As a native Oklahoman who has lived most of his life in Tornado Alley, when the original Twister movie came out 28 years ago it felt like I and my people had been Seen. Finally, here was a movie about living and surviving the storms that are native to our land.
Having watched that movie again a few weeks ago, I felt that perhaps I needed to revise my original assessment. It's a somewhat dopey movie about a dysfunctional couple that should never have been together in the first place and who get back together in the name of scientific discovery, with all kinds of cool special effects thrown in. While the motivations and the actions of the leads haven't aged well, it's still a watchable movie that proved the truth that all we really need to do to survive a storm is run away from it, or at least not drive into the path of the storm.
So this summer, almost three decades later, we finally have a sequel: Twisters. Sure, there are no returning characters, only the tragic figure of Muskogee State College's once-proud doctoral program in Tornadology, town event planners who can't read the freakin' weather forecast and pray their liability coverage will absolve them of responsibility in case of a natural disaster, and the evil villains of Corporate Funding. Seriously, Helen Hunt didn't need the paycheck? We couldn't have at least gotten a cameo from Preacher whose near-death experience all those years ago helped him start a TV ministry about the glories of Aunt Meg's steak and eggs?
Instead, in our new movie tornado chasing has become a cross of big business, redneck freedom signaling, and YouTube stupidity. Our heroine needs to be convinced 5 long years after watching her boyfriend and employees get sucked into the maw of the beast that she needs to return to Oklahoma, but only for One More Job. See, it's gonna be the tornado outbreak of the century! Whereas once she failed to kill a tornado, killing Sally Draper instead and only narrowing escaping a charge of manslaughter, her old corporate friend wants her back to guide around the countryside a pack of the most educated Ph.Ds he can afford but who have no storm-chasing instincts. At first she won't come, because now she's a New Yorker, because, as we know, that's where the hot weather action is now (after all, there was an F1 in Brooklyn only two years ago!). We know it's New York because she has a meaningful conversation with corporate friend in a coffee shop near a subway station (at least we think it is, but none of the subway lines are listed). She wakes up with a ghost in her bed as a subway train rolls by her window, and realizes that she's got unfinished business to do.
After a long and relatively pointless scene where she negotiates her vacation time with the HR office of the National Weather Service, back she comes to lead the polished flock of clueless men. She doesn't know their equipment, plans, or goals, much less the evil funding behind it all, but she'll immediately direct the day-to-day operations of the new startup. Soon, though, she's confronted with a YouTuber with a heart of gold, who was raised by wolves in the foreign country of Arkansas and is recognized in the deleted scene as the bastard unknown son of Bill Paxton. His motley crew, who likely all were inspired by the legacy of Philip Seymour Hoffman's Duffy (he'll tell you why he is who he is, OK?), rally around their hero as they seek to engage in the profit sharing of his videos.
Tornados immediately sprout from the depths of the plains like sea monsters off the Japanese coast. Everybody cheers, though, whether for profit or simply for entertainment. To the side a tiny child tells the adults in broken English, 'Tornado is a friend to all children everywhere!' The child is quickly obliterated by a flying windmill that was uprooted by a tornado (see, Trump is a genius when it comes to windmills!), but the heroine quickly recovers to survive increasingly powerful twisters that wipe out rodeos, movie theaters, oil refineries, and random houses both in towns and fields. All the while she and YouTuber come increasingly close as they share their love of tornados under the watchful eye of mama Maura Tierney, whose barn remains to this day a shrine to her daughter's precocious middle school science project.
It's worth noting that all the while the effects of global warming (more tornados! higher seed prices! crazy weather!) are discussed but never named. It is evident that the producers of this Peabody-winning documentary know that the greater portion of audiences will not be the smug New Yorkers who have a subway train outside their bedroom window, but honest Red-State Americans who know that global warming is as much a hoax as foreign pickups. The terrible tornados who are not the friend of children everywhere might well be defeated, however, as long as fireworks are shot into the tornado before the diapers.
Finally, cut to the money shot of the Biggest Tornado Ever Seen descending upon El Reno, Oklahoma. Lots of running in 200 mile winds enables most of the endangered children at a softball game and vendors at a downtown street fair (dang it, doesn't ANYBODY have a weather app on their phone to advise them to stay home instead???) to smartly run away from a flying trolley and into a movie theater playing a 1930s monster movie. Fortunately the power stays on throughout the total destruction of the town and its paper-mache water tower, so we can see what happened in that movie, which would have been a better use of my $6 than this turkey.
In the midst of the storm, however, our heroine tosses aside sanity and runs out through the swirling debris to the YouTubers' pickup and steals it in order to run it straight into the path of the ongoing tornado. Much like the original movie, they fortunately over the course of 6 hours had revised their entire game plan, loaded up 30 barrels of diapers, and bought a trailer (aluminum) to carry it all, as well as created a whole new class of fireworks to shoot at the enemy of plains-loving people everywhere. The hard-charging non-foreign pickup takes our heroine straight into the storm where she immediately demolishes the tornado just as it's sadly bringing to a end the monster movie, and YouTuber and corporate friend run out to celebrate her heroism as she complains about the slight scratch on her forehead.
Our heroine is ready to go back to New York, but sadly Will Rogers World Airport is closed because of a slight wind. YouTuber has just enough time to cause two weeks of maintenance closure to the airport drop off line (oh, that lovable scamp!) before running into the airport to sweep the heroine off her feet. And they live for happily ever after, we think, or at least until the adrenaline wears off. The End.
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Wild horses couldn't have kept me from seeing this movie. A 4pm Saturday showing was as packed as any movie I've seen in awhile, because here in the heartland we LOVE our tornados. If last summer was the year of Barbenheimer, then can we say that this is the summer of Inside Despicable Twisters?
But once is enough. I was entertained and annoyed all at once, but most importantly I feel dumber for having watched this movie, and this comes from a guy who has watched every episode of the Dukes of Hazard.
6/10
