Twister

There is something about Twister that I can't help but love. It is just so unabashedly entertaining about it and I usually watch it every summer. I can't help it. It may just be that I grew up in the Midwest where what to do in the case of a tornado is drilled into our heads at a young age. It could also be that my uncle Bruce is a Meteorologist, so I come by my interest in extreme weather naturally. Now, 25 years later, I still love this movie as much as I did back in the summer of 1996. Also, it's worth noting this film gave us the single greatest MPAA rating ever: Rated PG-13 for intense depiction of very bad weather.

Bill Harding (played by Bill Paxton) travels out into the field with his new fiancee, Melissa Reeves (played by Jami Gertz) to get divorce papers signed by his soon to be ex-wife Jo (played by Helen Hunt). Upon arriving and reuniting with his former Storm Chaser team, he discovers they had finally created a device he designed named DOROTHY that is created to aid in the study of tornados by releasing dozens of sensors into the tornado and transmit the data back to the team. With a onslaught of storms with the potential for numerous tornadoes, Bill can't resist the urge to re-join the team and try and bring his design to fruition, with Melissa along for the ride. Things get more complicated when another team shows up lead by Bill and Jo's former colleague, Jonas (played by Cary Elwes), who they discover has stolen Bill's design and created his own instrument pack. Now the race is on to see who can launch their pack first   

The film was directed by Jan DeBont from a script written by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin (with uncredited re-writes from the likes of Joss Whedon, Steven Zaillian and Jeff Nathanson). They crafted a fun adventure tale that runs tight getting started right away and keeping the action moving at a brisk pace with the love triangle between Bill, Jo and Melissa adding some weight to the story as well. Even 25 years later, the effects from Industrial Light and Magic still hold up for the most part (with a couple notable exceptions that never looked good). The film also makes good use of practical effects to simulate the extreme weather conditions including some inventive but harsh lighting techniques to make the skies behind the characters look darker than they really were. Then to top it off, we get a fantastic score for the film from Mark Mancina that remains one of my favorites. I purchased the expanded score album and I can confirm listening to it while driving across the prairies of North Dakota makes the drive feel a lot more exciting.  

The film assembled quite an impressive cast, led by Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt. Paxton and Hunt play off each other quite well as bickering exes that in the midst of the chaos of the film find their love for one another being rekindled. Helen Hunt has a bit more heavy lifting to do from a dramatic standpoint as her character Jo suffers from severe trauma of witnessing her father being killed during a tornado as a young girl and she pulls off those moments quite well. Up until this point, Bill Paxton had primarily been a well-respected character actor so this was a rare leading role for him but he just nails it perfectly. Jami Gertz does well in her role as Melissa and is often the comic relief offering up some of the more memorable ones of the film. The film is populated by a number of great character actors to add a little color to the film as well, including an early notable appearance by Philip Seymour Hoffman as the adrenaline junkie team member Dusty and Lois Smith as Jo's tough and wise Aunt Meg. Cary Elwes makes for a suitably smarmy villain as the rival team leader Jonas, whose personality and ego makes it clear why his former team members hate him so much. 

Twister is a film that I have loved ever since I saw it the theater back on Opening Night in May 1996. It's one of those films I've never gotten tired of watching. It is just straight up enjoyable popcorn entertainment. It also kicked off a whole new disaster movie trend over the latter half of the 90's, curiously with a number of them being duplicates (looking at you Dante's Peak/Volcano and Deep Impact/Armageddon). Still, for me Twister ranks as one of the best but then again I may be biased.