in a bad situation, either. In another 1997 film, Dante’s Peak, subtle clues of volcanic activity are completely overlooked and ignored until the volcano itself starts becoming nastily active. The blame game is a little harder to play on this one. The clues were less obvious, and Dante’s Peak takes place in a small town, not a big city with an army of supposed experts. The mountain town is quaint, but much less technologically advanced by virtue of not being a huge metropolis in the first place. That gives it just a tiny bit of wiggle room when it comes to a lack of reaction time. Yet, the fact still remains; clues about an eruption were there long before the volcano actually erupted. This means it suffers from the same core problem, humans ignored nature, humans got what they deserved… contrived lessons about valuing nature and one’s own community; learned.

Fast forward a few years in film making history and we can take a look at the 2004 film “Day After Tomorrow”, the global warming crisis had been around for a long time in the movie, with no concern paid to it by those who could have done something. As a result, the deep freeze is squarely to be blamed on humans acting like ignorant fools, once again. While one might argue preventing the climate crisis would be much harder than issuing any kind of warning, the core problem is the same. Humans underestimated the forces of nature. Eventually, nature does what it always does. It proves itself superior to the lowly humans who didn’t watch for the warning signs and act accordingly…

In the end,all three movies depend on an incredible level hubris to be believed, and so in my mind, they’re not actual disaster films. I would argue, if humans bring their own undoing by their own failings, that’s not a disaster movie. That’s just a movie showcasing how dumb humanity can be. It may be entertaining to watch Volcano, Dante’s Peak, and Day After Tomorrow… but, most of the time the main characters on screen deserve exactly what they’re getting. I would presume that’s why disaster films take this route more often than not.

It’s easier to swallow, and in some way, the viewer can justify what they’re watching. If humanity does it to themselves by acting lackadaisical, that’s humanity’s problem. People typically get trounced by whatever disaster is going on. Watching innocent people suffer for doing no wrong isn’t very fun. We like to see “bad guys” get a face full of justice, but most people don’t want to see the completely innocent person suffer incredible tragedies. That’s the same reason companion animals usually have plot armor in these movies. No one wants to see the innocent pets die. The dogs and cats did no wrong. Why should they suffer, just because the people in the movie magically lost brain cells?

In the end, the themes of most disaster films make it very clear. It reduces down to one thing, and one thing only: screw around with nature and find out the hard way…

If you encounter incredibly hot, acidic air in an underground tunnel that managed to kill construction workers, and ignore the fact that a scientist told you there could be deadly underground activity, don’t be surprised when you find out it’s more than a gas leak. Thank you Volcano for that obvious insight… if you’re going to mess around with a volcanic activity that’s managing to kill wildlife and boil people in the hot springs, you’re going to find out why that’s a bad idea. Thank you Dante’s Peak, what a brilliant lesson. The same is true of a deep freeze likely to overtake a huge section of the globe. It never would have occurred to me that we maybe shouldn’t be in the path of a literal ice age… unless I… you know, had absolutely no concept of self-preservation…

In a horror movie, all of that basically reduces to “don’t go into the basement alone”. If it were in a horror film, that’s what these characters would be doing if they were literally that nonsensical. By having an entirely avoidable disaster, the people facing them need to be incredibly dumb when the warnings have been laid out clearly. That isn’t to say watching stupid people do stupid things isn’t fun. I’m just saying, you can’t have much in the way of innovation for a plot like that… it can’t and won’t revolutionize the disaster film genre.

Even this surface level of compare and contrast of other movies highlights Twister’s main difference in how it approaches its own plot. Twister doesn’t, and couldn’t, contain the level of downright Darwinism I just pointed out from other films. The story cannot allow for it, because if it did, then even the very opening in the movie would have no leg to stand on. The suffering that takes place in Twister isn’t as easily preventable or avoidable, that’s the whole point in the first place.

Twister really is just a story about having a better tornado warning system in humanity’s future. The movie plays the long-game, because it’s about actually heeding nature, instead of ignoring nature. It doesn’t kick the goalpost any further than that. Tornadoes are ubiquitous, but they’re also fast forming and unpredictable… that alone is danger enough.

Twister’s Balancing Act: Common Sense and Common Threats

To add a further layer of narrative urgency to this movie, the family element comes first, not secondarily. When loved ones are placed into danger along with strangers, the loved ones come first when thinking about priorities and safety. There is no central element of a “dead-beat” father more involved with work than his own children. You won’t see the entirely neglectful spouse mired within their work purely for the sake of “public safety”. Neither will you find the self-important and self-indulgent political figurehead sitting on their laurels. Twister showcases a proactive cast of characters because the endeavor of studying tornadoes is personal to them directly.

