Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast, the questions ask if movies have
Speaker 1: women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
Speaker 1: best start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Hey, Jamie, Twisters hate my family, like honestly, Caitlin as
Speaker 2: a militant feminist.
Speaker 3: Everyone in this movie needs to get away from Helen Hunt.
Speaker 4: She is leading them to danger.
Speaker 3: Yes, she is repeated. I mean everyone is being led
Speaker 3: to danger. Everyone here has a near death kink obviously
Speaker 3: right like they get off on it. We see it repeatedly. However,
Speaker 3: there's only one character who the Twister hates back with
Speaker 3: a vengeance, and it's Helen Hunt. Because we are in
Speaker 3: from what we can understand, we're led to believe, you know,
Speaker 3: like we're we're with Oklahoma natives. We are with people
Speaker 3: who have grown up live understand Tornado Alley, but with
Speaker 3: Helen Hunt around. There are six unprecedented Twisters in a
Speaker 3: space of it seems like seventy two hours. Yeah, seventy
Speaker 3: two hours generously, But we never see anyone sleep, and
Speaker 3: no one changes their clothes.
Speaker 4: I think it's one nightfall. I think it's forty eight hours.
Speaker 3: Maybe just when you think there's not going to be another.
Speaker 3: I watched this movie with my brother today and we
Speaker 3: were repeatedly shocked at exactly how many times Twister delivers
Speaker 3: on the titular promise. Like I thought we had reached
Speaker 3: the final Twister, and then I checked the run time.
Speaker 3: I'm like, hold on, and then there is like a
Speaker 3: you know whatever, diegetic newscast that's like up next, the
Speaker 3: biggest Twister in thirty years. I'm like, they literally just
Speaker 3: finished one. It's shocking how many Twisters, and they seem
Speaker 3: to hate Helen Hunt and her extended family. Well, I
Speaker 3: think it's personal with the Twisters, Like I don't know
Speaker 3: what Helen Hunt's family did in ancient times to a Twister,
Speaker 3: but the Twisters have it out for her specific twist.
Speaker 3: Like I would be like, Helen, I love you, Joe
Speaker 3: love you, but clearly Twisters hate you, like you need
Speaker 3: to move out of the area.
Speaker 4: I think when Joe and the Twisters are chasing each other,
Speaker 4: I think that that passes the Bechdel test.
Speaker 3: I was gonna ask you that because they do use
Speaker 3: she her pronouns for Twisters in the same way that
Speaker 3: I mean there's so many, I mean, truly so many
Speaker 3: parallels between this movie and Jurassic Park, but also a
Speaker 3: lot of parallels between this movie and Titanic. You know,
Speaker 3: she her Titanic, she her the twist Twisters.
Speaker 4: She heard Tyrannosaurus Rex and the raptors and all the
Speaker 4: other dinosaurs and.
Speaker 3: When it all comes together, and yeah, I mean there
Speaker 3: really are the Michael Crichton of it all, the gorgeous
Speaker 3: science woman lead wearing a tank top whereas everyone else
Speaker 3: is wearing three shirts as a man of it all,
Speaker 3: the guy calling Bill Paxton boss of it all. It
Speaker 3: really does boggle the mind. How what a clear line
Speaker 3: there is with disaster movies, with thrillers with white men
Speaker 3: wearing minimum three shirts as the romantic protagonist. Like it's
Speaker 3: just Twister is a part of a cultural moment.
Speaker 4: It sure is.
Speaker 3: And I personally feel as someone who at the time
Speaker 3: of recording, I have not seen Twisters. I don't think
Speaker 3: I could, or like, if I wanted to see Twisters,
Speaker 3: I would need to be sitting in a movie seat
Speaker 3: at this exact moment.
Speaker 4: No, it's not even out for another week at the
Speaker 4: time of this recording.
Speaker 3: Okay, fuck it I'm busy, I'm not I don't think
Speaker 3: I'm going to see it. And here's why, Glenn Powell.
Speaker 4: I like him.
Speaker 3: I like him. I have enjoyed the performances of his
Speaker 3: i've seen, but I just feel like it's a losing
Speaker 3: battle to be like, hey, new guy have the raw
Speaker 3: charisma of Bill Paxton in his prime. Like it's I
Speaker 3: just don't see it. How could anyone? He's so distinct.
Speaker 3: May his soul rest in peace.
Speaker 4: May it indeed. I would say this is one of
Speaker 4: Bill Paxton's more subdued roles because he's normally screaming even
Speaker 4: more than this in most of his movies.
Speaker 3: I agree. And also I think it's really funny that
Speaker 3: his name is Bill, like they made it, they put him,
Speaker 3: not that this movie is on easy mode, Like as
Speaker 3: an actor, clearly there's a lot of physical demands that
Speaker 3: come with this movie on top of like normal acting challenge.
Speaker 3: But I just always think it's funny when you know
Speaker 3: it's Bill Paxton and they I don't know if I'm
Speaker 3: casting an actor, if the perfect actor for my lead
Speaker 3: role has the same first name, I would consider changing
Speaker 3: it because it is a little like they keep calling
Speaker 3: him Bill and you're like, oh, you made a mistake,
Speaker 3: but they didn't. The character's name is Bill.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty funny. Hey listeners, Welcome to the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 3: Whatever, fuck you, guys. We love you guys. Happy summer.
Speaker 4: My name is Caitlin Deonte.
Speaker 3: My name is Jamie Loftus. This is the Bechdel Cast,
Speaker 3: the podcast where we talk about your favorite movies using
Speaker 3: an intersectional feminist lens. What's the Bechdel test, Well look
Speaker 3: it up on your own time. We're kind of busy
Speaker 3: tonight because we have to talk about Twister nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie.
Speaker 3: I've seen it a couple different times. Over the course
Speaker 3: of the last twenty years. I've seen Twister probably three
Speaker 3: or four times. Yeah. I have a memory of watching
Speaker 3: this movie with my aunt during a vacation. I have
Speaker 3: a memory of watching this movie on a plane. Like,
Speaker 3: this is a movie that I didn't see in theaters.
Speaker 3: I was too young to see it in theaters for sure,
Speaker 3: But I just have memories of like knowing of its existence,
Speaker 3: and I have a feeling that the reason I don't
Speaker 3: watch this movie more. While I do think it's good,
Speaker 3: and it has a lot of the elements of what
Speaker 3: I like in a movie. There are so many movies
Speaker 3: that came out in close proximity with similar actors, with
Speaker 3: a similar premise that I think are better that while
Speaker 3: this movie was I think, rightfully, very successful, I don't
Speaker 3: return to it very often. I feel like the reason
Speaker 3: I mainly think about this movie is because of the
Speaker 3: attraction that existed about this movie at Universal Studios, Florida. Right,
Speaker 3: and then Bill Paksay's in the video and he's like, Hi,
Speaker 3: because that's like his whole vibe. Hi. You might be
Speaker 3: wondering how did we make the Twister? And you're like, dude,
Speaker 3: I was like six, I did not wonder how you
Speaker 3: made the Twister? But they had, you know, if you're
Speaker 3: nine thousand years old like us. There was a live
Speaker 3: demonstration at Universal Studios, Florida where they basically demonstrated something
Speaker 3: I would probably be more interested in now than I
Speaker 3: was as a child, where they would sort of demonstrate
Speaker 3: behind a pane of glass how they did a lot
Speaker 3: of the practical effects in Twister. Which is part of
Speaker 3: what's really cool about this movie is how many really
Speaker 3: challenging and as we'll talk about very dangerous practical effects
Speaker 3: that were done during this movie. And I was kind
Speaker 3: of surprised on this viewing. It'd been at least six
Speaker 3: or seven years since I'd seen it, and I don't
Speaker 3: know that I've ever watched this movie paying one hundred
Speaker 3: percent attention, if I'm being honest. So a lot of
Speaker 3: plot points I'd forgotten. I totally forgot phillipsymore off. But
Speaker 3: like there's so many people. I don't think I knew
Speaker 3: who Alan Rock was the last time I saw this,
Speaker 3: Like there's this movie has a ridiculous amount of heavy hitters. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but in any case, Yeah, this was the first time
Speaker 3: that I truly paid attention to it, and I was
Speaker 3: pleasantly surprised at at least how relatively well. I feel
Speaker 3: like the special effects hold up, which makes sense when
Speaker 3: you know, or I learned after I finished watching the
Speaker 3: movie that this movie was basically pitched as a special
Speaker 3: effects demo versus a story to endure, which it's I
Speaker 3: would argue, not wow, rude, I mean, the story sucks.
Speaker 3: The story sucks, but whatever. Famous climate change denialist Michael
Speaker 3: Crichton wrote this movie, you know, sort of offset from
Speaker 3: Jurassic Park. It just feels like he's pulling from the
Speaker 3: hits to write this special effects demo that became the
Speaker 3: movie Twister.
Speaker 4: Sure. Also, I mean the practical effects, yes, very good.
Speaker 4: The CGI not so good. But it was nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 4: so what could they have done.
Speaker 3: I think the practical effects are amazing. I think the
Speaker 3: CGI effects for the time for the time, yeah, are
Speaker 3: pretty good. And I really got a kick out of
Speaker 3: learning that the cow, which is iconic. I remember the
Speaker 3: cow from the trailer whenever I saw the trailer on
Speaker 3: like ABHS or whatever. Also Twister nineteen ninety six, Caitlin. Yeah,
Speaker 3: from what I heard, and from what I heard is
Speaker 3: from director John Debont. And it was so funny because
Speaker 3: I again, this was a rewatch that I just watched
Speaker 3: the movie with my brother and then I did all
Speaker 3: of the research after I did no research before we
Speaker 3: started watching, and I said several times I was like, wow,
Speaker 3: this feels paced, whise like speed. Like every single time
Speaker 3: there's a twister, there's like a brief Quippi exchange and
Speaker 3: then there's just another twister, which is how speed works.
Speaker 3: It's like there's a car thing and then Keanu and
Speaker 3: Sandra are like, that was wild. That was wild. I
Speaker 3: have a crush. No, I have a crush. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: the baby.
Speaker 4: Like it was cans.
Speaker 3: It was cons like. And that's kind of the pacing
Speaker 3: of this movie as well, where it's like, Sexy Quippy,
Speaker 3: another Twister, Sexy Quippy, another Twister, and then two hours
Speaker 3: later the movie ends, and then to find that they
Speaker 3: have the same director. So it actually makes a lot
Speaker 3: of sense. This was just like the action thriller pace
Speaker 3: of this director at this time. What's your history with
Speaker 3: Twister nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 4: I did not grow up with this movie, despite it
Speaker 4: being one of two VHS tapes at my gramm's house.
Speaker 4: So anytime I would go to visit Whoa and She's like,
Speaker 4: do you want to watch a movie? And I'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 4: what do you have? And she had exactly two VHS's
Speaker 4: and I don't even remember what the other one was,
Speaker 4: which is the one that I watched all the time.
Speaker 4: I just remember that there was dirty dancing.
Speaker 3: No, my grandma had dirty dancing and slapshot okay, and
Speaker 3: oh my god, Anne River dancing because she.
Speaker 4: Was Irish fun Okay, No, I'll have to ask my
Speaker 4: mom if she remembers, but I.
Speaker 3: Would be so curious. I feel like that's a very
Speaker 3: forbit of detail, like the especially when there's only two,
Speaker 3: and you would think I.
Speaker 4: Would remember the one that I actually watched, but I don't.
Speaker 4: I only remember fucked up.
Speaker 3: Were you watching like basic Instinct with your grandma?
Speaker 4: I'm guessing it was like Aladdin or just something that
Speaker 4: I was watching all the time anyway, But I was
Speaker 4: always like, what's this other movie Twister? I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know about it. It seems it seems there's adults
Speaker 4: in it. I don't no, and so I just because
Speaker 4: I was like ten, yeah, and so I just like,
Speaker 4: wasn't that interested it. But I do remember that she
Speaker 4: had it, but I didn't see it until decades later.
Speaker 4: I think I watched it for the first time in
Speaker 4: my twenties and then again kind of recently, like within
Speaker 4: the past year. I was like, oh, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: this movie rules. It's awesome.
