Twisting the effects away in hair-raising tornado yarn

Twisting the effects away in hair-raising tornado yarn

By Yenni Kwok

JAKARTA (JP): In Twister, Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton may have
the leading roles, chasing dreaded tornadoes for the sake of
science and humanity. But there is no doubt that the real star of
the movie is the tornado itself.

It is wild and powerful. It hurls, flattens everything to the
ground, picks up everything; houses, cars, even cows.

Hunt (Mad About You) plays Jo Harding, a tornado-chasing
scientist and the estranged wife of ex-tornado chaser, Bill
Harding (Paxton of Apollo 13). Their marriage is very close to
divorce. Bill is engaged to be married to Dr. Melissa Reeves
(Jamie Gertz), until he realizes his love of tornadoes outweighs
his love for Melissa.

It is the tornadoes that reunite Jo and Bill. Bill ends up
joining Jo and her eight college-nerd looking assistants, chasing
tornadoes in a convoy of a pickup, motor home and trucks. They
invent Dorothy, data gathering sensor equipment which supplies
breakthrough data for better tornado warning.

Because Dorothy's sensors need to be at the core of a twisting
tornado, the team need to be ahead of it to place the equipment.
At the same time, they race against Jonas (Cary Elwes), who
steals Bill's concept of Dorothy, and his well-funded, corporate-
sellout team, who drive in their black Darth Vader-like vehicles.

Twister has the right team for an action movie. It was written
by Michael Crichton, whose resume includes the box-office
thriller Jurassic Park, together with his wife Anne-Marie Martin.
The director is Jan De Bont, whose last film Speed skyrocketed
Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, the cute couple of the movie, to
stardom.

As a result, the action in Twister is less thrilling than the
in Jurassic Park (the dinosaurs take more lives than the
tornadoes), but far more enjoyable than any action in Speed.

Sure, there is romance. Jo and Bill cannot hide their
lingering mutual attraction to each other. However, the romance
is unexciting compared to their adventures with tornadoes. It is
more thrilling to see Jo and Bill challenge the tornadoes, and it
is certainly more fun to see tornadoes make cows fly than seeing
the pair's longing looks.

Even Elwes (Princess Bride, Dracula) fails to win the
audience's heart as the antagonist. He certainly loses out to the
other star of the movie, the tornado.

It is certainly not Elwes's fault. Every feature film needs
some kind of human conflict. Perhaps the fear of Twister becoming
a Hollywood docudrama prompted the screenwriters to include
romance and rivalry in the main story of pursuit of natural
disaster.

Hunt is the one who brings human soul to the movie. After all,
her character Jo is the most complex of all. As Jo chases
tornadoes in the name of science, she also chases answers to dark
periods in her past. A tornado blew her father away in front of
her when she was small.

Obsession

That is how her obsession with tornadoes started. She grew
into a strong-willed, independent and witty woman, which is not
such a departure from her character Jamie Buchman in the sitcom
Mad About You.

Paxton, on the other hand, is as stiff as wood. His tense
seriousness may have been right for his role as an astronaut in
Apollo 13, but falls flat in the thrilling movie of natural
disaster.

While the Hardings and their young scientists jump in
excitement after their near-death adventure with tornadoes,
Melissa usually stands speechless or cries in fear. As familiar
as scientists may be to natural disasters, we may start to wonder
whether these ones feel afraid as they drive alongside the
unpredictable tornadoes. Surely Melissa's reaction is possibly
the most human of all.

In Twister, watch out for little reminders of Judy Garland and
her ever-famous Wizard of Oz. After all, in the United States
tornadoes are synonymous with her and the movie. Here are some
examples. Jo's dog from her childhood, Toby, looks like Toto of
Wizard of Oz. Jo's aunt, Meg, is watching a Judy Garland movie
when a tornado hits her town. And of course, the sensor equipment
is named Dorothy!

Also checkout the special effects. John Frazier and his team
do a very good job in creating dark, angry-looking skies,
tornadoes raging over water and ground, flying houses, a flying
gas truck, and of course the highlight of it all, the confused
flying cows. You are most likely to leave the theater gushing
over the tornadoes, not Hunt, Paxton or any of the human stars.