Twister (1996 film)

Twister
Twister theatrical poster
Directed by	Jan de Bont
Written by	Michael Crichton Anne-Marie Martin
Produced by	Ian Bryce Michael Crichton Kathleen Kennedy
Starring	Helen Hunt Bill Paxton Jami Gertz Cary Elwes Philip Seymour Hoffman Alan Ruck
Cinematography	Jack N. Green
Edited by	Michael Kahn
Music by	Van Halen The Goo Goo Dolls Mark Mancina Anthony Kiedis (uncredited) Dave Navarro (uncredited) Chad Smith (uncredited) Gioacchino Rossini Ennio Morricone Shania Twain
Distributed by	Warner Bros. (USA) Universal Studios (non-USA)
Release dates	May 17, 1996
Running time	113 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$92,000,000 (estimated)
Box office	$494,471,524

Twister is a 1996 disaster film starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as storm chasers researching tornadoes. It was directed by Jan de Bont. The film was based upon a script by Michael Crichton and his wife, former actress Anne-Marie Martin.

In the movie, a team of "storm chasers" try to perfect a data-gathering instrument, designed to be released into the funnel of a tornado, while competing with another better-funded team with a similar device.

Twister is notable for being the first movie ever to be released on the DVD format and the last ever to be released on HD-DVD. Twister will soon be released in high definition on both HD DVD and Blu-ray disc.

Main Characters

Jo Harding: The leader of her storm team. When she was five, Jo's father was killed in an F5 tornado because of a less-than-perfect warning system. Ever since then, she's dedicated her life to creating the advanced warning system. During the film she is in the process of divorcing from Bill Harding, but because she still loves him, she is hesitant to do so. Jo is dedicated and persistent in what she does.

Bill Harding: Jo's ex-husband. He quit storm chasing to become a weatherman and has also gotten engaged to Melissa, a therapist, despite his divorce not yet finalized. Bill has a short fuse and always must have things his way. When he was a storm chaser, he was noted for being exceedingly reckless in his methods, being described as "the most out-of-control son of a bitch in the game."

Melissa Reeves: Bill's soft-tempered and easily frightened fiancee. The storm chasing makes her uneasy around Bill.

Jonas Miller: Jo and Bill's rival chaser. Unlike Jo, Jonas has corporate sponsors and tends to chase for the publicity and money. Jonas is cocky and enjoys taunting Bill. Jonas is a scientist with, as Bill says, 'no instincts.' This point is emphasized through the film, as Jonas and his team constantly follow Jo and Bill's movements.

Eddie: Jonas' reluctant assistant. Eddie is more reasonable than Jonas in several ways.

Aunt Meg: Jo's aunt. She is close to everyone in Jo's team and feeds them steak and eggs when they stop by. She lives in Wakita with her dog, Mose. She and her neighbours were hit by a tornado.

Dustin 'Dusty' Davis: A member of Jo's chase team. The most extroverted and wise-cracking of the team, Dusty is the 'frat-boy' type. He drives a mini-bus called the "Barn Burner" and listens to loud music constantly.

Robert 'Rabbit' Nurick: A member of Jo's chase team. He acts as the navigator for when the group is chasing, and he is goofy but a little smart-alecky as well.

Sanders: A member of Jo's chase team. He is Rabbit's co-navigator.

Tim 'Beltzer' Lewis: A member of Jo's chase team. Beltzer is a lot like Bill in the fact that he has a short-fuse.

Haynes: A member of Jo's chase team. Haynes is the only other female on the team besides Jo. She is calm and quiet, but does have a wild side.

Jason 'Preacher' Rowe: A member of Jo's chase team. Preacher is the oldest member of the team. It is not certain what his role in the group is. He seems to enjoy continually speaking in pseudo-poetic verse.

Laurence: A member of Jo's chase team. Laurence is a nervous and quiet guy and is in charge of photographs and video when the group chases.

Joey: A member of Jo's chase team. He handles the Doppler and machinery.