Speaker 3: It does rule. I mean, I'm surprised, and I'm glad
Speaker 3: you have it now, because it feels like a movie
Speaker 3: that is like you are the target audience for. I know,
Speaker 3: it's a romp, it's intense, it's sexy. It's fun.
Speaker 4: Ten out of ten on the rompometer. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 4: need Dorothy to take those measurements. I can safely say
Speaker 4: for myself that it's a ten out of ten.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it made me laugh again. My brother
Speaker 3: and I were laughing so much this morning at how
Speaker 3: first of all the and it feels very I don't know.
Speaker 3: I read Michael Crichton books when I was too young,
Speaker 3: and I like, thank you so much. Even though we
Speaker 3: don't read books for this podcast, I do love reading,
Speaker 3: and like I remember reading Michael Crichton books when I
Speaker 3: was a kid and like getting them from the library
Speaker 3: and just feeling, you know, I'm sure he researched and
Speaker 3: knew his shit, but it just always felt like such
Speaker 3: YadA YadA science. And so when you get to Twister
Speaker 3: and it's like science balls, like this whole thing is
Speaker 3: like we have to throw the science balls into the
Speaker 3: Twister so Helen Hunt can cure her father wound. Like
Speaker 3: it's all so bizarre that, like my brother and I,
Speaker 3: every time the science balls came out, we're like, well,
Speaker 3: here they are again. Helen Hunt is just like having
Speaker 3: a conniption because the science balls have spilled and they surely,
Speaker 3: as scientists, they would know to put a net on
Speaker 3: top of they. But they're always spilling the science.
Speaker 4: They're loose, loose science balls just.
Speaker 3: Rolling around, and they have so many Dorothy's because they
Speaker 3: present it as like this movie is funny to because
Speaker 3: I think it is like fun but not good, because
Speaker 3: if there's so many things that are wrong that are
Speaker 3: going on, there's an antagonist who like doesn't need to
Speaker 3: be there. The antagonist should be the Twister, Like, we
Speaker 3: don't need Carrie Elwis there.
Speaker 4: How dare you say that about my friend Carrie Ellis.
Speaker 3: We need him in Saw, we don't need him in Twister, unfortunately.
Speaker 3: But like it was just like every time you show
Speaker 3: up and he looks a little bit too much like
Speaker 3: Bill Paxson, and you're like right, and he's like, I
Speaker 3: don't have any science balls, but screw you guys. But
Speaker 3: they present I thought they present Dorothy the science machine
Speaker 3: at the beginning, like we made Dorothy there is only
Speaker 3: one Dorothy, but it turns out that's not true. They
Speaker 3: have like at least four it.
Speaker 4: For Dorothy's, just in case the other three got ruined
Speaker 4: by tornadoes, which is what happened Dorothy Okay. According to
Speaker 4: Scholarly Journal, Wikipedia was inspired by Toto, an instrumented barrel
Speaker 4: shaped device used to research tornadoes in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 4: And if you look at a picture of Toto, it
Speaker 4: looks very similar to the design of Dorothy. So they were,
Speaker 4: you know, basing this off of real science. I don't
Speaker 4: know about.
Speaker 3: The They were, oh, a big barrel full of science balls,
Speaker 3: and they're like, this is real. I don't buy it.
Speaker 3: I don't buy it, but I don't care. I mean,
Speaker 3: when it comes to science and movies, honestly, the less
Speaker 3: you tell me, the better. I don't need, you know,
Speaker 3: the big short someone turning to camera and being like,
Speaker 3: here's what's going on with the science balls. They're the
Speaker 3: science balls. They need the silence balls to get into
Speaker 3: the twister to cure Helen Hunt's Father Wound, which reminded
Speaker 3: me of Oh my god, contact. No. I was thinking
Speaker 3: of clock Stoppers weirdly.
Speaker 4: Oh I've never seen that.
Speaker 3: Actually, No, yes, we have, we covered what No, what
Speaker 3: is the movie I'm thinking of? Julia Roberts sci Fi
Speaker 3: Father Wound, clock Alliver Platt.
Speaker 4: Oh no, no, no, flatliners.
Speaker 3: Flat Liner Clockwatchers, flat liners. Listen, this has been on
Speaker 3: for five thousand years. Well, we covered not clockwatchers, but
Speaker 3: rather flatliners. I contact is a way better point of reference,
Speaker 3: like in every way, but I was thought of. I
Speaker 3: think it's maybe the first time that we talked about
Speaker 3: like a sci fi movie where the primary woman who
Speaker 3: is also the romantic lead, her entire plot line is
Speaker 3: connected to men via a romantic interest with the male
Speaker 3: lead and then with a vague traumatic father wound from
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: True, I have to say, and I apologize to any
Speaker 3: of our listeners whose father was like fatally pulled into
Speaker 3: a twister. But the CGI in that scene made me
Speaker 3: laugh so much.
Speaker 4: It's a bit silly.
Speaker 3: If your daddy got pulled into a twister, you can
Speaker 3: send me a mean email and cancel me. But like,
Speaker 3: I just feel like daddy getting pulled into the twister
Speaker 3: is funny because the CGI and that is bad. You
Speaker 3: can just see that it is an extra on a
Speaker 3: green screen being like whoo b Like I was laughing.
Speaker 4: Sorry, Yeah, well, I was like, okay, a movie that
Speaker 4: opens with a natural disaster in which the patriarch of
Speaker 4: the family dies, What is this, Paddington?
Speaker 3: I Okay, see the parallels. Yeah, we're seeing through the
Speaker 3: matrix and this. But I do feel like this movie.
Speaker 3: It makes sense to me why this movie was very
Speaker 3: successful but not particularly remembered, because it just has elements
Speaker 3: of similar movies that came out around the same time,
Speaker 3: with similar, if not the same actors, that were better.
Speaker 3: But it is kind of like it's like cooked in
Speaker 3: a lap to be a fun summer movie. I don't
Speaker 3: even mean it as a criticism, but like, you know,
Speaker 3: any plot point or element of Twister that you like
Speaker 3: was done.
Speaker 4: Better in another movie in two years, yeah.
Speaker 3: Right before or after?
Speaker 4: Yeah the movie. Is it a cinematic masterpiece? Perhaps not,
Speaker 4: but damn if it isn't a fun romp that I'm
Speaker 4: always gonna enjoy.
Speaker 3: I'm smiling. It's fun.
Speaker 4: It's so fun. Let's take a break and then come
Speaker 4: back for the recap, shall we. Okay, here's the plot
Speaker 4: of Twister. The movie opens when it's nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 4: in Oklahoma. What do you mean, nothing, Jamie, nothing at all.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you when you're older, yeah.
Speaker 3: Tubby, yeah, Toby, tell me when I'm thirty five place.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, So we're in Oklahoma. A
Speaker 4: storm is blowing in. There are tornado warnings on the TV.
Speaker 4: We meet a young girl named Joe as well as
Speaker 4: her parents as they head to their storm cellar. There's
Speaker 4: a very intense tornado that blows little Joe's dad away
Speaker 4: and he died.
Speaker 3: Like It's sorry.
Speaker 4: It's campy. It's too campily done for what is a
Speaker 4: tragic death that affects the main character for the rest
Speaker 4: of the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't have cgi like that and expect me
Speaker 3: to be like weighted with grief for the remainder of
Speaker 3: the movie. I also thought it was equally campily funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah that anytime there is this repeated image connected to
Speaker 3: the opening scene that later on when who knows the fourth, fifth, sixth,
Speaker 3: ninth Twister they're plowing through the wreckage of that, Helen
Speaker 3: Hunt will often see this recurring image of a mother, father,
Speaker 3: and a young girl who looked like her in the
Speaker 3: open but the dad in these subsequent images thankfully has
Speaker 3: survived and she gives them the dirtiest little look like
Speaker 3: she's like, I wish your father got sucked into the twister.
Speaker 3: It is wild that there is such a through line
Speaker 3: runner basically joke of how like many movies of the
Speaker 3: nineties in two thousands and backwards, that therapy is ridiculous
Speaker 3: because no one needs therapy more in the entire world
Speaker 3: than Helen Hunt's character. Yes, oh my god, Like if
Speaker 3: Melissa had really sat down with Joe and we just
Speaker 3: got Bill out of there. He's the weakest of this,
Speaker 3: you know, his girl Friday, Like whatever the movie they're
Speaker 3: pulling from his girl Friday. The man is the weakest player.
Speaker 3: Let's sit these ladies down and have a therapy session,
Speaker 3: because that's what Joe needs. We don't need Joe running
Speaker 3: into the eye of a storm that's going to kill her.
Speaker 3: We need Joe to go to therapy for one second.
Speaker 4: I will say, And we can talk about this further
Speaker 4: in the discussion, but it's a very common choice for
Speaker 4: a man haunted by something from his past, specifically something
Speaker 4: related to his father, and that being his motivation for
Speaker 4: the rest of the movie. That's something we see time
Speaker 4: and time again in movies for male leads, but this
Speaker 4: time it's a woman, and that we don't see that much.
Speaker 3: So I yes, but I agree, like I had the
Speaker 3: same thought that you don't see that much, but I
Speaker 3: don't think that gender swapping it makes it a like
Speaker 3: more compelling thing to see, because the takeaway is still
Speaker 3: the same, is that like, falling in heterosexual love will
Speaker 3: cure this deep psychic wound, which is a bad lesson
Speaker 3: for any person. True fucking Bill Paxton will fix some
Speaker 3: of your problems, but you know, could not fix Yeah.
Speaker 3: I thought that too, and I think that there's some
Speaker 3: value in it, but it just feels kind of like whatever.
Speaker 3: It feels like Ghostbusters twenty sixteen, where you're just like, oh,
Speaker 3: now women can do it, and you're like, oh, I
Speaker 3: just would rather she not don't know, or like have
Speaker 3: whatever whatever. That's not what this movie is a This
Speaker 3: movie is not about progress. It's about twisters.
Speaker 4: It's so true, eight of them, and that makes you
Speaker 4: wonder how many twisters are gonna be in the movie Twisters.
Speaker 4: Apparently a lot more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you're gonna add the s, I feel like
Speaker 3: you're hard pressed to have more twisters in the space
Speaker 3: of a movie. I've never gotten more bang for my twister.
Speaker 4: Well, because the movie Alien has one alien in it.
Speaker 4: The movie Aliens has dozens of aliens, but the movie
Speaker 4: Twister has multiple twisters. And then I guess the movie
Speaker 4: Twisters is going to have an exponentially greater number of
Speaker 4: twisters as much. So there's gonna be millions, millions of twisters.
Speaker 3: I didn't. It's gonna be like Snoke. They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: we have jars full of twisters. Pat has made so
Speaker 3: many twisters.
Speaker 4: Wow, Jamie making a Star Wars reference, I thought i'd
Speaker 4: see the day.
Speaker 3: I love Star Wars nine because I love Babu Frick.
Speaker 3: So actually I'm the opposite of a Star Wars fan
Speaker 3: because I just made a joke about Star Wars nine
Speaker 3: and I like, yeah, no, I didn't count. I meant to,
Speaker 3: but then I kept like gasping every time there was
Speaker 3: another twister. I would say that, like set piece wise,
Speaker 3: there are well there are there are four large twisters
Speaker 3: because there's four Dorothy's, which says rule of threes, fuck
Speaker 3: you never mind.
Speaker 4: Well, also in one of those, there are three twisters
Speaker 4: in one kind of moment, So I guess that means
Speaker 4: there are say six.
Speaker 3: None of this lines with conventional story logic at all,
Speaker 3: like four and six are just not story logic numbers whatsoever.
Speaker 3: But these are the twisters we get, and like I
Speaker 3: honestly I mean, I forgot what the climax. I mean,
Speaker 3: I remembered it involved a twister, but I didn't remember
Speaker 3: that in them literally getting sucked into the twister without
Speaker 3: as much as a scratch, they were just kind of
Speaker 3: like it was like they had just been on the
Speaker 3: Jurassic Park ride. Like they were like a little wet
Speaker 3: and very horny, and like that's how I have always
Speaker 3: historically felt getting off the Jurassic Park line.
