Twister 27 Years Later – Nostalgia in the Wind

I’ve been living in Texas long enough to appreciate that the weather here is just this side of the absurd. This gives a unique perspective to the special effects in the movie Twister. Twenty-seven years later this movie delivers a relationship under pressure served with a side of technological, meteorological, and emotional nostalgia.

Twister came out May 10, 1996, and it is still one of my favorite all-time movies. I have seen this movie more times than I can count.

In my opinion, Twister is one of Bill Paxton’s (RIP) best films, right up there with Aliens and True Lies. I still find it hilarious that his character in the movie Twister, and he, are both named Bill. Bill Paxton, it turns out, is from right around here. Fort Worth, Texas in fact.

May is the official start of tornado season in these here the “Southern Plain” states of Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. However, this year, June was especially stormy. The weather completely whack-a-doo. Probably why this movie was on my mind.

The extreme weather I saw in real life is much like the weather shown in the movie. Rainstorms with the sun shining. Hail and rain falling over a very specific portion of a town. Rain bands. High winds. High humidity, heat upon heat upon heat.

Those summer days are the ones most Texans refer to when they say “Don’t like the weather? Just wait an hour”. Because a day can start at over 90-degree temps, blasting sunshine. Humidity so high it feels like 110 in the shade. Give it an hour and clouds roll in so thick it looks like nighttime in the middle of the day. The wind starts blowing, the temperature drops. Then the sky opens up, and hail the size of golf balls drops from the sky. You are chilled to the bone and soaking wet in the sudden rain storm that won’t quit. Then the next day you wake up and it starts all over again with deceiving sunshine. 

In real life

Back when this movie came out, I was still living on the East coast. At that point, I had not seen a tornado in real life. Living in Texas for the better part of a decade has given the movie some additional relevance. I have seen a tornado in person (from a safe distance). I have driven through a hail storm that seemed to come out of nowhere. The weather in the vast state of Texas is wild and sometimes unreal.

I have experienced the vast nothingness of the southern plains. Grass as far as the eye can see, not a speck of civilization on the horizon. It looks a hell of a lot more exciting on film backed with a Van Halen soundtrack. In real life the experience is a trial by fire — how far can you drive before you fall asleep at the wheel?

Mother Nature is a Bitch

It is Twister season and I have been noting the aspects of the movie that I enjoy the most. Aside from the weird CGI attempts to simulate windswept debris and full-sized trees being thrown about like twigs, the geological simulation of the actual F4 and F5 tornados feels legit in my opinion, and I have been lucky enough to see some actual tornados, if only from afar. Tornados are no joke. The effects of the dark clouds whipping over the land destroying everything in sight feel very real. The flying cow scene is still hilarious and memorable at the same time. 

Things of a bygone era

The storm chasers in this movie were using the height of technology at the time. 27 years ago does not seem like it was that long ago. But in the world of technology it is practically a lifetime. It is fun to see them using portable computers with laptop screens as thick as the computers themselves. The car phones hard-wired into the car, and wooden siding on a station wagon (I know that doesn’t qualify as technology). The internet was not a thing back then. They used paper maps.

There was an entire dialogue all about how one set of scientists argued about rolling the maps versus folding the maps. That whole scene doesn’t hit the same if you’re talking about navigating using a GPS or even Google Maps.

Twister in real-life science?

However, I have wondered if the idea posed in the movie had any scientific merit? Would understanding a funnel give scientists the data needed to increase tornado warnings?

Climate change is driving tornado alley into neighborhood territory. The Netflix documentary Earthstorm dedicated the second episode to tornadoes. It shows how the weather patterns have spread to create tornados in parts of the country that never saw those weather patterns before, like Florida, Chicago and eastern states. Gives a whole new meaning to tornado season.

Speaking of which, Michael Crichton was an unsung hero of this film, this was the heyday of his writing and I still love how this story about a team of storm chasers tackles scientific discovery, juxtaposed against the storylines of interpersonal conflict, divorce, and rivalry of competing labs, with the horror and unpredictable cruelty of Mother Nature. 

Their competition, the evil scientists with corporate sponsorships predictably drive all-black vehicles which they drive in an orderly almost soulless caravan.

Truly embodying the villainous spirit of scientists who are “in it for the money, not the science”.  

Tornadoes served with a side of broken marriage

I remember the first time I saw this movie and my reaction to the scene where Jo Harding reveals the experimental “Dorothy”. When they were talking about their weather machine, I thought they were talking about an actual child. That she had brought their daughter into the field. That he somehow had been estranged, as the soon-to-be ex-husband, and here was where they were going to reunite out in this pasture. Haha. 

That is what coming from a broken home will do to you how you automatically assume that this is alluding to a custody-related situation. Not the physical embodiment of a previously unrealized idea. An experiment. It still tickles me that this was my first reaction, and I am sure that was the intention of the screenwriters. To add tension to a couple going through a potential divorce. But triggering to those of us who are children of divorce.