Plot

June 1969, the film begins in a rural farm, as a severe thunderstorm hits. (They did not feature any downpours of rain in the beginning, just threatening skies and lightning.) Jo's father is watching a TV news report about a tornado warning for Oklahoma County. His wife quickly awakens their daughter, Jo ( Played by Spy Kids Co-star Alexa Vega), and all 3 take off for the storm cellar as a tornado hits the family farm. As lightning flashes all around them, one bolt hits a tree; sending branches crashing to the ground and chickens running. Once inside, his daughter screams that the family dog named Toby (named after Toto) is still outside, and Jo's father opens the cellar door just in time to let Toby in. As Jo's mother lights a candle, the twister makes a direct hit on the cellar. The twister turns out to be too powerful, and after a struggle, it rips the cellar door off—which takes Jo's father with it-into the vortex while Jo and her mother scream in horror. Daylight reveals that the tornado destroyed everything it touched (except some of Jo's family's possessions).

Many years after, the story revolves around two married storm chasers—Dr. Jo Harding (Hunt), now an adult, and her soon to be ex-husband Bill Harding (Paxton). As the film begins, Bill has gone into the fields of Oklahoma to find Jo and her team of storm chasers. Bill is a former weather researcher and storm chaser who has taken a job as a weather reporter and is about to marry his new girlfriend, Dr. Melissa Reeves (Jami Gertz), a Reproductive Therapist. Bill is seeking Jo’s signature for the final divorce papers.

When they meet, Bill discovers that Jo has built DOROTHY(named after Dorothy Gale), a device that Bill invented. DOROTHY is designed to release hundreds of sensors into the center of a tornado to study its structure. He also meets up with Dr. Jonas Miller (Cary Elwes), a smug fellow meteorologist and storm chaser. Miller is a savvy fund raiser but has little instinct for field work and has questionable professional scruples. When Bill discovers that Jonas has “invented” a device almost identical to DOROTHY called D.O.T. 3, Bill is enraged and vows to deploy DOROTHY before Miller can claim credit for his idea.

Bill joins Jo and her eccentric team of storm chasers, which includes Dustin 'Dusty' Davis (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Robert 'Rabbit' Nurick (Alan Ruck). Jo's team enjoys the thrill of the chase, but to Jo it's more than that, as she is seeking to understand the thing that took her father. If the team is successful, DOROTHY will help increase warning times and save lives.

Tensions rise between Jo and Bill when they have several close calls with dangerous tornadoes as they try to implement the new device. Through these ordeals, it becomes obvious to everyone but them that they still have strong feelings for one another. | Jo's team stops in Canton, Oklahoma for the night. An F4 twister hits the town while they are in a drive-in movie theater watching The Shining. The squad doesn't have time to prepare for it so they seek refuge in a metal garage building. The garage takes a hard sideswipe from the tornado, which leaves the building severely damaged, and "Preacher" injured when he is struck in the head by an airborne hubcap. Melissa is too frightened by it and decides to leave Bill since she does not want to go through it and because she notices the strong bond still holding Jo and Bill together. The powerful F4 tornado next moves on to the town of Wakita, Oklahoma, where Jo's Aunt Meg (Lois Smith) and her dog Mose live, wrecking her house and injuring her and many others.

The team then attacks their goal with even more fervor, wanting to succeed to prevent more injuries and deaths. They modify the sensors with an idea inspired by the windmill sculptures that Aunt Meg had in her front yard, by cutting up aluminum cans to create wings on each sensor so the tornado will pick them up more effectively. Soon, hot on the trail of another tornado, they next witness Jonas and his driver Eddie (Zach Grenier) drive right next to an F5 tornado. Jo and Bill try to warn Jonas that the tornado might shift its track and come at them, but Jonas won't listen. Sure enough, Bill's prediction proves to be true as the tornado changes course. A section of a radio tower's antenna picked up from the tornado flies right through the truck's windshield, impaling Eddie in the head while Jonas watches in the passenger seat. The twister then sucks the truck up. After a few moments of the truck becoming airborne, the truck crashes back to the ground and explodes, killing Jonas.

Jo and Bill decide that they will have to come dangerously close to the tornado in order to successfully release the sensors. They are able to successfully release the sensors into the tornado, but to avoid DOROTHY being blown away too early again, they leave it strapped to the back of Bill's pickup to increase the weight and jump out, leaving the truck on cruise control through a corn field. The idea works. Suddenly, seeming alive, the tornado shifts its direction, heading straight for them. They first take cover from the tornado in a barn full of slaughtering tools, but decide to look for something a little less dangerous. They run to a small building, which turns out to be a water pump house, and then tie themselves to a water pipe by leather drive belts. The tornado runs directly over the pump house, with the camera showing the inside of the F5's funnel with Bill and Jo being vacuumed toward it. They are able to hold on, and as the tornado disintegrates over top of them, leaving an almost clear and beautiful sky, the rest of the team shows up, all while "streams of data" (such as wind speed, air pressure, etc...) are pouring in, proving that DOROTHY was a success. The film ends with a retreating wide shot showing the damage path of the tornado, with only a farmhouse, near the location where Bill and Jo took shelter, virtually untouched.