Speaker 4: Right, tell me about it.
Speaker 3: They're so fine. It's like this movie is like everything
Speaker 3: that's fun about a blockbuster, where the steaks are always
Speaker 3: sky high, but also like paradoxically low at the state,
Speaker 3: Like there's never a risk that someone's gonna die except
Speaker 3: for that one guy who knows Carrie el Wes, who
Speaker 3: I thought was killed brutally and needlessly.
Speaker 4: Well, Carrie Ellis is in the same vehicle. He dies too,
Speaker 4: I know, but.
Speaker 3: Only his friend gets speared.
Speaker 4: Oh well yeah, but then you're led to believe that
Speaker 4: Carrie Elvis is also gonna he dies.
Speaker 3: I mean he dies, but I was just like this
Speaker 3: poor guy, like this guy we're allowed to believe in
Speaker 3: the whole scene leading up to it, that it's like
Speaker 3: he knows, he knows that they need to turn back,
Speaker 3: and then we kill hit like he'll carry Elwiz.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like final destination style.
Speaker 3: Yes, kill him in a movie that is otherwise, I
Speaker 3: think like very deliberately avoids those kind of kills. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is one guy who we just met and they're like,
Speaker 3: fuck this guy, and they just like absolutely. I mean
Speaker 3: I liked it, but I was I was shocked.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's shocking. Well anyway, so that's the first scene
Speaker 4: of the movie. Then we we see Joe's dad blow
Speaker 4: away in the tornado. We cut to the present day
Speaker 4: aka nineteen ninety six, which is when the movie came out.
Speaker 4: We meet Bill Harding played by Bill Paxton, driving in
Speaker 4: a truck with his fiance Melissa played by Jamie Gertz.
Speaker 3: Melissa Innocent Melissa did nothing.
Speaker 4: Wrong yeah, played by a fellow Jamie, although she spells
Speaker 4: her name jay A m I no E at the end.
Speaker 3: You can say it wrong.
Speaker 4: Yes. Anyway. They are heading to see adult Joe played
Speaker 4: by Helen Hunt. She is a tornado scientist, so you
Speaker 4: know woman in stem Alert. She's got a team of
Speaker 4: people working for her. They chase tornadoes to gather scientific
Speaker 4: data on them. The team includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan
Speaker 4: ruck todd Field when he was still acting.
Speaker 3: It is a wild crew, yeh. A woman who's forced
Speaker 3: to wear a hat. Okay, here's something I thought was interesting.
Speaker 3: There is one woman on the crew. This token is
Speaker 3: a well I guess including Joe, there's two women on
Speaker 3: the crew. But in terms of our side characters on
Speaker 3: the crew, there's several men. There's one woman she where
Speaker 3: is a hat the whole time until there's three women, well, okay,
Speaker 3: three women who are tornado chasing in the movie.
Speaker 4: And then also the Auntie aunt Megie.
Speaker 3: Aunt Meg what I don't respect women. I don't need
Speaker 3: to remember her name. There's three women on the storm
Speaker 3: chasing team if you count Melissa, which you sort of
Speaker 3: have to for the purposes of this movie. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: feel like this movie has the patience for two women.
Speaker 3: And then at the point spoiler alert where Melissa voluntarily
Speaker 3: exits the plot rather abruptly, all of a sudden, the
Speaker 3: woman in the hat removes her hat. We don't see
Speaker 3: her as San's hat before Melissa is gone, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: is the production team like we cannot see more than
Speaker 3: two women's full head like it was so weird because
Speaker 3: at the same time, like my brother and I would
Speaker 3: be like, oh, yeah, there she is in her hat again,
Speaker 3: and she has treated like, I think, slightly less equitably
Speaker 3: than the handful of Men, where clearly Philip seymour Hoffman
Speaker 3: is the sort of most present of this Bee crew.
Speaker 3: I would say Alan ruck is after that, and then
Speaker 3: the other three are kind of like have a line
Speaker 3: here and there. And the woman in the hat so
Speaker 3: the name of the character is Haynes and the name
Speaker 3: of the actor is Wendell Josephers, so like she has
Speaker 3: a name, you're hard pressed to find it in passing
Speaker 3: in this movie. For sure, I was calling her the
Speaker 3: woman in the hat like one would talk about the Babadok.
Speaker 3: But then all of a sudden, when the second narratively
Speaker 3: consequential woman exits, she takes her hat off. I did
Speaker 3: not even notice that I was getting conspiratorial about it.
Speaker 4: I was hitting this.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, now she can take her damn
Speaker 3: hat off, because at first I was like, the hat
Speaker 3: is a part of her personality. She loves to wear
Speaker 3: the hat, the hat is a part of her. But
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, the hat disappeared.
Speaker 4: The hat gets blown off by a tornado. I think
Speaker 4: that's obvious.
Speaker 3: I was perseverating about the hat. I was like that
Speaker 3: the importance the narrated like this, the contextual like subtextual
Speaker 3: importance of the hat. And then my brother was like,
Speaker 3: shut up. There's another twister, which I think is the
Speaker 3: proper response. Yeah, yeah, yeah, silenced by men again?
Speaker 4: Wow? True Ben, Speaking of men, there are several more
Speaker 4: on the team. The other ones include a guy who
Speaker 4: looks like Steve Buscemi but isn't, a guy who looks
Speaker 4: like Paul Giamatti but isn't, and a guy who looks
Speaker 4: like William h. Maycy but isn't. And then there's another
Speaker 4: guy who was in the show Lost. So there's a
Speaker 4: large team.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it took me until halfway in the movie
Speaker 3: to realize that. And then you really and then I looked,
Speaker 3: you know, I read scholarly journal Wikipedia about this movie,
Speaker 3: and it turns out that Bill Paxton is just a
Speaker 3: guy who you call when Tom Hanks isn't available, which,
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety six actually does make total sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, what can you do?
Speaker 3: But anyways, also also sorry, just when we're cast shout out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I did not realize this on first watch, but the
Speaker 3: child actor who plays young Helen Hunt is Alexa Vega
Speaker 3: of Spy Kids. Oh whoa, she is the sister in
Speaker 3: Spy Kids.
Speaker 4: I imagine that.
Speaker 3: Well, fine, don't be impressed. I thought it was interesting,
Speaker 3: and now she runs an MLM. So how do you
Speaker 3: like that? I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't like it either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no one likes it. No one likes it. But
Speaker 3: you know that's not what journalism is about, all right.
Speaker 3: So anyways, in the movie, so I just laid down.
Speaker 4: Oh I loved to keep these rants going.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Okay. So Bill and his fiance Melissa show up to
Speaker 4: where this team of tornado chasers has gathered. Bill used
Speaker 4: to work with Joe and he is married to Joe currently,
Speaker 4: but he's there to get her to sign divorce papers
Speaker 4: so that Bill and Melissa can get married and Bill
Speaker 4: can start his new life as a weather man.
Speaker 3: I really like this. Have you seen his girl Friday.
Speaker 4: I have, but it's been probably like twenty years.
Speaker 3: I just saw it for the first time late last
Speaker 3: year and really enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to helpfully
Speaker 3: covering it on the show one day and this is
Speaker 3: a gender swapped his Girl Friday situation. It's very exciting. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and do I think his Girl Friday is better? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I do. I mean, but there's no twist. They didn't
Speaker 3: have the technology, so you know, we're having a different conversation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they show up to get Joe to sign the papers,
Speaker 4: but she's like, maybe stalling for reasons. Ooh, we'll find
Speaker 4: out what they are.
Speaker 3: She moves her ring around. Kind of fun, kind of steaky.
Speaker 4: Then Joe shows Bill a machine called Dorothy, something that
Speaker 4: Bill conceived and Joe built. It's a first of its
Speaker 4: kind data collecting machine that releases.
Speaker 3: These science balls, yes.
Speaker 4: Science balls, into a tornado and they'll take all these
Speaker 4: measurements that will provide information that's never been gathered before
Speaker 4: about tornadoes. And this data may allow tornado warnings to
Speaker 4: go from three minutes in advance to as much as
Speaker 4: fifteen minutes, giving people more time to get to safety.
Speaker 3: And you would think, you know, if it's technology were
Speaker 3: that consequential, they wouldn't be so easy to spill all
Speaker 3: over the ground during gale force winds. But that's just
Speaker 3: not the situation. In Twister nineteen ninety six, it's so
Speaker 3: easy to scatter these damn science balls. I liked that
Speaker 3: even at the peak of the movie when the science
Speaker 3: balls are finally swept into the cyclone and everyone's like, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: we're never gonna die the science balls, Like we still
Speaker 3: don't totally know what they're doing.
Speaker 4: We don't.
Speaker 3: You're like, they're up there, they're up there, they're reading
Speaker 3: the tornado information. Yes, the science balls.
Speaker 4: My thing was this, there's gotta be a better way
Speaker 4: for them to get close to the tornado and for
Speaker 4: them to release the science balls into the tornado because
Speaker 4: they're just driving a bunch of trucks near tornadoes. Like
Speaker 4: I'm like, yeah, can't they get in like a helicopter
Speaker 4: and then have like I don't know, a T shirt
Speaker 4: cannon launch the science balls into the tornado from afar?
Speaker 4: Like everything they're doing is so dangerous, which is like, ye,
Speaker 4: the plot of the.
Speaker 3: Movie, right, But it's like, you don't need a product
Speaker 3: placement jeep to throw your product placement PEPSI helicopter science
Speaker 3: balls into the cyclone, Like yeah, and I get My
Speaker 3: brother and I were just I mean, this is maybe dark.
Speaker 3: Brother and I were like, is her dad still up there?
Speaker 3: Like what is her end game? Like her dad is
Speaker 3: like up in the top of every cyclone sipping tea,
Speaker 3: being like you go get them, Joe, just get these
Speaker 3: science balls up there.
Speaker 4: Like grief looks like anything you know.
Speaker 3: Well, I know, but like we've covered this plot point
Speaker 3: so much and maybe I'm just like being personally irritated
Speaker 3: by it, but I just feel like there's so many
Speaker 3: female protagonists that it's like you cannot conceive of what
Speaker 3: would possibly be the source of their distress, and it
Speaker 3: either goes to sexual assault or something related to their father.
Speaker 3: And that's not to say that it is not a
Speaker 3: very real thing that happens in the world. I've experienced both,
Speaker 3: But like I do think it's just a very lazy writing,
Speaker 3: especially when the creative team is majority men. I do
Speaker 3: think it's like when men are writing like a problem
Speaker 3: for women, they immediately default to their relationships with other men,
Speaker 3: whether it is romantically or in their family life, and
Speaker 3: this movie is guilty of both of those things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree. In any case, the point is that
Speaker 4: it's very difficult to get Dorothy in a position to
Speaker 4: release the science balls, and they're explaining all of this
Speaker 4: to Melissa Bill's fiancee who doesn't know anything about tornadoes
Speaker 4: because she's a therapist. We will find out that she's
Speaker 4: a reproductive therapist, which I didn't know that was a thing.
Speaker 3: Which makes total sense. But it's like, the more specific
Speaker 3: they get in pointing out how ridiculous the plot of
Speaker 3: the movie feels Mollis's job is, the more I'm just like, oh, so,
Speaker 3: not only is therapy ridiculous, but trauma in relation to
Speaker 3: reproduction is even more ridiculous, Like you're just it's it's
Speaker 3: like goofy, brainless ari ast shit that we talked about recently,
Speaker 3: where it's like, why get so specific with something that
Speaker 3: you're putting in there to either make fun of or
Speaker 3: just serve as a plot.
Speaker 4: Point, Yeah, or demonize the way our estra keeps doing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's it's weird. But anyway, the point is she's not
Speaker 4: a tornado expert, so we the audience are like, why
Speaker 4: are she and Bill even together if she doesn't know
Speaker 4: anything about tornadoes? Clearly he needs to end up with Joe.
