WARNING: SPOILERS
After over 91,000 people voted, the
International Movie Database gave Twister
6.1 stars out of 10. Do I agree with this rating? Yes and no. Twister is a favorite in our family. We’ve
watched it so many times that we could quote entire scenes word for word and
never get sick of it. But why is it so good?
Jo and Bill are a couple on the
brink of divorce, but if nothing else they have one thing in common, a passion
to find out how tornadoes work. Their passion eventually brings themselves back
together. Passion, that’s what life is about. That alone makes this movie worth
seeing. Crazy characters like Dusty keeps the energy of the movie flowing. I
mean, what’s not to like about an in-your-face, out-going, touchy-feely tornado
chaser? Each character, even minor ones have their own personality. Jo is the
fearless leader; Bill is the extreme; Dusty is, well, Dusty; Rabbit is good and
Rabbit is wise; Jonas is in love with himself, etc. The characters are
developed in such a way that it makes them hard to forget.
Small details and integration really
grab at me; for example. At the beginning of the movie, we see a scene where a
young girl loses her father to a tornado. We later learn that this girl is Jo
Harding, who is now chasing tornados to help create an advanced warning system.
Later when a tornado struck a town, Jo saw a family that looked similar to her
own family when she was young. Another detail is when Jo and Bill got the idea
on how to make Dorothy fly from looking at Aunt Meg’s famous metal sculptures.
Speaking of Dorothy, I thought the few hints of The Wizard of Oz was appropriate
and helped the audience relate to the story.
Witty remarks throughout the whole
movie made it very quotable and fun to watch. The argument between Jo and Bill
never gets old because it is so ridiculous, so marriage like, but oh so funny. Every
single time the characters spoke they expanded on not only the story, but they
revealed a little more of themselves. I am always reading in my screenwriting
books that each scene and every dialogue needs to expand not only the story,
but the character, and I feel that Twister
accomplished that very well.
Visually wise Twister had a lot of moving camera angles which I found
interesting.
Speaking of visuals…
Visually? This movie was extremely interesting;
lots of tornados and metal sculptures to look at. But some things weren’t quite
right. For example you could tell what moving tree was CGI and what was real,
you could see the blurriness of the background for the sky and… did I see the
reflection of the production truck on Bill’s car? I couldn’t quite tell. The
continuity was a bit off in places, like when the tricycle smashed through the
wind shield, there was never a hole left. The windshield got smashed numerous
times but in some shots it was smashed and in other shots it was not. So that
helped dampen the believability of the movie.
Could Jo and Bill really hold onto
that pipe while they were in the center of the twister? Probably not, but what
I can tell you is that that was one of the coolest shots which made that movie
for me. I mean, have YOU ever seen the center of a tornado? I certainly haven’t
and that was pretty darn cool if you ask me.
These are just a few of my thoughts
about this movie, I’m sure I missed a great deal of points. If you’d like to
help me out and pitch in your opinions feel free to comment below! Don’t worry;
I won’t be mad if you don’t like Twister as
much as I do. ;)
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