The only film I can think of one film that matches Twister’s resolve when it comes to sticking true to its themes. Independence Day, also made in 1996… it showcased family values with with not only one, not two, but THREE dedicated father figures, one of them being the President of the United States, one lower-class working man, and one military bad-ass with a soft spot for his wife and child… these three same characters get into aircraft to fight the alien threat of their own volition… now that’s what I like to see in my disaster films. Characters firmly attached to family values, community values, and a mission they’re damn sure they’re going complete, or go down trying… there’s a real down-to-earth pragmatism in both films, but it doesn’t come at the expense of what actually matters to the characters.

Getting back to Twister, a combination of characterization and personal motivation streamlines the narrative process. There is no lesson needing to be learned about the importance of one’s own community. That’s baked right into the film in a way you can’t ignore. Twister assumes, logically, that most people don’t need that lesson. Therefore characters aren’t often placed into situations to impart the lesson. That’s not to say it never once happens, it does rarely, but it’s just not quite as ham-fisted in its attempt to hammer a point home.

Like Independence Day, Twister is all about simple subtext mixed with common sense reality.

Rather brilliantly, Twister suggests that greater good has a reasonable limit. Therefore, it doesn’t feed you characters willing to devalue the baseline that it provides. These guys and gals may be storm chasers, but they are going to look after their own people first. The narrative focus is also much more narrow because the tornadoes they’re chasing are usually located in large open areas when they touch down. That means you don’t have an entire city to worry about on screen. You can focus on the main cast, and not what the panicked public surrounding them is doing. This means we end up with a much less convoluted character arc for our main and supporting cast.

Disaster films usually share particular and very similar issue with Star Wars. For the same reason you shouldn’t need to explain what Midichlorians are to justify a Jedi, you shouldn’t need to spend a lot of time to justify whatever disaster is about to be on screen. Twister simply provides the tornadoes. It is a movie that shows, long before it ever tells in extreme detail.

More importantly, instead of doomsday talk, these characters actually chase storms. They speak about tornadoes in a casual and normalized way unless they have a very clear reason to speak with any level of gravitas. Once again, so often hubris and a failure to listen to expertise is involved when the “big bad disaster” strikes. In many movies, by that time they realize the expert was correct, it’s much too late to remedy anything.

Twister doesn’t buy into that realm of thinking as a normality, because these are the experts. No layman or political figure in this movie pretends to be wiser than they are. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. Everyone listens to the experts, every single time. That’s the tragedy, and that’s the action. It is what makes the stakes in this movie so damn high as well. Every time someone says there’s a tornado coming, everyone jumps into high gear, and no one farts around… the tornadoes aren’t a plaything.

One thing I can and shall praise Twister for, is the relaxed and comfortable way the core cast engages with the threat they’re up against. They don’t panic until it’s time to panic, and not a moment before that. They are competent enough to know when to be fearful, and when to be relaxed. They’ll be blasting music in their cars with excitement during the non-dangerous parts of the storm chases, and then they knuckle down when it is time to get serious. That fluidity lends the movie a lot of credence, and narrative license. The tornadoes are allowed to be as over-the-top as possible, and the stunts can be borderline crazy. That’s the point though, they need to be willing to get up close, that’s their job.

Tropes and Nonsense: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

For all of the praise I just provided, that isn’t to say Twister isn’t without its faults. Actually, Twister has a lot of faults. The movie is almost mindlessly bog-standard on the surface. I say it’s a “thinker’s” disaster film. I do stand by that. The truth is though, it never really forces the viewer into thinking at all… that’s truly incumbent on the viewer. Honestly, sometimes it would really rather if you didn’t, and the film makes it clear when it’s time for you to turn off your brain and go for the ride it presents.

In that way, Twister has more than plenty to nitpick, if nitpicking is the goal. Surely, there are some tired old tropes too. At least they’re the comfy sort. Failing that, they’re at least laugh out loud funny moments purely because they are so asinine to begin with.

Between projectile squeaky toys, flying cows, and driving through rolling houses in the middle of the road, there are times when Twister defies its own rule book. Moments when characters should have not survived a storm chase rack up quickly. To be brutally honest I think that was the intention. In those moments even the movie itself knows that it is being ridiculous, and the dialogue turns campy. If that humor wasn’t entirely and obviously intentional, we wouldn’t have such great writing in other places in the film. Campy dialogue, and very occasional goofiness aside, let’s really talk about the tropes in this film.