Speaker 4: But before we can think much about that, the team
Speaker 4: receives word about a tornado that's materializing nearby, so Joe
Speaker 4: and her team get in their vehicles and a hall
Speaker 4: ass in that direction, and then Bill and Melissa go
Speaker 4: with them because Bill still needs the divorce papers from Joe,
Speaker 4: and Melissa's like, well, I want to learn about tornado.
Speaker 4: I'll come with you. On the way. Bill discovers that
Speaker 4: another rival team of tornado scientists, led by Jonas Miller
Speaker 4: aka Carrie Ellis of Saw One Fame, is also chasing
Speaker 4: this tornado, but Jonas isn't doing it for the science.
Speaker 4: He's doing it for money, because you know how lucrative
Speaker 4: tornado science is.
Speaker 3: I love that line where they're like he's in it
Speaker 3: for the money, not the science, and you're like, this
Speaker 3: is actually, weirdly kind of what Bill Paxton is more
Speaker 3: sensically accused of in Titanic, of like, yeah, he's doing
Speaker 3: it for the money, not the Titanic, which makes more
Speaker 3: sense when you know that there's money in artifacts from
Speaker 3: the Titanic.
Speaker 4: He's searching for a diamond that is worth more than
Speaker 4: the Hope diamond, So yeah, there's a lot of money.
Speaker 3: But like they're just vaguely like, you know, Tornado money,
Speaker 3: Like it's just you're just like.
Speaker 4: Maybe anyway, Jonas has a machine of his own, not
Speaker 4: unlike Dorothy, and Bill is furious that Jonas stole his design.
Speaker 4: So now it's a race between Joe and her team
Speaker 4: and the evil mercenary Jonas and his convoy of dodge
Speaker 4: Mini vans to be the first to collect the tornado data.
Speaker 1: This.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's something I liked about the movie. It is
Speaker 3: so transparently product placement. Ye, where it's like only pepsi
Speaker 3: cans and jeeps will survive the storm or whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yes. And so while they're waiting to see when
Speaker 4: and where this tornado actually like touches down, two women
Speaker 4: talk to each other, Joe and Melissa. But oops, it's
Speaker 4: about Bill, so it doesn't pass to the Bechdel test.
Speaker 4: But Melissa is basically like, you're still in love with Bill,
Speaker 4: aren't you? And Joe is like ti, he no, I
Speaker 4: don't know, and it's clear that she did wonder.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Then Bill, who has agreed to join the group for
Speaker 4: one day, he Spidey senses where the tornado is going
Speaker 4: to form, so everyone drives in that direction. A tornado materializes,
Speaker 4: but Bill kind of miscalculates and they miss their chance
Speaker 4: to release Dorothy. To mention, Bill and Joe are almost
Speaker 4: killed under this little like bridge thing, and Joe's truck
Speaker 4: gets destroyed along with one of the Dorothy machines, though
Speaker 4: it's established that there are three others. The team goes
Speaker 4: back out again, chasing another tornado in the area. This
Speaker 4: one turns into two tornadoes, then three, and they call
Speaker 4: them sisters. So we've got some sister twisters on our hands.
Speaker 3: Okay, we do, and they're determined to destroy Helen Hunt's family. Yes,
Speaker 3: but the important thing here is that they're women apparently. Yes.
Speaker 4: Also, cows are flying through the air.
Speaker 3: I love it. Yeah, And that the CGI cow was
Speaker 3: built off of the CGI zebra in Jumanji, which I
Speaker 3: thought was very interesting. Yeah. They just were like, turn
Speaker 3: that zebra into a cow, same color scheme, make it happen,
Speaker 3: and they did.
Speaker 4: They're like an animal with hoofs go close enough. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 4: cows are flying around. But then suddenly the tornadoes dissipate,
Speaker 4: but the storm chasers are still thrilled because like this
Speaker 4: is like the beginning of a long day full of tornadoes.
Speaker 4: Although Melissa is terrified again, she can't really hack it
Speaker 4: in the tornado industry.
Speaker 3: I kept kind of like assuming based on how she
Speaker 3: was styled and was reacting to tornadoes conceptually that she
Speaker 3: was quote unquote from New York, Like it just seemed
Speaker 3: like she wasn't from there, because that was something that
Speaker 3: I was repeatedly bumping up against when I was overthinking
Speaker 3: the plot of the movie, that there were characters in
Speaker 3: this movie who were shocked that there were tornadoes, but
Speaker 3: you weren't told that they weren't from Oklahoma. But that
Speaker 3: makes no sense, like that they would be like, oh,
Speaker 3: what is doing? What like even though there's rarely like
Speaker 3: in the course of this movie seven hundred tornadoes in
Speaker 3: the course of and I'm sorry, and I know someone's
Speaker 3: gonna email me like tornadoes and twisters aren't the same thing. Well,
Speaker 3: bad news. I didn't fucking know that. So anyways, like
Speaker 3: these large cyclical storms, you know, usually twenty of them
Speaker 3: don't happen in the course of a feature length film,
Speaker 3: Like it still felt like Melissa was like what is this?
Speaker 3: And I was like, are you not from here? Like
Speaker 3: where are you from?
Speaker 4: I we don't, Well, she's not from New York because
Speaker 4: she speaks with accents from the American South. I'm not
Speaker 4: good at detecting what accents are from what regions of
Speaker 4: the South.
Speaker 3: No, but it did feel dissonant to me. I feel like, narratively,
Speaker 3: if a character did not know about twisters, it would
Speaker 3: be stated or indicated in some way that they were
Speaker 3: from in a region that did not experience twisters, right,
Speaker 3: But that wasn't done.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we needed a line from Melissa where she's like,
Speaker 4: I'm from Georgia. We don't get these here or something.
Speaker 3: Right, like somewhere in the American South that just like
Speaker 3: was not in Tornado Alley. But it was just bizarre,
Speaker 3: like they I feel like you're sort of led to
Speaker 3: believe that everyone is from around here. But she doesn't
Speaker 3: understand what a twister is for class reasons, which doesn't
Speaker 3: make any sense. No, Like, I love a class narrative,
Speaker 3: but not knowing what a popular weather phenomena in your
Speaker 3: region is due to class does not make sense.
Speaker 4: Right, because it's established that I think that she lives
Speaker 4: there now, even if she didn't grow up in Tornado Territory, right,
Speaker 4: she and Bill Paxston live there now.
Speaker 3: I just think it indicates how kind of like underthought
Speaker 3: her character is, because I think the team at the
Speaker 3: time we say everyone from this movie is generally from
Speaker 3: Oklahoma from Tornado Ali, but there are characters who are
Speaker 3: shocked by theoretically something that they would have noted about
Speaker 3: for decades at that point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know. In any case, the most recent
Speaker 4: tornado dies down and the group pays a visit to
Speaker 4: Joe's aunt Meg, played by Lois Smith. She makes them
Speaker 4: steak and eggs and they share a bunch of stories.
Speaker 4: They talk about a scale that measures the intensity of tornadoes.
Speaker 4: The ones they saw today were F two's and F threes,
Speaker 4: and even more intense one is an F four, and
Speaker 4: then there's the rare but devastating F five And the
Speaker 4: only one of the group who has ever seen one
Speaker 4: of those is Joe, because that was the tornado that
Speaker 4: killed her father.
Speaker 3: Another incredible narrative moment where Melissa, minding her own business,
Speaker 3: is like, what is five me? Which is a fair question, yeah,
Speaker 3: considering that she just moved to Oklahoma three days ago.
Speaker 3: And then everyone's like, oh, and they answer so evasively
Speaker 3: when it's like Helen Hunt isn't in the room, just
Speaker 3: say say it.
Speaker 4: Also, the guy who looks like William H. Macy says
Speaker 4: it's the finger of God and that's just a very
Speaker 4: funny phrase.
Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, fingered by God, like it's just fingered
Speaker 3: by God. There is so many awesome, creepy bizarro turns
Speaker 3: of phrases in this movie, and some of them are
Speaker 3: used in the context of her sexual harassment. But bear
Speaker 3: with me. What is it the suck zone that's the
Speaker 3: first jump scare.
Speaker 4: Yeah, phillipsy Moore Hoffman is always talking about the suck Zone.
Speaker 3: Phillipsy Moore Hoffman's character, I don't know if it is written, improvised, whatever.
Speaker 3: He is surprised, kissing every woman he meets. It's made
Speaker 3: to see him charming. I love Philip Siberhoffman, and yet
Speaker 3: I don't find this charming. Although sock Zone is funny
Speaker 3: and I was laughing, I believe. Let me know what
Speaker 3: you think here, I believe, and my brother and I
Speaker 3: firmly because I did not remember what happened in this movie, Dodo,
Speaker 3: it's like washing over you kind of effect. I firmly
Speaker 3: thought that we were being set up, that Melissa and
Speaker 3: Dusty were gonna kind of strike something up because they
Speaker 3: are repeatedly nonsensically thrown together. Where ultimately part of why
Speaker 3: I think Bill Paxton's character Bill is a bad guy
Speaker 3: because he's like almost always like, no, I have to
Speaker 3: be with my ex wife right now and my wife
Speaker 3: to be you just have to hang out with this
Speaker 3: guy I know who famously sexually harasses p and he
Speaker 3: and it's Philip Subra hot Fin, so we're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I love him, but like, you know, objectively, that is,
Speaker 3: he's repeatedly putting this woman who he knows is wildly
Speaker 3: out of her element. There are multiple points of this
Speaker 3: movie where I don't know it's a blockbuster, but I'm
Speaker 3: in a bad mood, and so like why does he say, yeah,
Speaker 3: keep coming? Like at the first time she follows the Twister,
Speaker 3: Bill doesn't know and that's why, like she's joined this journey.
Speaker 3: She's freaked out. But it's like, you know, unturned territory.
Speaker 3: And in the second Twister sequence it's like the love
Speaker 3: triangles in a car there is you know, like sponsored
Speaker 3: by Jeep and it's interesting. But after that, when they
Speaker 3: go to Aunt Meg's house, why does she continue? Because
Speaker 3: there is a cast off scene as they leave Aunt
Speaker 3: Meg's house where Bill Paxton says, you go with Dusty
Speaker 3: and she says okay, and it's like real, realistically, that
Speaker 3: character is not going if she's continuing, she's going with
Speaker 3: the one person she knows, not Dusty, who she met today.
Speaker 3: Like I thought that in some draft of this script,
Speaker 3: because I know there are multiple drafts of this script,
Speaker 3: Like Joss Whedon revised the script, but then he got
Speaker 3: a cough and then puld like whatever, But like the
Speaker 3: script was revised in the way that blockbuster scripts are.
Speaker 3: I believe that there is a version of the original
Speaker 3: script of Twister where they're like, yeah, and then Melissa's
Speaker 3: started dating Dusty. I'm glad she didn't, but it felt
Speaker 3: like for a good portion of the movie we are
Speaker 3: being led to like they are together more often than
Speaker 3: she's with her fiance.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Anyway, what happens next, Well, the storm picks back
Speaker 4: up again. You'll never believe it, but another twister is coming,
Speaker 4: so the group heads back out to chase the next tornado. Also,
Speaker 4: Joe and Bill are vibing. Melissa is in another car,
Speaker 4: probably with Dusty, feeling uneasy. They almost crash into Jonas,
Speaker 4: who is also heading into the storm, but Bill and
Speaker 4: Joe get their first but things go wrong. A telephone
Speaker 4: pole knocks Dorothy off the truck. All the science balls
Speaker 4: go flying because they're just very loose in this barrel,
Speaker 4: and she's crying. She's crying, she wants to stay hurt.
Speaker 3: She's science falls and because of her father trauma.
Speaker 4: Father.
Speaker 3: Right, this is supposed to be a reveal when you're like,
Speaker 3: do you think I'm six years old? Which I guess
Speaker 3: is like people who saw this movie were six and
Speaker 3: maybe it was shocking for them.
Speaker 4: Maybe yeah. But Bill is like, you can't stay here,
Speaker 4: it's too dangerous. This won't bring your dad back. Stop
Speaker 4: living in the past and look at what's in front
Speaker 4: of you right now aka me, which Melissa hears because
Speaker 4: the radio slash like walkie talkie thing is picking up
Speaker 4: their entire conversation. Somehow, we don't know why or how
Speaker 4: that's happening, but.
