Twister

You almost have to admire Twister. It teaches us next to nothing about tornadoes. Apart from a quick reference to the Fujita Scale, which labels them anywhere from F0 to F5 depending on the destruction they cause, the movie offers only dumbed-down mumbo jumbo. The enthusiastic storm chasers in the movie prefer nicknames for tornado types, such as “sisters,” when a tornado breaks into two smaller tornadoes; a “sidewinder,” when a tornado goes in an unexpected direction; or a “jumper,” when a tornado starts to form but then disappears back into the clouds, only to reappear somewhere else. The movie is so busy being a Hollywood thrill ride that it doesn’t have time to break down the digital readouts showing storm formations or examine what about a particular sky suggests a tornado will develop. Instead, Twister resolves to be an escapist action movie. Our heroes navigate all manner of flying objects, dodging or driving through various obstacles dropped or eerily caught in the tornado’s spin, from bad CGI cows to a tanker truck destined to explode. After all, what blockbuster would be complete without a huge fireball? The tornado impales one victim and throws farm equipment in front of others. If we didn’t know any better, we might even think the tornado had an agenda. 

The screenplay by author Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin, his wife, punched up by various uncredited script doctors from Joss Whedon to Steve Zaillian, vaguely suggests the tornadoes have a personal motivation. In the opening sequence set in 1969, the young Jo Harding and her Oklahoma family rush to their rickety storm shelter, with their Cairn Terrier (think Toto) trailing behind. To be sure, Twister has more references to The Wizard of Oz (1939) than a David Lynch film. When the tornado sucks up her father, Jo develops a lifelong obsession with studying tornadoes to give people more time to find safety. As an adult played by Helen Hunt, Jo feels persecuted by them, as though the secret cabal of tornadoes picked her family in ‘69—a notion reinforced after her kindly aunt (Lois Smith) narrowly survives an attack in the present. It’s a big emotional moment when her would-be ex-husband, Bill (Bill Paxton, nailing his first major leading man role), realizes that she thinks tornadoes are selective about the houses they destroy. But it makes about as much sense as the shark in Jaws: The Revenge (1987) targeting the Brody family. 

Twister’s director, Jan de Bont, saw tornadoes as the monster of his big-budget monster movie, telling The Philadelphia Enquirer that he wanted to make “a Grimm fairy tale where the monster comes out of dark clouds.” De Bont started his career as a cinematographer on various early Paul Verhoeven projects and Die Hard (1988) before making his directorial debut on Speed (1994) for 20th Century Fox. Although a skilled visualist, his short-lived career as director petered out after several disappointments, among them Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) and The Haunting (1999). Rather than meteorological phenomena, de Bont creates a primal force that growls (the sound designer used animal effects for the tornado’s roar) and seems to torment our heroes. Bill refers to the tornadoes with the “him” pronoun, whereas Jo feels stalked by them. It’s an incredibly stupid idea that, despite the A-grade production’s sizable budget and names such as Steven Spielberg attached as executive producer, feels more aligned with subsequent D-grade disaster flicks such as the Sharknado series. Today, there’s a vast subgenre of direct-to-secondary-market fare about killer tornadoes, and we can thank Twister for that. When released in 1996, it earned nearly half a billion dollars at the box office, proving that moviegoers have a taste for tornado mayhem. 

Spielberg began developing Twister after seeing an effects test by Industrial Light & Magic, proving they could make a convincing tornado—or, at least, convincing by mid-1990s standards. In the wake of Spielberg’s special effect extravaganza Jurassic Park (1993), based on Crichton’s book, Hollywood went mad about the potential of computer-generated images. Echoing Ian Malcolm’s famous line, Hollywood didn’t stop to ask if they should, only if they could. Spielberg enlisted Crichton and Martin to develop a screenplay, and after some cursory research (they watched a PBS documentary), they delivered a script and picked up their $2.5 million paycheck. The particulars borrow from His Girl Friday (1940), with a soon-to-be-divorced couple thrown together one last time, and the new fiancée on the outside, realizing she doesn’t belong. Bill wants Jo to sign their divorce papers so he can marry Melissa (Jami Gertz), a stuffy reproduction therapist. But Melissa soon recognizes that her beau has a yet-unseen storm-chaser side to him, and he belongs with Jo. 

