Twister: Simply Audacious, Audaciously Simple

I wanted some fresh air today. As I write this, I'm sitting on my front porch, a gentle breeze flowing over my body and raising goosebumps on my legs. At the same time, violent winds blow the Amblin Entertainment logo credit into thousands of jagged pieces on my computer screen. I've always been amazed by the weather, especially by how it can be so calm one moment and so savage the next, and though I've never seen a tornado, I've harbored a keen and persistent interest in them from a very young age. This means that mixing movies and tornadoes, two distinct passions of mine, is like mixing a sort of cinematic drug.

Growing up in a Conservative Christian household, I wasn't allowed to watch Twister when I was little because it had too many bad words in it. Of course, what I'm watching today would make my past parents and my former Sunday school teachers blush, but being keenly interested in tornadoes and unable to watch the definitive movie about them really piqued my curiosity. Once I came of age, I was fascinated by the at-the-time awesome special effects that brought my favorite weather phenomena to life, but even at such a young age, I knew something about the movie was ringing hollow. Something was missing. Rewatching it today, I now know what it was.

In a world of sequels, prequels, and reboots that it almost immediately preceded, Twister lives on an island and has virtually no connection to any other movie, not even its slightly superior legacy sequel. It is a story of predictable reconciliation between soon-to-be ex-spouses with a zeal for the weather, with the flavor of tornadoes mixed in to make their passions just that much more interesting. It is little more than a slideshow of gradually-intensifying storms that mostly understands that people go to disaster movies to watch cows being blown at the heroes, or maybe it's just the same cow, passing by them again in the circular winds of the funnel. This is not a complicated movie. It is not trying to make more of itself than it is, and so it lives to tell its story while other disaster movies like it get swept away in the winds of their own baseless ambition.

Its computer-generated tornadoes of every shape and size are rudimentary by today's standards, but they were groundbreaking for the time. We see some of them blow away barns. We see others demolish houses while estranged lovers cling to each other, desperately trying to avoid being sucked up to the heavens. But if you ask me, it's the tornadoes we don't see that are the most terrifying. A couple of tornadoes in Twister strike under the cover of night, and this is where the movie's brilliantly overwhelming sound design comes into full earshot, a cacophony of churned-up metal, wood, and dirt that makes for a terrifying spectacle that is arguably better heard than it is seen.

All of these tornadoes, whether they occur during the day or the night, seem to have something of a personal vendetta against Bill and Jo, the imminent divorcees who we all know will reconcile by the end of the movie. On many levels, Twister is about these two and their complicated relationship, and it doesn't always work. That's because it rests every ounce of its emotional weight on two thinly drawn characters. Their personalities take a back seat to the tornado action when they should be sharing the stage more, and for as much screen time as they're given, I wish they had more to their personalities than their upcoming divorce, which Twisters had a simple but brilliant answer for with Tyler Owens's whirlwind-riding cowboy persona. This is one case where the sequel outdoes the original.

Twister is fun. It's uncomplicated, audacious, and predictable, one tornado-related setpiece after the other. I wish there were more variety to it beyond the shape, size, and time of day the tornadoes strike, but for what this movie is, it's almost strangely satisfying. Its heroes are rambunctious white knights held together by duct tape and one too many drinks, while its villains are sleazy corporate types and bad therapists, typecast to check the exact boxes you'd expect. Twister is not subtle, but at least you'll never be at a loss for exactly what the movie wants you to feel.

It's been one day since I started writing this review, and I'm back here on the front porch, finishing it as a gentle breeze once again flows over me. How can the weather be so violent one minute and so serene the next? Twister doesn't answer that or any other high-thinking question, but it does reinforce nature's intrigue. Disaster aficionados have flocked to it for thirty years for good reason, and I don't see them going anywhere for the next thirty. At times, a movie is supposed to challenge everything below Heaven, and at others, it's just supposed to loft it thirty thousand feet into the air and blow it into a million pieces.

Twister - 7/10

Matthew 16:1-4