Speaker 3: It's one of the science that one of the science
Speaker 3: balls narts, one of those one of the science balls,
Speaker 3: and I thank them as a team Melissa. I'm team Melissa, period.
Speaker 3: And yeah, one of the science balls told Melissa, guess
Speaker 3: what writing's on the wall, and thankfully she listened, and
Speaker 3: even more thankfully to whatever subsequent writer was like, do
Speaker 3: not just make her end up with Dusty like let
Speaker 3: her return to her work as a doctor. Melissa wins
Speaker 3: the plot because even even though at the end it's
Speaker 3: like do do do do do? And they kiss and
Speaker 3: they're back together, like two years from now, they're for
Speaker 3: sure dead. Yeah, they have two years something. They're like
Speaker 3: those the cologists that yes, yeah, yeah, and it's like
Speaker 3: it's beautiful, but it's also just like, okay, that's kind
Speaker 3: of like you're not me being like, okay, the volcanologists
Speaker 3: that got swallowed by the volcano, that's their business, but
Speaker 3: like kind of it is. And that's how I feel
Speaker 3: about the Twister couple, Like all right, if you want
Speaker 3: a twister or to suck you up instead of going
Speaker 3: to therapy, like I just like don't have the emotional
Speaker 3: energy to be like no, we should help them, like.
Speaker 4: Choice, Yeah, their life, their choice.
Speaker 3: They're consenting adults that want the twister to eat them.
Speaker 3: Helen Hunt, if she had just had a conversation with Melissa,
Speaker 3: Melissa could have referred her to someone who could have
Speaker 3: helped out with that, or at least helped her understand
Speaker 3: that better in a way that wouldn't involve her dying
Speaker 3: by twister.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I wonder if they acknowledge in Twisters that Bill Paxson
Speaker 3: and Helen Hunt absolutely got sucked into a twister and
Speaker 3: died because they're begging for that to happen to them.
Speaker 4: I bet Glenn Powell is that his name? Yeah, plays
Speaker 4: the son and the Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton died
Speaker 4: in a twister accident, And.
Speaker 3: Okay, so let maybe the third generation of someone who
Speaker 3: refuses to go to therapy and also chase twisters with
Speaker 3: an indie darling like fine, fine, I'm just tired, Caitlin, Like.
Speaker 4: I know, Jamie, I'm sorry. The point is that Melissa
Speaker 4: overhears what's basically a profession of love from Bill to
Speaker 4: Joe because the plot needed that to happen. So now
Speaker 4: Melissa knows this and it's not great for her. She's sad.
Speaker 4: And then during another lull between tornadoes, Joe signs the
Speaker 4: divorce papers, but before she can give them to Bill,
Speaker 4: another huge storm comes on very suddenly right where they are,
Speaker 4: which is at a drive in movie theater, so everyone
Speaker 4: has to take shelter. Then the torny heads to Wakita,
Speaker 4: where Aunt Meg lives, so the group goes there too,
Speaker 4: but not before Melissa ends her relationship with Bill, and
Speaker 4: she says, bye, you can go on ahead, but I'm
Speaker 4: not gonna be here when you get back.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, which is a great moment for Melissa.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and she's like, I'm not even sad about it?
Speaker 4: What does that say? And he's like, uh shrug.
Speaker 3: But don't worry. The movie will express no interest in
Speaker 3: her from here forward. We have no idea no what happens, We.
Speaker 4: Do not, But the characters we are meant to care
Speaker 4: about are Joe and Bill. They head to Aunt Meg's
Speaker 4: house with the other tornado chasers. They see the destruction
Speaker 4: along the way, families who have lost their homes. They
Speaker 4: save Aunt Meg, who is trapped under the rubble of
Speaker 4: her house, as well as her dog, Mows the dog,
Speaker 4: and now weather reports are predicting a possible F five tornado.
Speaker 4: That's one of those big nasty ones.
Speaker 3: That's a daddy killer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Then Joe has the idea for
Speaker 4: how to make Dorothy fly, because she and Bill were
Speaker 4: having concerns about not being able to get Dorothy up
Speaker 4: into the tornado. But she looks at Aunt Meg's like
Speaker 4: wind chime things and she's like, oh, let's fashion a
Speaker 4: bunch of pinwheels out of Pepsi cans and attach them
Speaker 4: to the science balls so that they'll fly up into
Speaker 4: the tornado.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Thankfully this Tornado crew only drinks classic Pepsi. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and they fashion the little propellers with the with the
Speaker 3: logo visible. And my boyfriend's dad worked in product placement
Speaker 3: during this era, and you're like, Okay, that was whatever
Speaker 3: that ridiculous plot boy ended up being was hard fought
Speaker 3: by some guy.
Speaker 4: It's like, no, cut the cans in a way that
Speaker 4: we can see that it says Pepsi.
Speaker 3: The poor pa is that had to fucking like exact
Speaker 3: o knife those ridiculous science balls. It's just I hope
Speaker 3: that Helen Hunt got to keep a science ball.
Speaker 4: Hmmm, yeah, I'm sure she did.
Speaker 3: Anyways.
Speaker 4: Anyway, so the team heads out again to chase this
Speaker 4: impending F five twister. Bill and Joe place the third
Speaker 4: Dorothy Machine in the path of this huge tornado, but
Speaker 4: once again, something knocks it out of the way because
Speaker 4: this twister is kicking up so much debris it throws
Speaker 4: a semi truck at them. This is also when Jonas
Speaker 4: and some of his team are killed by the tornado.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're speared there. I sort of thought that, like,
Speaker 3: I was kind of hopeful. I thought it would be
Speaker 3: a fun plot point at least that like Jonas and Bill,
Speaker 3: Bill would end up like their teams would end up
Speaker 3: having to work together on opposite sides of the Twister,
Speaker 3: and that Jonas could learn that, you know, that Joe
Speaker 3: and Bill's approach to Twister via science balls was actually
Speaker 3: thoughtful and like they would have to collaborate, but instead
Speaker 3: he is he has like Saw like slasher movie style
Speaker 3: killed for his hubris, which is also fine. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: just don't understand why if that guy was going to
Speaker 3: disappear for forty five minutes and then be speared to death, Like,
Speaker 3: why even have an antagonist if it's that unnecessary.
Speaker 4: I guess it's to establish that you shouldn't be into
Speaker 4: tornadoes for the money, and you should be in them
Speaker 4: for the love of the game.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: In a way, Carrie Elwis is Carrie Ellis and saw
Speaker 4: Bill Paxton is the other guy in Saw one We
Speaker 4: want all yeah, and the Twister is Jigsaw and he's
Speaker 4: playing a little game with these boys.
Speaker 3: Exactly, except you don't get the satisfying flashback to show
Speaker 3: that Carrie Elws was cheating on his wife in a
Speaker 3: room that looks like every other room in Twister. That
Speaker 3: is actually something I really like about this movie is
Speaker 3: the movie is so obviously expensive and the action sequences
Speaker 3: in this movie. I'm bitching a lot about the plot,
Speaker 3: which I do think is nonsensical and ridiculous in the
Speaker 3: way that a lot of nineties disaster movies can be,
Speaker 3: with the exception of Titanic and others, But like, the
Speaker 3: action sequences are awesome. It feels like speed, which makes sense.
Speaker 3: It's the same director where it's like the wildest, most
Speaker 3: elevated thing you could think of with a set piece
Speaker 3: is what they do where Bill Paxon and Helen Hunt
Speaker 3: are driving full speed in a jeep toward a house
Speaker 3: in the middle of a twister, and he's like, we
Speaker 3: better drive through it. And then we see them drive
Speaker 3: through the house at every conceivable angle and it just
Speaker 3: looks so expensive and dangerous and it's awesome.
Speaker 4: It's fun. Yeah, yeah, so that's about to happen. So basically,
Speaker 4: Joe and Bill drive into a field and place the
Speaker 4: last Dorothy and this time it finally works. The science
Speaker 4: balls fly up into the tornado and collect all the
Speaker 4: data that they've been trying to gather the whole movie.
Speaker 4: But oh no, the tornado is still coming for them.
Speaker 4: So Joe and Bill outrun the tornado on foot. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 4: and don't worry.
Speaker 3: They linger for a long time in spite of being
Speaker 3: at the top of their fields to not know to
Speaker 3: run in the opposite direction of a twister, I just can't.
Speaker 4: Anyways, they're just looking at it and they're like, wow,
Speaker 4: the majesty of nature.
Speaker 3: Wow, should we kiss?
Speaker 4: Also, no point are they wearing any kind of like
Speaker 4: protective gear, like, no weather appropriate clothes.
Speaker 3: No, because Helen Hunt has to be wearing a tank
Speaker 3: top or the movie cannot be released.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Anyway, so they go and they hide in a barn,
Speaker 4: and the barn is full of so many pointy tools,
Speaker 4: and the tornado is throwing the sharp pointy things at them. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's tearing the barn apart. Joe and Bill almost get
Speaker 4: blown away, but then they anchor themselves to some pipes
Speaker 4: that are secured in the ground via some leather belts. Okay, kinky,
Speaker 4: and this tornado dissipates and everyone is safe, and Joe
Speaker 4: and Bill kiss on the lips about it. In front
Speaker 4: of all of their friends the end. So that's the movie.
Speaker 4: Let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss,
Speaker 4: and we're back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this movie is I don't know, There's a lot
Speaker 3: of interesting things going on with it. It's tricky because
Speaker 3: our podcast obviously addresses the narrative, story and characters the most.
Speaker 3: That's not necessarily what this movie is about. That's not
Speaker 3: why this movie made a ton of money. It is
Speaker 3: very much, I think, a really great example and even
Speaker 3: though I've just been an hour being like, oh, the
Speaker 3: story sucks, but I think that we are given interesting,
Speaker 3: compelling characters where you know, this movie is directed by
Speaker 3: and I'm honestly afraid to try to say his name
Speaker 3: because I feel like I'm wrong. He's Dutch. His name
Speaker 3: is Jean Debant. This is not the first time we
Speaker 3: have covered his work, because he also directed Speed, and
Speaker 3: he was, you know, tangentially involved in a number of
Speaker 3: other movies that we've covered. He started as a cinematographer,
Speaker 3: which is I think a really cool, like career pivot,
Speaker 3: because you just get movies that are narratively less good
Speaker 3: but look cool. And that's Twister to a fault written
Speaker 3: by Michael Crichton, as well as his wife co writer. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Co writer Anne Marie Martin, who was then married to him,
Speaker 3: had also previously been an actor.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think this was the only movie she wrote,
Speaker 4: or at least the only movie she was credited on. Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 4: she mostly worked as an actor.
Speaker 3: It's hard to you know, as far as writing goes.
Speaker 3: You know, Michael Crichton, I feel like, is the big
Speaker 3: name involved. But it is kind of hard to know,
Speaker 3: like who to get annoyed with because it's the blockbuster,
Speaker 3: and also because this movie did famously go through a
Speaker 3: lot of rewrites. Josh Whedon was a rewriter. It's also
Speaker 3: implied that the actors had a lot of say and
Speaker 3: there was a fair amount of improv in the action
Speaker 3: of the movie, because there was an incident where Helen
Speaker 3: Hunt and we don't know what this is even in
Speaker 3: reaction to I'm assuming she's right, but I don't even
Speaker 3: know right that Helen Hunt was said to have been
Speaker 3: frustrated with the interactions that had been originally scripted between
Speaker 3: her character Joe and with Melissa, saying that it felt
Speaker 3: very like shrill and shrewy and argumentative. Yeah, katty was
Speaker 3: the word that she used, so basically like she felt
Speaker 3: that the interactions between them were sexist. And so I
Speaker 3: don't know if that means what was there was rewritten
Speaker 3: or just cut, because what we get between these characters
Speaker 3: is very minimal, which I think is a huge lost opportunity. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this movie is supposed to be like Tornado Alley His
Speaker 3: Girl Friday, and I still feel like His Girl Friday,
Speaker 3: a movie that came out over half a century before,
Speaker 3: still is a little more thoughtful in its characterization of women.