Cast

• Helen Hunt ... Jo
• Bill Paxton ... Bill
• Jami Gertz ... Melissa
• Cary Elwes ... Jonas
• Lois Smith ... Aunt Meg
• Philip Seymour Hoffman ... 'Dusty'
• Alan Ruck ... 'Rabbit'
• Sean Whalen ... Sanders
• Scott Thomson ... 'Preacher'
• Todd Field ... Beltzer
• Joey Slotnick ... Joey
• Wendle Josepher ... Haynes
• Jeremy Davies ... Laurence
• Zach Grenier ... Eddie
• Gregory Sporleder .... Willie
• Patrick Fischler .... The Communicator
• Nicholas Sadler .... Kubrick
• Ben Weber .... Stanley

• Anthony Rapp .... Tony
• Eric LaRay Harvey .... Eric
• Abraham Benrubi .... Bubba
• Jake Busey .... Mobile lab technician
• Melanie Hoopes .... Patty
• J. Dean Lindsay .... Dean
• Dean Kelpine .... Diner mechanic
• Sharonlyn Morrow .... Waitress
• Richard Lineback .... Father
• Rusty Schwimmer .... Mother
• Alexa Vega .... Jo – 5 years old
• Taylor Gilbert .... NSSL scientist – Bryce
• Bruce Wright .... NSSL scientist – Murphy
• Gary England, Jeff Lazalier, Rick Mitchell .... TV meteorologists
• John Thomas Rhyne .... Paramedic
• Paul Douglas .... Bodger
• Samantha McDonald, Jennifer F. Hamilton .... Drive-in girls
• Anneke de Bont .... Farm girl

Theme park attraction

Twister: Ride It Out
Ride statistics
Theme	Twister
Duration	12
Preceded By	Ghostbusters Spooktacular

Twister... Ride It Out is an attraction located at Universal Studios Florida. It is based on the 1996 blockbuster film staring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. The attraction takes guests to a small mock-up of the Oklahoma town of Wakita. Video monitors show home movies of tornadoes shot, and signs carry information about the Fujita Scale.

As guests walk into the "Twister filming center", Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt talk about filming the movie. As soon as they are done, guests walk into a new room which is a square model of Aunt Meg's house after the twister. When guests walk into the kitchen, televisions are stuck into the wall, supposedly by force. Bill and Helen appear on the TV and talk about what is ahead. The moment they finish, guests walk into a scene, resembling the Drive-In scene in the movie. Suddenly, sirens go off, scenes from The Shining (which is being shown at the drive-in in the movie) appear on the screen, and then winds in the room get stronger. A small light can be seen inside a mock-up of a house, as well as voices from a family getting into their storm cellar. All of a sudden, a tornado drops from the sky, sprinklers turn on and a tree is split in half by lightning. Guests suddenly notice handlebars and grab on. Soon, the tornado wrecks the Screen, the food station, the car, and makes a thrilling effect with fire. As the storm dies, the stage drops, giving guests a final scare to remember the tornado's fury. There is a giftshop at the end named Aftermath.