There are a lot of tropes and overused plot devices, countless of them. However, a great deal of them come from the characters themselves. I think this image below does a fairly good job of giving you an idea of what kind of characters you’ll encounter.

Yeah, you’re going to run into the thrill seeking, renegade, “dude-bro” storm chaser with more brawn than brains. He’s always going to look like he needs a hot shower, and equally Rambo his way through every storm encounter. He’s just the high octane “best buddy” supporting role you expect him to be. As much the emotional levity as he is unkempt and askew, he’ll turn out to have a heart of gold despite appearing completely creepy and obnoxious.

You’re also going to find the nagging “geeky” type that will complain about maps being folded instead of rolled up. He’s the typical buttoned-up sort that plays classical music, and doesn’t seem to like rolling in the dirt with the rest of the storm chasers. He’s there for the science, not the thrill.

Then there’s the glasses wearing, short haired androgynous character that has very few speaking lines, and yet always shows up in the background. Basically, the standard “find Waldo” character, bonus points if they read as possibly gay to the viewer, and have at least one “smart-ass” moment when they get to be snarky just for the fun of it.

Last, but certainly not least, you’ve got the “fish out of water” bait-and-switch love interest that has no idea what in the hell she’s getting into. She’s well-dressed, kind, and fairly unobtrusive. She acts as a vessel for the average viewer who isn’t used to tornadoes, or chasing them. She’s going to be the one crying in the aftermath the most, shaken and terrified, as most people would be if we encountered a tornado face first unwillingly.

That’s just the side-cast mind you, and it’s not even all of them.

Atop the motley crew of characters, you have the main male protagonist, Bill. He knows exactly what he’s talking about 90% of the time, and is rarely ever wrong. His “best buddy” will always talk him up, no matter what. Along with him, we end up with the tough as nails, “take no shit” female character, and the other love interest to our main male lead… that means we’ve got a love triangle going on, take that for what you will. Female leads are always a coin toss in disaster films. Often shoved between being an absolute annoyance, or an organic and fleshed out character.

Thankfully, there are some subversion here, and they’re wonderfully done.

Our main female lead in Twister tends to fall into the “organic person” category, with a down-to-earth inciting traumatic incident and loss of a parent. Jo has many faults as a character, but you could have made her a man and her character baseline still works. Her gender has no bearing at all on who and what she is to this movie when it comes down to the plot. With or without Bill, she would be chasing down those tornadoes. That they just so happen to have a strained marriage is entirely secondary to that goal.

That makes her one of the best female leads in the disaster movie genre, because she could live her life without him, but she doesn’t state that explicitly. She has no high-horse that she wants to stand on, because she still loves Bill. Mixing this with the fact that Bill isn’t a pig-headed and mindless tail-chasing jerk-wad, and you’ve got a recipe for a dynamic on screen couple. Neither one of these characters fall into the usual gender-role trappings you expect of a disaster film. They’re just average people doing the same job, both of them… therefore equality in expertise is implied to the viewer, and not shouted about by the characters in question.

Now that I’ve digressed into one subversion done well, let’s get back to the rest of the overdone themes that you’ll run into in this film.

Our main team, our heroes so-to-speak, are going to be disenfranchised by the rich big company, played up as villains for stealing innovation and ideas without any concern or thought given to our rag-tag underdogs. Since these villains are surely going to die in the movie, we have to make sure they’re as unlikable as humanly possible. These stand-in villains need to be as self-serving and arrogant as possible, to the point it will ultimately lead to their own demise… hubris I complained about before in other movies show up here with Jonas and his own storm chasing crew. Obviously, it won’t end well for him.

The self-same innovative technology that Jonas steals, will be the emotional crux of the entire story in Twister, both emotionally and scientifically. It’s the entire reason why characters find themselves in direct danger during the final storm and almost all of the storms preceding it…

So, yes, there are tropes galore. I won’t say Twister isn’t packed full of them. There’s plenty more where that came from too. Some are done very well, and others miss the mark a little bit. At the very least there is one saving grace. Emotions are the driving force of Twister’s plot, not the tornadoes themselves. Emotions don’t need to be entirely rational. They only need to be persuasive to the character and somewhat believable to the viewer. Twister mostly accomplishes that emotionally driven goal, with a few tiny slip-ups here and there.