Speaker 3: And so time is a flat circle. But the thing
Speaker 3: is like, we're given a love triangle, and I like
Speaker 3: both of the women in this love triangle. I don't
Speaker 3: hate Bill, but I don't like him. I like Bill Paxton,
Speaker 3: I don't like Bill the guy. Yeah, but whatever, Like
Speaker 3: you know, we're given three interesting characters who are struggling
Speaker 3: with their own individual things, but I just feel like
Speaker 3: they're kind of like unevenly characterized.
Speaker 4: I well to come to the movie's defense, okay, because
Speaker 4: I enjoyed the movie, and I think there are some
Speaker 4: interesting things as it relates to gender, where a lot
Speaker 4: of movies would be about a guy who really won
Speaker 4: something and he's going out and he's doing it and
Speaker 4: there's a woman who he's allowing to tag along. That
Speaker 4: is not the case here. It's pretty flipped where it's
Speaker 4: you know, we do have dual protagonists in Bill and Joe.
Speaker 4: I would argue, So you have a man and a
Speaker 4: woman at the center of this story, and they kind
Speaker 4: of share protagonist functions. They have the same overall goal
Speaker 4: as far as like gathering the data on the tornadoes,
Speaker 4: but it's the woman who has the backstory that we
Speaker 4: know about, which is giving her a more clearly defined motivation.
Speaker 4: He is the one with a subplot with his relationship
Speaker 4: with Melissa, but that kind of peters out and it
Speaker 4: turns into a romantic subplot with Joe. Another thing is
Speaker 4: like he was the one to design Dorothy. Joe was
Speaker 4: the one to actually like build it and see it
Speaker 4: into fruition. She's the one who's still doing the storm chasing.
Speaker 4: She has a team of men mostly and we'll talk
Speaker 4: about Haines, but you know it's well mostly men.
Speaker 3: Yes, I hear what you're saying, and I do think
Speaker 3: that there are things that are subversive, and I think
Speaker 3: ultimately just gender swapped to what a traditional narrative would
Speaker 3: be and for nineteen ninety six that is impressive, But
Speaker 3: I still feel like there's a lot of tropes present
Speaker 3: where it is one thing to say, like, yes, she
Speaker 3: is in a what I'm assuming I don't know shit
Speaker 3: about what Tornado science was like in the nineties. I'm
Speaker 3: assuming that most science was still male dominated in the
Speaker 3: nine Times, right. Oh, so the fact that she has
Speaker 3: a majority male team working for her is subversive, But
Speaker 3: also it just feels swapped. It feels like, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a world where you could you could flip the
Speaker 3: characters of Bill and Joe. I'm glad that it's not
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 4: It does feel swapped, But I would argue that this
Speaker 4: movie is doing better than a lot of similar blockbuster
Speaker 4: movies from this era by having a strongly motivated woman
Speaker 4: in Joe who we know things about, who is helping
Speaker 4: to drive the narrative in significant ways, because again, similar
Speaker 4: movies from this time would generally only position the woman
Speaker 4: as a love interest to the male lead, or maybe
Speaker 4: the woman would be allowed to tag along, but wouldn't
Speaker 4: really be allowed to do anything and wouldn't have any
Speaker 4: expertise in what they are trying to accomplish. And so
Speaker 4: I think this movie. I think Twister could be considered
Speaker 4: an example of a stepping stone movie for more meaningful
Speaker 4: inclusion later on.
Speaker 3: I agree, I mean, I agree to some extent, but
Speaker 3: I just feel like the ways that it's subversive still
Speaker 3: feeling it's leading on a lot of classic crutches, which
Speaker 3: is like, yeah, the things that we know about her
Speaker 3: are exclusively in relation to the men in her life,
Speaker 3: and so this is still not a world where her
Speaker 3: relationship to women has informed the direction of her life.
Speaker 3: That her father died in a cyclone, and that that,
Speaker 3: like her father's death, we are led to believe repeatedly,
Speaker 3: is what led her to pursue her current thing. That
Speaker 3: is very normal for a kid to want to pursue
Speaker 3: something based on a passion or event that happened in
Speaker 3: their formative life. But again, it's just all related to men.
Speaker 3: And even though we are given Aunt Meg, who is
Speaker 3: a you know, obviously a very formative and prominent woman
Speaker 3: in Joe's life, all wes see Meg talk about is
Speaker 3: Joe's relationship to Bill, and we see Joe in you know,
Speaker 3: very like nineties pg. Thirteen or whatever. This ended up
Speaker 3: being like a very blockbuster like contemplative. My hair is dry,
Speaker 3: but I'm in the shower scene thinking about, ugh, I
Speaker 3: love Bill so much. And then she gets out and
Speaker 3: then her aunt is like, don't you let Bill so much?
Speaker 3: And She's like, I don't know, And so we're given
Speaker 3: I think the framework of like, yes, in the abstract
Speaker 3: like she is. I think like she's. I think it's
Speaker 3: like a very girl power thing where she is ostensibly
Speaker 3: in charge, but the things that we learn about her
Speaker 3: have nothing to do with her power, have nothing to
Speaker 3: do with her sense of authority. It's very Quippi, and
Speaker 3: it's all in relation to the men who have driven
Speaker 3: her story before and like during the actions of this movie.
Speaker 3: So I just kind of don't buy it.
Speaker 4: No, I see that it is very like surface level.
Speaker 4: I mean again, this is like, yeah, it's a blockbuster,
Speaker 4: that's not.
Speaker 3: I just don't think this movie is like subverting or
Speaker 3: informing the future in any way like whatever.
Speaker 4: No, but I'm just like thinking of other movies from
Speaker 4: this era that like do such a shittier job. So
Speaker 4: I guess maybe I'm giving the movie too much credit
Speaker 4: because I'm comparing it to other like very sexist movies
Speaker 4: from the mid nineties, not to say that it's doing
Speaker 4: a great job, but again, I think better compared to
Speaker 4: so many of the like extremely sexist action blockbusters from
Speaker 4: this time. I do find it interesting that the movie
Speaker 4: kind of explores this power struggle between Bill and Joe,
Speaker 4: where for the most part, again Joe is leading a
Speaker 4: team of men who we never see like question her
Speaker 4: judgment or question her authority or try to undermine her
Speaker 4: the way that men who work under women often do.
Speaker 4: We don't see that, and I found that refreshing until
Speaker 4: Bill comes into the mix, and then there's all the
Speaker 4: ways this like no we need to go over here, No,
Speaker 4: we need to go over here, No I'll drive, No
Speaker 4: I'm driving.
Speaker 3: Which again does feel very like and just because I've
Speaker 3: seen his Girlfredda recently, Yeah, I kind of liked these sequences,
Speaker 3: even though they feel out of place in the nineties
Speaker 3: disaster genre. But they are kind of like weirdly copy
Speaker 3: pasting these like thirties Quippi like no, yes, no, yes,
Speaker 3: I don't, you don't, let's kiss no, like that sort
Speaker 3: of like back and forth Frank Capra era dialogue into
Speaker 3: the nineties and it doesn't totally work, And I thought
Speaker 3: it was really weird until I knew what they were
Speaker 3: trying to do, and it's still really weird. And it
Speaker 3: feels like that, like, based on what I was reading,
Speaker 3: felt like it was kind of a director thing where
Speaker 3: it was written one way and then the director decided
Speaker 3: on set that it sounded weird and then encouraged the
Speaker 3: actors to improvise, which probably made it a little weirder.
Speaker 3: And I don't know. I like a lot of the
Speaker 3: setups that happened in this movie, Like a love triangle
Speaker 3: in a jeep driving toward a twister is a great setup.
Speaker 4: That's a winner, but.
Speaker 3: The way it plays out not as good.
Speaker 4: I do imagine that a lot of this, like power
Speaker 4: struggle between Joe and Bill, is more about their relationship history. Yes,
Speaker 4: because totally they're married. They were, they are married. They
Speaker 4: apparently split up but didn't officially divorce. Yet we find
Speaker 4: out that Bill was the one who walked out. According
Speaker 4: to him, it was because Joe wasn't a great partner.
Speaker 4: He says that you know, you have you had no
Speaker 4: idea what it meant to be married, commitment, stability, supportiveness,
Speaker 4: a house, all kinds of neat stuff like that hilarious
Speaker 4: line of dialogue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which just feels Yeah, that feels like very like
Speaker 3: bullet points of like I just googled marriage, right, which
Speaker 3: is very I don't know. I liked that line too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was funny, but yeah, I don't know. It
Speaker 4: was just interesting that again, like the reasons for their
Speaker 4: breakup and the reasons that Bill sites as Joe not
Speaker 4: being a great partner are often things that are attributed
Speaker 4: to men when they're not when they're not great partners
Speaker 4: and relationships. Again, it just feels like maybe another gender
Speaker 4: swap thing. But the lazier thing would have been to
Speaker 4: make Bill a very stereotypical tropy man and to make
Speaker 4: Joe a very agree with that stereotypical tropy woman, and
Speaker 4: the kind of flip side.
Speaker 3: So I do agree with that. I like that Joe was,
Speaker 3: you know, presented as the one who is too sucked
Speaker 3: up in work to be able to commit fully to
Speaker 3: the relationship. I don't think it was fully demonstrated what
Speaker 3: Bill was doing to fully demonstrate, because it is also
Speaker 3: sort of implied that he was also very consumed with
Speaker 3: his work. But I feel like the fact that he is,
Speaker 3: you know, it seems like in this very misguided rebound
Speaker 3: relationship with someone who who does want to settle down,
Speaker 3: which it seems like is what Bill wanted and what
Speaker 3: Joe was unable to really give him in their marriage.
Speaker 3: Does demonstrate that, like they wanted different things. Again it's
Speaker 3: blockbuster logic. I don't really know what happens in the
Speaker 3: course of them almost dying while driving into six twisters
Speaker 3: in two hours, Like how that demonstrates that Joe is
Speaker 3: actually now ready for a long term relationship like maybe not,
Speaker 3: maybe not, but but I mean, yeah, no, I did
Speaker 3: appreciate that like that in this like fairly common relationship
Speaker 3: dynamic is swapped in a way that was I think effective.
Speaker 3: I guess I just didn't understand narratively, like how it
Speaker 3: was resolved they're the events of the movie.
Speaker 4: Is the movie's not interested in that.
Speaker 3: Which is why I honestly found myself getting a little
Speaker 3: I mean, I think, like Bill is arrogant, but to
Speaker 3: your point less characterized than Joe. But I found much
Speaker 3: of what wasarized with Joe to be very frustrating, Like
Speaker 3: it felt like the way she was characterized was pretty
Speaker 3: standard for a woman character is like my hero's journey
Speaker 3: is begun by something something my father and is continued
Speaker 3: by something something my husband, and like there is this
Speaker 3: implication of ambition and that we know that that is
Speaker 3: a lot of what drives her. We know that's a
Speaker 3: lot of why her marriage failed. But it doesn't seem
Speaker 3: like she really meaningfully grows throughout the movie. I don't
Speaker 3: really understand what changes about her. It almost feels like
Speaker 3: it almost diminishes why they broke up, which it seems
Speaker 3: like was they wanted different things, and I don't think
Speaker 3: that changes at the end of the movie. I just
Speaker 3: think they have whether they've gotten horny from another like
Speaker 3: half dozen natural disasters. Like, I don't think that anything
Speaker 3: has changed, which is why I'm team Melissa.
Speaker 4: Talk about Melissa, although really quickly before we get there. Uh,
Speaker 4: it's in this scene where Joe and Bill are discussing
Speaker 4: why their marriage failed, where some very dated views on
Speaker 4: therapy come up, where.
Speaker 3: Well, that's Melissa's whole story. It's a whole runner where
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, oh my god, if you're in therapy,
Speaker 3: you're ridiculous, because actually you could be driving into a
Speaker 3: twister and it's like, well, guess what if any of
Speaker 3: these motherfuckers had bended therapy? They wouldn't be driving into
Speaker 3: a twister, so you know, match point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but yeah, just in general, the suggestion that someone
Speaker 4: might need therapy is taken as a grave insult.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Bill Packson's character is like, what could I possibly need
Speaker 4: therapy about? And it's like, sir, everyone needs therapy. That
Speaker 4: is not an insult, that's just a neutral statement.
