Twister Movie Review

Twister (1996)

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Written by: Michael Crichton & Anne-Marie Martin
Directed by: Jan de Bont
Starring: Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Cary Elwes, Jami Gertz, Philip Seymour-Hoffman, Alan Ruck, Jeremy Davies
Rated: PG-13
Watch the trailer

Plot
Bill and Jo Harding, advanced storm chasers on the brink of divorce, must join together to create an advanced weather alert system by putting themselves in the cross-hairs of extremely violent tornadoes.

Verdict
It's the age old battle of humans versus tornadoes. Is this movie ridiculous? Frequently. This packs a lot of CGI action and forces some drama. One stretches credibility and the other feels perfunctory. This coasts on an idea, and it's clear in retrospect it managed to release at the right time. I don't think one could survive being in a tornado without a scratch, but the tornadoes are exhilarating.
It depends.

Review
I remember the hype this had upon release. It wasn't on the level of Jurassic Park, another Crichton movie although this one is not based on a book, but this was still everywhere. Chasing tornadoes suddenly became popular. There had never been a movie like this that took us this close to tornadoes. This was the second highest grossing movie of 1996, only losing out to the juggernaut that was Independence Day. Director de Bont had just directed his first movie, the action-packed thrill ride Speed. This certainly was at the forefront of 90s disaster movies. Being first on the scene no doubt helped the popularity.

Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt play Bill, Jo

This starts with high energy, showing a family trying to weather a tornado. This doesn't provide much background or character development. We get the year and a storm. While that experience may traumatize some, it's created a storm chaser in Jo (Helen Hunt). As if chasing storms isn't enough, this needs to add tension between Jo and Bill (Bill Paxton) as they're getting divorced. Bill is here to get the divorce papers signed and ends up tagging along. Bill's new wife is not a storm chaser which leads to plenty of comedy as she's thrust into this adventure. She seems like a prop, a break in the action.

Dodge Ram truck, tornado

Everyone welcomes Bill back as he adamantly states he's not back. He just wants the divorce papers signed. This provides a fair amount of exposition, which might be the reason Bill's new wife is here, as Jo and Bill talk about their goals of deploying probes into a tornado. No one has ever done that before. This ragtag group of storm chasers plans to chase a tornado and deploy the probes. Bill 'must' follow them as the divorce papers didn't get signed.

If a tornado wasn't enough of a protagonist, the rival scientist Dr. Miller (Cary Ewes) is also chasing the same storm with a plan to deploy his own probes. Of course his crew dress in all black and drive black vehicles for that extra bit of menacing flair. Miller is in it for the money not the science. It's pure screenwriting drama. Who wouldn't sponsor Bill and Jo, at least partially? This is just a way to create more tension. Bill will triumph over Miller's science and technology because he's a storm whisperer. The movie wants Miller to be the villain just so we don't feel bad if something happens to him. The tornado is villain enough.

The perfunctory drama is there to create the illusion of a story, while this also acts like a commercial for the Dodge Ram truck. The big pretense of this movie is that they must launch the probes directly into a storm. It's a decent enough excuse to chase storms the entire time, but what makes this movie is the destruction and power of tornadoes. It's insane, and the CGI is great. Of course they keep failing to actually launch the probes. That allows us to see tornadoes slinging various objects and even a cow across the screen. This is a movie that started with an idea of a tornado first and worked backwards from there.