The paper-thin characters might get whisked away by the high winds if not for the high-energy execution of de Bont, cinematographer Jack N. Green, and longtime Spielberg editor Michael Kahn. If there’s not much character-wise to compel the viewer—and there isn’t—Twister at least deploys a breakneck momentum. Jo’s fun-loving group of wacky scientists scrambles and exchanges banter in punchy scenes where their convoy races after tornadoes, hoping to get their experiment, called Dorothy no less, into position. If they succeed, small sensors will ride the winds and chart a tornado’s behavior, allowing them to better predict where tornadoes might develop. All the while, de Bont uses their mission as an impetus for energized chase sequences that, along with the affable cast, divert the viewer from the reality that nothing all that compelling is happening in the narrative. But it’s all very engaging thanks to the appeal of Hunt and Paxton, and their supporting cast that includes a boisterous Philip Seymour Hoffman, a twitchy Jeremy Davies, a dependable Alan Ruck, and a bad guy named Jonas supplied by Cary Elwes.

The story unfolds during a nasty weather system, prompting a “record outbreak of tornadoes” that can only be properly assessed by Bill, the resident twister whisperer. He’s a “human barometer” who needs only to look out at the sky and sprinkle some sand to measure the wind, and, in doing so, he will know where the next tornado will strike. He’s also dubbed “The Extreme,” suggesting a reckless alternative to the mild-mannered persona he maintains with Melissa, which presumably earned his new weatherman gig. By the end, Melissa breaks off the wedding plans, leaving Bill and Jo to embrace their tornado-chasing wild sides in this thriller of remarriage. It’s not a particularly complex setup, evidenced by its need for a villain. Elwes plays an uncollaborative scientist who copied Bill’s tornado-gadget idea. The smarmy Jonas heads a line of black minivans, operated by his anonymous, orange-coated goons. By contrast, Jo and Bill’s crew is full of visual variety and humanity. So when something bad happens to Jonas, no one cares. When one of our heroes gets so much as grazed, it’s cause for great concern.

Twister takes a rather thoughtless approach in depicting how its characters interact with tornadoes. At one point, Jonas and his driver (Zach Grenier) drive toward a tornado on a highway. The viewer can see what has been described as a mile-wide tornado ahead, and so can Jonas. Yet, a moment later, they’re shocked when they drive right into the belly of the beast, shouting, “Look out!” as though the tornado came out of nowhere. Elsewhere, Jo and Bill outrun tornadoes on foot. The finale finds Jo and Bill racing to a farm, where they survive the same vast tornado by fastening themselves to metal pipes using leather straps. They’re miraculously unaffected by the flying debris that should have ripped them to shreds. It all strains credibility. So, too, does the CGI used to create the tornadoes. The effects didn’t look all that great in 1996 when I saw it in the theater as a teenager; they have only worsened in the last three decades, looking more like cone-shaped blobs of brown today. 

Twister is roller-coaster cinema designed to provide a few thrills; though, it lacks any interesting characters or drama. Like an amusement park ride, its ups and downs ultimately peter out, leaving the viewer with little more than a momentary buzz or two to remember. It’s also a money-making machine, armed with conspicuous product placements for Dodge, Pepsi, and Kotex. Universal Studios even developed a now-decommissioned attraction based on the movie. However, for all of my complaints, Twister has just enough star power in Hunt and Paxton, and the side characters played by an ensemble of familiar faces, to justify a mindless viewing. Its momentum and technical competency keep the viewer enrapt for two hours, regardless of its frequent, if not constant, inanity. Twister has the lizard-brained appeal of every disaster movie, where the moviegoer delights in watching Nature tear the world apart and make short work of human beings. It disappears from the mind almost the instant it’s over, and perhaps that’s for the best. Any amount of thought committed to the movie will surely result in confusion and disappointment. Fortunately, it’s not asking you to think. Not at all.

(Note: This review was originally posted to Patreon on July 17, 2024.)