Gauntlet thrown

At one later scene, his fiancée tells Jo Harding that she hopes that this scientific escapade isn’t a last ditch effort to keep her separated husband in her life. It never sat well with me that they weren’t actually divorced, but Bill was already in a fairly serious relationship. Moreso that Jo took this all in stride, and tries to make light of the fact that when he left her, he started dating Melissa, and no one else. It’s practically insulting how quickly he threw himself into another serious relationship.

Strikes a little close to home, and I am glad that I can watch this movie and not be triggered by memories of my own situation with the ex. He very quickly started a relationship with another woman, and this woman he then married after our divorce was final. The only difference is that he didn’t wait until we were separated, he was cheating with this other woman while coming home and sleeping in the same bed with me because he assumed I didn’t know.

Escalating intensity

The rest of the movie unfolds with each tornado escalating intensity, coupled with their ending marriage being tested in deeper ways until the crescendo of the final challenge.

It starts as Bill comforts his current fiancée after the first tornado. When they go chasing after the second tornado, Bill and Jo are in the front seat with the fiancée in the back as the third wheel observing their dynamic.

They skid through the second tornado, they see cows, and at the end Bill and Jo share an excited hug when they make it through their brush with danger unscathed.

Right before the third tornado they have a pit stop to visit Jo’s Aunt May, where she gives Melissa an inside look at the shared history as the team tells stories around the table of their adventures, and sees a side of Bill that she has not seen before.

Then they leave to chase the third tornado, and he abandons Melissa to ride in the back with Dusty as Bill and Jo leap ahead to chase after the tornado. The attempt fails, and they have a difference of opinion where Jo’s single-minded determination to keep going is met with Bill’s readiness to throw in the towel and call that experiment a wash. The conversation they have in the road seems to be a confrontation that they should have had before Bill left, right?

Obsess much?

I found this confusing as I got older. Like why did this revelation about how she was obsessed with her father’s death (daddy issues?) and how that shaped her career choices and seems to have affected her marriage, why is this the conversation they are having now and not previously? How long have they been separated?

We know that she had the paperwork in December. Based on the fact that Jo was still wearing her wedding band, clearly in denial, and the fact that he was ready to get divorced so he could marry Melissa, Bill must have filed for divorce.

Apparently uncontested divorces in Oklahoma don’t necessarily need a lawyer. I deduced that she lived in Oklahoma based on some context clues, such as Dusty wearing the OU emblem hat, since he had been part of their team for years and worked in the lab.

And the Muskogee State College emblem on the side of Dorothy. Even storm chasers on the road need a home base. So the Harding team had a home state of Oklahoma.

I am going to make a blanket statement that is not based on anything other than casual observation, but men in a relationship with a headstrong independent female tend to move on quickly. So Bill and Jo probably weren’t separated more than 7 or 8 months.

The Other Woman

Bill’s fiancée may be accomplished but she doesn’t seem to be that strong or independent. Cushy job, cushy life, thinks of dangerous situations as a metaphor because she couldn’t conceive ever actually putting oneself in danger for the greater good. Oddly enough, I stumbled across this post that poses Dr. Melissa Reeves as a girl-boss feminist icon. I don’t know if I agree, even after reading it. I don’t know how feminist or iconic being the “other woman” would be, and I am not sure that someone girl-bossing their life would put up with the mansplaining shenanigans of Bill Harding as he parades through the Midwest chasing storms and confessing his dedication to his soon-to-be ex-wife. Seems like a lot of bullshit I wouldn’t put up with.

Conclusion? Communication was not their strong suit. Bill probably walked out one day after they had some passive aggressive argument. He went for “cigarettes” and never came back. So Jo got ghosted and went back to work figuring he’d come back once he cooled off, but he came back with divorce papers. So she avoided signing off on them thinking that she could bring him back with one last ditch effort.

Stay together for the children

She birthed their figurative child(ren): Dorothy I-IV (quadruplets!). He comes back. He sees them in action, and through the excursion they have the discussion they couldn’t have before he left the first time.

Dr. Melissa Reeves knew what was up when she showed up to the middle of a cow field in her white power suit. She also didn’t call out of her office or direct her clients to reach out to her later, instead remaining on call with a cell phone in a time when cell usage was not widespread as a power flex.

She knew this guy she was with was hung up on his ex. He was reluctant to confront Jo and the only reason he was coming to get the papers signed was because Melissa was escorting him to make it happen. Left to his own devices, Bill and Jo likely would have remained estranged married for decades and he would have carried on with his life while keeping his wife on the hook.

In the end, after this confrontation, Bill and Jo come together. They bond over the shared tragic demise of their colleague frenemies. And when his fiancée leaves him to continue on his death trip to nowhere, they get the band back together now that their figurative child has borne fruit and given their relationship a new purpose and focus. Will they get the counseling they need? Will they learn to communicate in a healthy way and resolve to make their marriage work?

Or is Melissa the first of many other women to come in the future when Bill inevitably leaves again when he and Jo fail to communicate?