Movie Review Twister Blows Away Reality Essay - 1,228 words

Movie Review: Twister blows away reality A storm chaser's dream come true is to get close enough to a mile-wide tornado to shoot unique video of nature's extreme fury. Maybe even take some close-up measurements of the storm's surroundings, if the situation warrants. But never will a chase team be caught racing into the middle of a cornfield toward the heart of a whirling funnel, no matter what the prize. Yet that's exactly what Twister actors Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt do as "professional" storm chasers in the debut movie of the 1996 summer season. In reality, storm chasers consider dirt roads, let alone fields of dirt, to be death traps as heavy rain can instantly turn them into axle-deep mud bogs trapping chasers and their vehicles in harm's way. Twister is full of such annoying oversights.


The husband-and-wife chase team take incredible risks no real storm chaser would dare take (that's Hollywood). Their blissful ignorance of immediate danger is aided by dumb luck every time they drive right up to each tornado. Their goal is to stick a barrel of tiny sensors into the tornado's path where they would be sucked into the twister while gathering data needed to improve an early warning system. This is plausible, cutting-edge science that just might become a reality. As this is happening, however, objects much, much heavier than their truck swing magically around them (as if suspended by giant cables from a crane, or something) while the truck remains firmly planted on solid ground.


Scene after scene defy the basic physical forces governing motion (kind of like Director Jan De Bont's "brilliant" 20 -ton bus leap across a 50 -foot opening in a nearly level highway span in his movie Speed). Sir Isaac Newton would have slapped a hand to his head and let gravity take over as he fainted in disgust. Another blatant oversight is leaving a neon sign brightly lit after a violent tornado thrashes a drive-in movie theater. Electricity is one of the first things to go during severe storms, sometimes before the first damaging winds hit.


On the movie set, cars are thrown around like toys, yet the lights are still on; makes me wonder if the lights are on, but nobody's home in De Bont's head. To be fair and not paint a totally bleak picture, Twister does have some good parts. Jamie Gertz plays a rather believable, non-tornado buff who gets dragged along on chases only to be terrified by falling trucks and flying cows. She's a shaking, babbling mess who retains enough insight to walk away before the movie's final tornado chase begins, an act perhaps we viewers should have drawn on, for the worst was to come at the end of the movie. That's when the largest tornado of the cinematic experience known as Twister envelops Paxton and Hunt as they strap themselves to a metal pipe inside a tiny wood shed.


The building is shredded, yet our iron-like chaser heroes are just a bit wind blown but otherwise unscathed. Impossible! They would have been what I like to call cat food, torn apart beyond our wildest, horribly twisted imaginations. In history, true stories of these unnatural occurrences are well documented. Take a casual read through Key Davidson's book Twister: The Science of Tornadoes and the Making of an Adventure Movie if you don't believe me. For those unfamiliar with the graphic detail of real tornado video, I will say the special effects in Twister do a pretty good job of showing the tornado's rapid circulation.


Whirling dirt and debris are depicted using dark brown and black colors, getting the maelstrom's look ess ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: early warning, helen hunt, storm, warning system, tornado

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