Speaker 3: But I thought that unintentionally, that plot point actually ages
Speaker 3: very well because you know whatever, like eighteen years later,
Speaker 3: it's so obvious that everyone on the Twister team needs
Speaker 3: therapy and they actually look sillier. But yeah, at the time,
Speaker 3: it's very clear, like it's such a well because this
Speaker 3: movie is I think, you know, sort of like Control
Speaker 3: see Control VD, out of well worn tropes in a
Speaker 3: bunch of different genres ranging a half a century to
Speaker 3: make this movie work, and that's one of them. And
Speaker 3: I feel like that is really prominent from the eighties
Speaker 3: to the two thousands. I think the first time that
Speaker 3: we talked about it in detail on this show was
Speaker 3: during Freaky Friday, and also in the Santa Claus Neil
Speaker 3: is a therapist, Like it's just a very well worn
Speaker 3: trope and that the person it's weird because I feel
Speaker 3: like they're sort of made to seem like, you know,
Speaker 3: rich people and their problems, which has a lot to
Speaker 3: do with access to mental health care. But I feel
Speaker 3: like that the problem is like it's made to seem
Speaker 3: that like therapy is something that is only for rich
Speaker 3: people because it's fake, not that therapy is something that
Speaker 3: is accessible to rich people because of how healthcare is
Speaker 3: structured and almost everyone would benefit from it anyways, that's
Speaker 3: what's happening here and the vague people. I feel like
Speaker 3: that's always I want to say. In Freaky Friday, it's
Speaker 3: like Jamie Lee Curtis's character is calling someone named Jonathan
Speaker 3: over and over and over who's calling her with the
Speaker 3: same problem that is made out to be very ridiculous
Speaker 3: and very absurd. And we see that with a couple
Speaker 3: of characters in Twister, where Melissa is talking to the
Speaker 3: same few clients and it's made to seem like they're
Speaker 3: very weak and very pathetic for seeking out her help,
Speaker 3: and that Melissa is slowly realizing that there are bigger
Speaker 3: problems than mental health. Because you could have accidentally assumed
Speaker 3: that when someone said they drove into twisters for a living,
Speaker 3: they were speaking metaphorically, which is all so ridiculous. Like
Speaker 3: I was so I mean, I was very glad that
Speaker 3: this movie subverted, or at least at best avoided what
Speaker 3: I thought would happened in a movie in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 3: which is that they would just push her off on
Speaker 3: someone else. And I did think she was being pushed
Speaker 3: towards Dusty in multiple scenes. Thankfully that doesn't happen. She
Speaker 3: walks away. It's her idea. I do kind of like
Speaker 3: it feels abrupt, and I do wish that she had
Speaker 3: had a more meaningful interaction with Joe. Yeah, but for
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six, it was on her terms. I do
Speaker 3: think she walked directly into a twister and was dead
Speaker 3: twelve minutes later. But fine, but it is her whole
Speaker 3: profession is still unequivocally made out to be ridiculous, and
Speaker 3: that's just like a trope.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very representative of the you know, extreme stigma surrounding
Speaker 4: mental health and therapy at the time. So in the
Speaker 4: movie is just taking the thing and reinforcing it. As
Speaker 4: far as Melissa's like function in this story, she's there
Speaker 4: to create this you know, pretty classic love triangle situation.
Speaker 4: I will say at least she's not characterized as being
Speaker 4: like mean and awful the way that like Well, to
Speaker 4: reference another Lindsay Lohan movie, Meredith from The Parent Trap,
Speaker 4: it's more that she's just like not compatible with Bill.
Speaker 4: They don't share the same core interests and that's why.
Speaker 3: And I did really like that she was the one
Speaker 3: to say and I'm not even really sad about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like I feel like it is implied that and again,
Speaker 3: it would have been helpful if we knew because with Bill, well,
Speaker 3: I agree, it is unusual that we know the most
Speaker 3: about Joe of anyone in this movie. We at least
Speaker 3: know with Bill that it sort of seems like he
Speaker 3: wanted to be in a stable, more traditional marriage and
Speaker 3: career and that is why he ended up with Melissa.
Speaker 3: We don't know why Melissa ended up with Bill. We're
Speaker 3: not even totally sure why she's from and why she
Speaker 3: doesn't seem to know what a twister is. But I
Speaker 3: do like that, at the end of the day, that
Speaker 3: she is the one to state the problem, say that,
Speaker 3: like they have very likely been incompatible the whole time.
Speaker 3: I do think it's annoying that she says the thing
Speaker 3: I was predicting with my brother that she would say,
Speaker 3: which is that clearly she needs you and is not
Speaker 3: allowed because the thing is we love trying. There is
Speaker 3: this implied graciousness to the third party that I would
Speaker 3: love to see subverted. But Melissa is a class act.
Speaker 4: She's about she's two accommodating.
Speaker 3: Maybe I just would love to see more people who
Speaker 3: okay in future love triangle movies. And it has happened,
Speaker 3: but I would like to see it more that the
Speaker 3: third party who ends up with no one in the
Speaker 3: love triangle is pissed off about it, even if the
Speaker 3: other two people belong together. They're like, yeah, well, what
Speaker 3: the fuck? This feels horrible? Yeah, kind of like James
Speaker 3: Marsden in The Notebook, you know, like, well, what the fuck.
Speaker 3: I'm a nice person. I deserve love, I imagine, and
Speaker 3: look at my life. I mean, I imagine.
Speaker 4: It's a case by case basis thing where yeah, sometimes
Speaker 4: it makes sense for the person to be like really
Speaker 4: hurt and upset.
Speaker 3: And I'll tell you what though, Like there's so few
Speaker 3: people that are like, you know what, it makes sense.
Speaker 3: You're totally right for each other. And I realize this,
Speaker 3: and I don't need help getting out of the.
Speaker 4: Twister, especially because he takes their truck, So how is
Speaker 4: she even gonna drive away anywhere?
Speaker 3: Else? She dies, Caitlin, I hate to break it to you,
Speaker 3: but she does not make it out of the two
Speaker 3: subsequent twisters that happen after her characters exit. Where does
Speaker 3: she go?
Speaker 4: Where does she go? Well, here's the thing I think of.
Speaker 4: A sexist choice would have made Melissa, you know, once
Speaker 4: she realizes that Bill and Joe are destined to be together.
Speaker 3: A lot of.
Speaker 4: Especially you know, writers who are men, would have made
Speaker 4: Melissa be really cruel to Joe and be like really
Speaker 4: possessive over Bill or something like that, which could at
Speaker 4: least have the potential to feel very like, oh, women
Speaker 4: in conflict with each other in a way that like
Speaker 4: men don't understand because women are petty and their caddy.
Speaker 4: So at least that didn't.
Speaker 3: Did you not feel that the converse we had between
Speaker 3: them was like inherently that I mean, yeah.
Speaker 4: You mean in the diner or whatever, when she's when
Speaker 4: Melissa's like, you're still in love with Bill, aren't you?
Speaker 3: A little? Yeah, it felt like a little bit of
Speaker 3: like a little bit of that conversation was in that
Speaker 3: conversation doesn't accept in passing pleasantries past the Bechdels desk
Speaker 3: because they're talking about Bill the whole time, which is
Speaker 3: what they have in common. But like that conversation to
Speaker 3: be did feel a little bit like both of them
Speaker 3: were very uncomfortable, which makes sense. I don't know, maybe
Speaker 3: I'm overthinking it, but like I.
Speaker 4: Think it could have been worse. I guess I was
Speaker 4: just like primed for worse in the nineties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I just like it's in a world where
Speaker 3: they were given something to bond over and talk about
Speaker 3: that wasn't the mutual guy they'd fucked.
Speaker 4: Fair. Another thing that kind of rubbed me the wrong
Speaker 4: way about Melissa's character is that she becomes this sort
Speaker 4: of like audience insert character in the sense that like,
Speaker 4: she's the only one who doesn't know anything about tornadoes,
Speaker 4: and the movie assumes that the average viewer won't know
Speaker 4: much about tornadoes, and the movie needs a way to
Speaker 4: deliver exposition so that the audience can understand what's going on.
Speaker 4: So you see a lot of other people, mostly men,
Speaker 4: explaining stuff to Melissa, And I'm always wary of a
Speaker 4: story that requires a bunch of men explaining stuff to
Speaker 4: a woman. Now, granted we see Joe explain things here
Speaker 4: and there to Melissa as well, but it just it
Speaker 4: still pings for me when like, yeah, the character who
Speaker 4: needs to have a bunch of exposition dumped on them
Speaker 4: to be like one of the few women in the movie.
Speaker 3: I agree, And I also think that's like part of
Speaker 3: why I get even more defensive of Melissa's character, because
Speaker 3: she is ultimately the audience insert because most of the
Speaker 3: science in this movie, based on my research, is made up,
Speaker 3: and so you do need someone to explain.
Speaker 4: Made sciences to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's made that she's very naive and is like, way,
Speaker 3: what is this? But it's like, yeah, this is made up,
Speaker 3: but yeah, but it is like recontextualized as a woman
Speaker 3: who needs something to explain to her, mainly by other men.
Speaker 4: Well, something else I noticed is that the two characters
Speaker 4: in the movie who speak with accents from the American South,
Speaker 4: Melissa and Jonas, are the characters who were not rooting
Speaker 4: for Obviously, like Jonas is the villain, Melissa is positioned
Speaker 4: as someone who ignorant, is like an obstacle ignorant and yeah,
Speaker 4: like an obstacle for Bill and Joe and ignorant. I mean,
Speaker 4: what I'll say is that at least the movie doesn't
Speaker 4: depict them the way a lot of media depicts people
Speaker 4: with Southern accents as being like unintelligent and inarticulate and
Speaker 4: like backwards and all that kind of stuff. Both of
Speaker 4: these characters are highly educated. One of them is a doctor,
Speaker 4: one of them is a scientist.
Speaker 3: But they are and I would say that they're still
Speaker 3: both ignorant.
Speaker 4: Well, that's what I'm saying, Like, the two characters with
Speaker 4: Southern accents are the ones who are like positioned as
Speaker 4: obstacles and who are positioned as like not having either
Speaker 4: the same like intuition about tornadoes or just being completely
Speaker 4: ignorant of them. So I feel like there's still like
Speaker 4: a demonization of the American South in that regard.
Speaker 3: Which, again, like if that is the case, it makes
Speaker 3: no sense because they all appear to be from the
Speaker 3: same area that.
Speaker 4: I mean, we have no idea, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 3: But but even that is like speaks to a lack
Speaker 3: of characterization. Right.
Speaker 4: The only character we know where they're from is Joe
Speaker 4: because we see her as a kid in Oklahoma. I
Speaker 4: guess we don't really know where anyone else is from
Speaker 4: where we can only assume the only.
Speaker 3: Person we know is because of Daddy trauma and the
Speaker 3: way of Aunt Meg. Who Aunt Meg is. I feel
Speaker 3: like kind of a quirky, older woman, kind of stock character,
Speaker 3: and this stock character exists across gender boundaries, and I
Speaker 3: appreciate it, releast that she's there to sort of expand
Speaker 3: the characterization of Joe and that they have a very
Speaker 3: close bond, and that you know, Meg has a close
Speaker 3: bond with the entire storm crew. But again, the only
Speaker 3: thing you see Aunt Meg and Joe talk about is Bill. Yeah.
Speaker 3: If I got out of this shower and my aunt
Speaker 3: immediately started talking to me about how the man I
Speaker 3: recently divorced downstairs should actually still be my husband, and
Speaker 3: I don't care that his fiance is down there like
Speaker 3: he's here. You might as well go for it. It's
Speaker 3: just a movie, a man road. I know, Anne Marie
Speaker 3: Martin has her I don't want to like discount the
Speaker 3: fact that there was a woman co writer, but it
Speaker 3: just feels very like YadA YadA, patriarchal, Like, Okay, we
Speaker 3: have to have these characters interact. I don't even feel certain.