Trivia

• The DOROTHY instrument in the film is loosely based on a real-life experiment that NOAA attempted in the 1980s with an instrument called the TOtable Tornado Observatory, or TOTO. It was designed to be placed in the path of an oncoming tornado where various measurements could be taken. However, TOTO was ultimately unsuccessful and it was retired in 1987.
• A very young Alexa Vega, co-star of the Spy Kids films, plays Helen Hunt's character when she was little in the prologue.
• Working titles for the film were Catch The Wind and Wind Devils.
• This movie features 2 tracks "associated" with Van Halen: the instrumental "Respect the Wind" (performed by Eddie Van Halen and Alex Van Halen) and a band track called "Humans Being". The former is the only song on which the elder of the two brothers, Alex, has worked on something without the band Van Halen throughout his entire career (The song was credited to Eddie and Alex Van Halen).. Incidentally, the second song was the last one recorded with vocalist Sammy Hagar before his acrimonious exit from the band in 1996.
• A joint production between Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures, which is why the movies on the drive-in marquee are The Shining, a Warner Bros. release, and Psycho, a Universal owned production. Also Helen Hunt, and Jack Nicholson would star in "As Good As It Gets" the next year
• The original tagline for the movie was "It Sucks", but the producers ultimately decided to go in a different direction, thinking that this tagline would provide critics with ammunition if they didn't like the movie. The tagline that was eventually agreed upon was "The Dark Side of Nature".
• The movie received a PG-13 rating for "intense depiction of very bad weather".
• Many references were made incorrectly to the Fujita scale. For instance, the weatherman in the beginning of the movie (a flashback scene that is supposed to be to 1969 – see later errors) made reference to an F5 tornado. This is a mistake; the Fujita scale was not introduced until 1971.
• In several occasions during the movie, the storm chasers estimate a tornado's intensity while it is occurring. In reality, a tornado's intensity was only able to be measured by the damage it left behind, generally after ground and aerial surveys were conducted by the National Weather Service, which used to take weeks to complete. While meteorologists now are able to more accurately predict tornados' intensities as they are occurring, in 1996 this was not feasible. A tornado's intensity could be determined by considering its size, speed, and debris cloud, but such predictions were just ballpark guesses.
• The sound of the tornado was produced by recording a camel's moan and slowing it down.
• Several actual television meteorologists from Oklahoma are featured throughout the movie. In the film's prologue, Gary England of KWTV-9 Oklahoma City can be seen on a small television in actual footage from the early 1970s. He can also be heard later in the movie reporting over the radio, and even delivering his (locally) famous closing tagline, "Stay with News 9; we'll keep you advised." Gary also served as a technical advisor on the film. Former KFOR-4 Oklahoma City (and later KJRH-2 Tulsa) meteorologist Jeff Lazalier is seen on television interviewing Cary Elwes's character, Jonas Miller, during the meal scene at Aunt Meg's. Soon after, Rick Mitchell, Chief Meteorologist at KOCO-5 Oklahoma City can also be heard giving a weather report over the radio. (On a related note: in the film's prologue the year is given as 1969, however, Gary England did not actually work as a meteorologist until 1972.) Mike Morgan also of KFOR was also briefly seen.
• Sega Pinball released a pinball machine based on this movie.
• On May 21st, 1996, a tornado destroyed a Drive-in theater in St. Catharine's, Ontario which was scheduled to show the movie Twister. An Associated Press article titled "TORNADO DESTROYS 'TWISTER" THEATER' was published in the Boston Globe on May 22nd, 1996. Snopes.com reports that the facts of this incident were exaggerated into an urban legend that the theatre was actually playing Twister during the tornado. Comedian Bob Saget claims he was on his way to see the movie at this St. Catharines drive-in when the real thing hit.
• The twister in the first destruction scene was a replica made of the one used to suck up Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ. On the widescreen DVD release of the film you can see her house being pulled up into the sky by the tornado.
• The movie Star Wars is referenced when a character exclaims, "That's no moon, it's a space station!" in regards to a tornado confirmation.
• While chasing the "sister" tornado the scene is supposed to take place on a muddy land bridge. However through the window of the truck you can clearly see that they are on a highway and can even see oncoming traffic pass.
• During the chase after the confrontation between Bill and Jonas, the beginning of the guitar solo portion of the song "Child in Time" by Deep Purple is played as Dusty screams "The wonder of nature baby!". However, the video screen inside the car shows footage from Deep Purple's performance at the California Jam in 1974, featuring the MK III incarnation of the band, which NEVER performed this song live.
• After the final tornado tosses a tanker-truck onto the road, and it explodes, Bill and Jo escape the fire. But within the flames, there is an open door with a green exit sign above it.
• When they are trying to out-drive the F5 tornado, it begins to throw farm equipment onto the road. When a combine harvester lands on the road in front of the truck, Bill hits the extended auger and it shatters the passenger-side of the windshield. But in the next cut to the truck, the windshield is perfectly fine.
• the Original Motion Picture Score by Mark Mancina is considered a Collector's Item and is very difficult to find.
• In at least one tornado chasing scene, there is a Texas Highway signpost, despite the movie taking place in Oklahoma.
• During the summer run of Twister, an F4 tornado touched down in Bullitt County, Kentucky, causing major damage to some areas outside of Shepherdsville, Kentucky. The resulting disaster and local news coverage managed to boost interest in the film and its box office intake.

External links

• Official site for the film
• Twister at IMDb
• Twister Museum Wakita, Oklahoma
• Hear the theme song