Yes, there are some details you can rip to shreds, but, that would be true of almost every movie of the genre. You can’t really bash Twister for doing the same, unless you want to be a hypocrite… the flying cow happily floating in the gale forces of a twister and squeaky toy are hilarious, but lets be honest, moments like that are downright stupid too. While they only do things like that sparingly, there are still more than plenty of times you need to turn off your brain and simply enjoy.

The Marriage Subplot: It Actually isn’t Crap

Even the “filing for divorce” marital drama sub-plot in Twister is secondary to its main themes and very little more. Let’s be honest, it’s a common thread that anyone watching films from the 90’s and early 00’s will be very well antiquated with… but here, it doesn’t feel like garbage.

See if you’ve heard this one before: one of the spouses encountered extreme childhood trauma, an inciting incident for the movie at best (in this case an F5 tornado). Later on, that trauma enforces the main plot. The incident explains why that person is so obsessed with the concept of studying the thing that traumatized them. Add on more gumption than you can measure, and a healthy dash of cynical resolve, and you’ve got a trope.

Of course, the “lead male characters are usually always right” bend on the tail end of romantic tit-for-tat is not without its fair share of scrutiny, either. Then again… if you do all of the above, you’ve got a recipe for pretty much any disaster film on its face. I could say the same of many movies preceding Twister, and several that came after it. There are a few outliers in movies such as these with happy marriages, but those are very few and far between. Typically if romance is successful at the start, that’s because it’s a new and freshly budding one. Or, much better yet, the characters don’t meet until the movie, and the romance begins on screen…

At least in Twister, the marital drama comes more from heartfelt miscommunication on Bill’s end, and childhood trauma on Jo’s end, rather than any else. Bill feels pushed away, Jo feels as though he doesn’t understand her perspective. Their marital drama comes down to one fact alone; life gets muddy sometimes. Moreover, that’s a Jo and Bill problem. The movie keeps it that way. Their arguments don’t impact the rest of the storm chasers because those arguments are intended to be private. Even when the arguments are overheard, they’re still not intended for others to be involved in, and the rest of the team actually respects the concept of privacy… they mind their own business.

Twister may in fact be using the relationship drama to its advantage, purely because it is so secondary. It is also so droll and typical nobody bats an eye at it… it is a non-issue for most of the characters at best, and only a mere “thing that happened” at worst. It feels more realistic because all of the adults are acting like adults. Beyond that, because the drama is kept insular, it’s also kept moderate to the main plot.

Directed by Jan de Bont, Twister is certainly following a carefully crafted formula. You might say the themes that become problematic in the disaster genre are to blame because of Twister being a box office hit… and perhaps, you wouldn’t be wrong to think so. Later movies attempting to crank up the drama normally take the relationship and emotional investment woes much too far. Twister set a very high bar when it comes to interpersonal relationship sub-plots, platonic and otherwise.

I’d say, in attempting to surpass that high level, a lot of films just flat out jump the shark. Relationship drama is usually the least interesting thing about disaster films, followed swiftly by the inattentive parent garbage, or uniformed political know-it-all.

Yet, the power of the pen rested with Michael Crichton, known for his book series Jurassic Park… so, what did we movie goers really expect? The Jurassic Park movie came out in 1993, became resoundingly popular, and that dinosaur romp has a lot of the same basic concepts. It was also a smash hit, so why fix what isn’t broken, right? Mass appeal drives the market, and that too might be why Twister satisfies so well.

Following up in the writing department as far as heavy hitters are concerned is Anne-Marie Martin. That actress is so common to find in slasher style horror films, I can’t even begin to wax on about it. If I listed her credentials, we’d be here all day. Bonus points if you know any of her work in comedies and dramas. Needless to say, this combination behind the screen-play is probably what makes Twister such a narrative powerhouse. It does manage to innovate just a little, while also keeping true to the tired old tropes we know and (hopefully) love.

Fun fact: at the time of the film, Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin were a married couple. They didn’t divorce until 2003. I would hazard a guess that particular detail is Twister’s special little ingredient. The married couple spearheaded the writer’s room. That’s why the divorce sub-plot in the movie feels less “tacked-on” and more organic. We had a husband and wife duo laying down a romantic commentary that didn’t need to be overblown. Honestly, that particular sub-plot is very easily forgotten or overlooked, and I feel that was intentional. People go to a disaster film to watch the disaster, not the marriage mumbo-jumbo… we have actual romantic dramas and thrillers for that. We didn’t need it encroaching too heavily into Twister, and they knew it.