Speaker 3: I don't know like, do we know is Aunt Meg
Speaker 3: her father's sibling.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we don't know. If it's her brother who died
Speaker 4: in the tornado, We don't know, if it's her brother
Speaker 4: in law. We don't know if it's just like Aunt
Speaker 4: Meg used colloquially but like not a blood relative. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, like the movie is badly written, is my point.
Speaker 4: Also, Aunt Meg is more excited to see Bill than
Speaker 4: she is her own niece, than she is deceived Joe.
Speaker 3: She's more more happish, She's more like Dusty King, like
Speaker 3: you know, and not to say that, like your relatives
Speaker 3: cannot perform more excitement to see others than you like
Speaker 3: been there, But regardless, like it just feels all very
Speaker 3: like half cooked, and it just feels like Aunt Meg
Speaker 3: is put there because at the end of the second act,
Speaker 3: we have to pull Aunt Meg and her Golden retriever
Speaker 3: out of the rubble because YadA, YadA, YadA, and it
Speaker 3: ultimately serves to make Bill Paxton look like a hero
Speaker 3: because he saves her and the dog with Joe, but
Speaker 3: at the end he goes back twice and it's you know,
Speaker 3: I just think that like even the most consequential relationship
Speaker 3: between women in this movie, which I do think is
Speaker 3: between Joe and her aunt, is still almost exclusively in
Speaker 3: reference to men. So so whoops.
Speaker 4: The last thing I want to talk about is the
Speaker 4: one other woman on the storm Chaser's team, Missus hat
Speaker 4: missus Hat aka Haynes. Once again, the actor played Haines
Speaker 4: is named Wendell Josepher. There's not much to say because
Speaker 4: you barely see her on screen, You barely see her
Speaker 4: and Joe interacting. You would think there would be some camaraderie.
Speaker 3: I would guess, and I hope. I wonder if this
Speaker 3: is true that all of the science side characters outside
Speaker 3: of Dusty were written to be gender neutral, and yet
Speaker 3: only one.
Speaker 4: Woman was cast. Yeah, that is very frustrating. Maybe someone
Speaker 4: would argue, well, realistically, the people who were doing Tornado
Speaker 4: science back then were predominantly men.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, guess what, bitch is the movie.
Speaker 4: It's a movie, and you can do whatever the fuck
Speaker 4: you want. Yeah, and again, the most frustrating thing to
Speaker 4: me is that, like, you rarely see Haines and Joe
Speaker 4: interacting in a situation like that, where like, because I mean,
Speaker 4: we've been there in the comedy sphere where like We're
Speaker 4: two women on a show that has like eight other
Speaker 4: men on the lineup, and you like develop camaraderie with
Speaker 4: the other people who are like you, and you would
Speaker 4: think there would be more camaraderie between Joe and Haines.
Speaker 4: But again, you never see them interacting because the movie
Speaker 4: doesn't actually care anything about Haines. So Bods, that's frustrating.
Speaker 4: Oh whips, Do you have anything else you'd like to discuss?
Speaker 3: No, this movie, I think vague like passes the Veccal
Speaker 3: test in the way that maybe we should have defined
Speaker 3: it at the begin name, because I feel like this
Speaker 3: movie does pass the Bechtel test, but in ways that
Speaker 3: we generally find to be unsatisfactory. It's pleasant trees, it's hello's,
Speaker 3: it's quipi asides. I think it does technically pass the
Speaker 3: Bechtel test, but in terms of like meaningful interactions, I
Speaker 3: would say, no, it doesn't.
Speaker 4: I think. Yeah. The closest thing would be a line
Speaker 4: where Joe says to Melissa, if you have to pee,
Speaker 4: do it now, because there's nowhere to stop along the
Speaker 4: way on our path of tornado chasing.
Speaker 3: Which is useful information but could be cut from the movie.
Speaker 4: Could be cut Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's the thing is like, I feel like there's very
Speaker 3: at this point because, as we talk about all the time,
Speaker 3: the Bechtel test is a general metric just to get
Speaker 3: a feel for are people of a martialized gender interacting
Speaker 3: in meaningful ways in this movie? And I do feel like, well,
Speaker 3: there are subversive elements to the movie. The answer to
Speaker 3: that question is no, No, that women are not interacting
Speaker 3: in subversive ways. They're only interacting in relation to men,
Speaker 3: even though there are ample opportunities for that to not
Speaker 3: be made the case. And so it feels to me
Speaker 3: like a classic nineties version. I mean, I know I
Speaker 3: say nineties, I mean I know that it happens in
Speaker 3: every generation where every generation feels like feminism we actually
Speaker 3: got it right, and no one has, including our generation, right.
Speaker 3: But like this feels like a very third wave nineties
Speaker 3: version of like, yeah, we get it, and it's like, no,
Speaker 3: you don't, because you were still talking about Bill Paxton
Speaker 3: the whole time, and so for me, it doesn't pass.
Speaker 4: There also would have been a great opportunity because there
Speaker 4: is a scene early on where Haines tells Joe about
Speaker 4: I think it's the first tornado that arises in the movie,
Speaker 4: but Joe does not respond at least to Haines. She
Speaker 4: like then addresses the whole group and it doesn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she just like turns to the boys.
Speaker 4: It could have been so easy for Joe to be like, wow,
Speaker 4: thanks Haines, now we know your name, and what else
Speaker 4: do you have to say about this? And there could
Speaker 4: have been a couple back and forths that would have passed.
Speaker 4: But the movie didn't do it. So yeah, spiritually I
Speaker 4: would say no, the movie does not pass the Bechdel test.
Speaker 4: But our nipple scale, where we rate the movie on
Speaker 4: a scale of zero to five nipples ba on examining
Speaker 4: the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, I mean, as
Speaker 4: much of a rump and a fun time I think
Speaker 4: it is, I still will only give it. I'll give
Speaker 4: it like one and a half maybe two. I'm feeling
Speaker 4: a little generous just because I think it does some
Speaker 4: interesting things. Compared to similar blockbuster movies of this same era.
Speaker 4: Most other movies from this time and that were of
Speaker 4: the same ilk did way worse. They were so deeply
Speaker 4: sexist and like outwardly hateful toward women, Whereas this is like, well,
Speaker 4: what if a woman was in charge, and what if
Speaker 4: we knew more about her than any of the other
Speaker 4: characters who were men, and you know, a few things
Speaker 4: like that, and I think that there's something to be
Speaker 4: said for that.
Speaker 3: Not a lot.
Speaker 4: Again, it's not doing the best job ever, but by
Speaker 4: nineties standards, I was vaguely impressed. It's a very, very
Speaker 4: white cast, no diversity whatsoever. The treatment of therapy and
Speaker 4: mental health is dated and is presented in such a
Speaker 4: way that perpetuates the stigma of mental health and therapy.
Speaker 4: So there's not great things in it. But I don't know.
Speaker 4: I like Joe's a character. She makes jokes, she makes quips.
Speaker 4: She says, I'm gonna head southwest to the counter. Oh,
Speaker 4: how was the tornado? It was, Wendy. These are funny
Speaker 4: lines that I laughed at, and so I like her.
Speaker 4: And I'll give the movie two nipples, and I'll give
Speaker 4: one to Toby the dog, which is Joe's childhood dog,
Speaker 4: and I'll give the other to Mose the dog and
Speaker 4: Meg's dog. The end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna think this movie one and a half
Speaker 3: because I do think that it is like vaguely subverting stuff,
Speaker 3: but in a way that is very unsatisfactory. I feel
Speaker 3: like the success of this movie mainly is that, like
Speaker 3: you were saying earlier, and I wish yeah, Like I
Speaker 3: think I was too irritated by other elements of the
Speaker 3: movie to fully appreciate, but that yes, Joe is the
Speaker 3: best characterized person in this movie, and that is rare.
Speaker 3: I still think she's mainly characterized as it pertains to
Speaker 3: the first man she met and the man she married,
Speaker 3: which is very reductive and to me, reeks of a
Speaker 3: story that is written and shaped by primarily men. I
Speaker 3: also think the way that she is like clothed and generally,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not excessively harping on her body, but
Speaker 3: if you look at the way that her team is
Speaker 3: clothed versus her, it's obvious.
Speaker 4: That she's showing more skin.
Speaker 3: This movie came out two years after Jurassic Perk, and
Speaker 3: she is dressed far more scantily than Laura Durd's character.
Speaker 3: Like it just feels a little more and which sucks
Speaker 3: because I think Helen Hunt does a great job in
Speaker 3: this week. I think she's really talented, and I think
Speaker 3: that the physical endurance, which we didn't really get to,
Speaker 3: but the fact that like Helen Hunt and the entire
Speaker 3: cast of this movie were obviously put through because so
Speaker 3: much of the movie were practical effects, which again I love,
Speaker 3: but that you know, Yon Debant was kind of a tyrant,
Speaker 3: a bit of a James Cameron, which makes sense as
Speaker 3: he was considered as a director for this movie, but
Speaker 3: he was busy with Titanic. But everyone was put through
Speaker 3: the physical ringer. But the only person who was called
Speaker 3: out as being a little clumsy was Helen Hunt. Yes,
Speaker 3: and Helen Hunt stood up for herself in retrospect when
Speaker 3: she knew of that quote. And it's just like it's
Speaker 3: even being a better characterized movie in a blockbuster as
Speaker 3: a woman is still entrenched in this theory of the
Speaker 3: time sexism. I am very in a lot of it
Speaker 3: is because I have no nostalgic attachment to this movie,
Speaker 3: but like watching it, I just don't feel a lot
Speaker 3: of reasons to excuse that. And I think Helen Hunt
Speaker 3: and Jamie Gertz give great performances. I think their characters
Speaker 3: are really good, and I feel like they're underserved and
Speaker 3: ultimately two greats of twentieth century cinema into twenty first
Speaker 3: century cinema because obviously I mean Phillip Seymour. Hoffman's later
Speaker 3: performances are incredible. I would also shout out Bill Paxton's
Speaker 3: performance in night Crawler, one of my favorite movies, is
Speaker 3: a great later performance from him. Unfortunately they're no longer
Speaker 3: with us. It's a great way to end, obviously, and
Speaker 3: Alan ruck in the entirety of succession, like you have
Speaker 3: a lot of great actors here. But ultimately, yeah, I
Speaker 3: understand why this movie was kind of forgotten in spite
Speaker 3: of making half a billion dollars in nineteen ninety six money.
Speaker 3: And that's saying something. It does just feel like the
Speaker 3: best elements of better movie is put into a movie
Speaker 3: that is pretty good.
Speaker 4: And I guess we'll find out what Twisters is all about.
Speaker 3: So you have a feeling. I have a feeling.
Speaker 4: Is it gonna be about Twisters? Do you think?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And I don't think that anyone cares, so yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll give it one and a half nipples. I'll give
Speaker 3: one to Helen Hunt and I'll give half to Jamie
Speaker 3: Gertz because I think and the character of Melissa, because
Speaker 3: I think that they were great and that this movie
Speaker 3: would have been vastly complicated in a good way, because
Speaker 3: This movie needed more interpersonal conflict versus random twisters between
Speaker 3: the two women at its center. It would have been
Speaker 3: amazing if they formed an allyship and forced Bill to
Speaker 3: reveal information about himself, but no one was thinking this
Speaker 3: hard about it, and so I just felt a little
Speaker 3: underwhelmed by the product. One and a half nipples from Jamie.
Speaker 4: Well, listeners, that's our twister episode. You can follow us
Speaker 4: at Bechdel Cast on Instagram. You can go to our
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Speaker 4: can buy a bunch of merch that Jamie designed.
Speaker 3: So do it.
Speaker 4: And with that, Jamie, let's get in a truck and
Speaker 4: drive away from the twisters toward safety. Bye Bye. The
Speaker 4: Bechdelcast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Drante
Speaker 4: and Jamie loftis produced by Sophie Lichtermann, edited by Moe
Speaker 4: La Boord. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan
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