Yet, that very real string of human emotion lends itself further to the credibility of the cast and characters. The romance itself might have dwindled for Jo and Bill, our resident on screen married couple. While romantically they might have been misguided, they aren’t complete failures as people. Their own moral focus, and the community surrounding them matters.

Each storm chase demarcates the rebuilding of the relationship between Bill and Jo. The highs and lows of their relationship really showcase alongside the storms they’re chasing… perhaps an allegory to the unpredictability of storms themselves. The focus stays on the stress of each and every situation, and the stakes involved with being near to the tornadoes in the first place. In spite of their near constant bickering early on though, you can tell that they still really care about each other. Yes, they both get a little snippy with each other, but it never feels like they’re trying to truly hurt one-another emotionally. The dried out romance feels stressed to the brink, withered and strained, but not downright toxic or manipulative. They wouldn’t be saving each other and trying to work as a team if they truly hated one another, because as I feel the need to highlight yet again, the stakes aren’t world-ending.

Bill could extract himself at any time, Jo could sign the divorce papers at any time… but, they both choose to continue working together. Even when the other woman Bill’s been seeing during the separation is in the same car with them, the three of them are civil. It’s incredibly refreshing to see these three characters in the same car together, able to communicate, without losing their ever-loving minds. This is a rarity in film making when an easy argument can raise the threshold to danger. A verbal warfare could have erupted here in this moment, but it didn’t…

That means that Bill and Jo managed to learn from a previous mistake. In an image further up, you might have noticed an overturned car, thrown by a tornado. That car was thrown because Bill and Jo were more focused on arguing than the tornado. This time, they’d all rather gawk at the flying cow.

In this scene, they’re appropriately level headed, and working as a team, and not fighting in front of the “other woman”. It’s not forced upon them, it’s not even a spoken agreement, only a mutual level of adult understanding that now is not the time to be acting like air-heads.

I’m only about forty minutes into explaining the movie at this point, but truly, I feel like that’s as far as I need to go when it comes to breaking down the core and critical points of this film. Everything outlined above are common plot elements, and those elements make Twister everything a disaster movie should be. This special quality is what other films need to aspire to when considering both the threats involved, and the characters they’re working with.

With that incredibly lengthy diatribe over and done with, by now you should have concluded a few things. Firstly, that Twister actually understands what it wants to do as a film. Secondly, that it doesn’t oversell its own plot. Thirdly, that these adults know how to act like functional human beings. Twister displays those qualities without beating the viewer over the head with them.

I can now lay out the final, and most important piece of this puzzle. The entire lack of judgement, even when it would be the most deserved… it’s just not there. There’s none to find.

The most important character in this movie is the one that doesn’t show up until around the middle of it, Aunt Meg. Now despite the fact that Bill has left Jo, and is now seeing another woman, this doesn’t stop Jo’s beloved aunt from embracing Bill, telling him just how much she missed him, and giving the woman he’s currently seeing a place at her table, along with the rest of the storm chasers.

In this moment, Bill’s new love interest becomes one of the storm chasers in spirit and the true level of acceptance she’s earned here isn’t anything to scoff at. I’ve gone to great lengths not to name her in this review, because I wanted you to see her as a plot device up until now… because frankly, she does feel like one, until this moment. We’ve seen her be a damsel in distress looking for comfort, we’ve seen her talking to patients over the cell phone because she’s a doctor, we’ve watched her follow in the wild adventures of these chasers, and we’ve seen her question Jo about weather or not Jo loves Bill… but in this moment, we get to see her as a person breaking bread with the rest of them.

Our resident “fish out of water” was welcomed with open arms, brought into this group, and even Jo has been nothing but civil with her. Standing side-by-side, they’re even happy. Why does this matter? Like I said, it’s the heart and soul of the matter… it’s what makes this movie so damn special… how many disaster films can you name where the entire group of people, and I do mean the entire group, including the resident and beloved aunt can welcome the clear outsider with such generosity and kindness? Go ahead, I’m waiting… seriously, if you know movies like this, pass them over. I want names because that’s why I LOVE twister. When I said that the relationship drama doesn’t take center stage, and that there’s a real thread in community and caring for one-another, this is what I’m talking about.

Melissa becomes so much more human in this scene because in that very moment we as viewers are told that it’s okay to like her as a person too… that her circumstances with Bill can’t and won’t negate the fact that she should be welcomed, and should be included. You do want to root for her relationship with Bill a little bit, at least I did. Some may even argue the movie encourages you to want to root for her.

Aunt Meg can and does speak with Jo in a scene after the one at the kitchen table, expressing how sad she is that Jo and Bill do have their problems, but this scene indicates that he is a good person. That Melissa is a good person, and that Jo is a good person… that there are no evil intentions, or sides that need to be taken. No contrived adversity, only understanding and compassion.

Now, that all may sound too sickly sweet for you. I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that such a scene would be downright impossible for a lot of people to accomplish in real life, given the hurt feelings involved. Placing a side differences isn’t easy when those facts hit deeply and personally.

Extraordinary people do exist, and rarity or not, we’re graced with that sight on the screen time and time again in Twister. These are without a doubt some of the most loving, accepting, open-minded people that you’ll find in a PG-13 disaster flick… Twister aims to be fun, above all else that’s the goal of this movie. We come to watch tornadoes run rampant, and the film doesn’t disappoint in that ambition. The stakes are high, but never too high. The emotional lows are never too low or super depressing, and at the end of the movie our husband and wife duo reconcile to have their happy ending.

A Few Final Thoughts

Twister, while not brilliant, is a movie for a “thinker” willing to contemplate just what this film is trying to be. It’s willing to be torn to pieces when it gets profoundly stupid, because it knows those moments are, in fact, profoundly stupid. It even seems to laugh along with you. This is perhaps one of the few uplifting disaster movies out there, where levity within the human condition mingles heavily with the fact this is such a serious and depressing topic.

Tornadoes take lives, they destroy homes and stability,. Yet, if all we ever do is live our lives in fear of the next one, we would take for granted so many beautiful things in this world. Twister is nothing without its levity. It would be a stone cold fact that the movie would be little beyond garbage without its ability to find value in emotional attachments to others. Objects can be replaced, people can’t…

Twister manages to knock that theme out of the park, without being too dark about its subject matter. It would have been all too easy to make a doom and gloom story about loss and fill the screen with one action packed tragedy after another… people and homes being decimated for the sake of carnage alone. That’s one of the biggest issues I take with a lot of disaster films. They so badly want to sell the action and the danger, they’ll go to any length to reach it.

The more damage, the more terrified people, the more lives ruined in bombastic fashion, the better.

Day After Tomarrow’s brand of logic is to see if we can freeze over half of the planet, no thought given to the countless lives truly lost by the deep freeze because there’s just not enough screen time for that. Just as it doesn’t have any time to express what that actually means for civilization at large if that were to actually happen… too big for its own britches, that movie ends where it should actually begin. The credits roll, leaving nothing but a series of unknowns in its wake.

The same could be said for a great many disaster films. They end after they’ve spent the time ruining all and sundry for the sake of entertainment, and that might have some value. I’d argue though, that the value diminishes when that’s all disaster films set out to do.

That’s not what Twister does, it breaks that mold and does so proudly. Instead, of giving us nothing but drama and mindless wanton destruction, Twister gives us a little bit of hope, and a lot of catharsis. The movie opens the car door and invites you to join in on the ride with these storm chasers and their mission to get their technology airborn into a tornado, come hell or high water.

The final tornado ends, just as all tornadoes end… but, we know there will be another, and another, and another. They aren’t going away. That’s not an ominous cliff hanger, just a fact of living on planet earth.

Twister invites you to look at the facts… not the scientific ones, but the emotional ones. It asks you to beg the question; what truly matters more? When is innovation more important than family? Is the safety of countless others more important than the safety of our own personal connections? Where does someone draw the line, and when should they? You can’t really analyze questions like that if characters begin the movie by taking everything around them for granted. Twister doesn’t begin ambivalently, or end that way either. That’s what makes it such an intelligent film.

It’s not book-smart necessarily. It is emotionally mature, though. Perhaps in its own way Twister is wiser in its self-awareness than so many other films out there. If you take a few seconds to think about the ethos that it attempts to convey, the film stays solid. Since tornadoes are dynamic, that means the characters must be the same way; swift thinking, highly capable, and incredibly willing to be in the direct line of peril.

In a sea of disaster films that try to convey a message much bigger than the film would ever have the time to convey, or worse forsakes any heartfelt message entirely, Twister hits that middle ground.

Well, that’s about all I have time for… as I say that, I look at the length of this post and cringe. I knew it would be long, but this is almost too long.

This has been Kernook of the Demented Ferrets, where stupidity is at its finest, and level grinds are

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