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kazashiniwielder · 4 months ago

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Okay, so Twisters came out this weekend, which means I had to watch Twister again, and I really need to gush about this movie.

Twister is one of two disaster movies that I can watch repeatedly without it getting old (Armageddon is my other favorite). And part of it is because of the characters.

Jo, Bill, and Melissa aside; who were all magnificent characters, I adored Jo’s team just as much!!!

Tim ‘Beltzer’ Lewis came off like Jo’s second in command. Usually when Jo went off ahead and the group stopped to gather data, Beltzer seemed to take charge. He was usually one of the first people Jo called for and would be the first to start giving orders. Beltzer is a bit of a nerd, having quoted Star Wars in his excitement when he thought they were going to get ‘Dorthy’ up. He also a bit of a goof, saying ‘he was without apparel’ when Bill kept insisting he wasn’t butt naked when they met. It is also clear Beltzer has been doing this for a while because he was part of the retelling of stories from the early days along with Dustin and Rabbit.

Haynes travels a little with Beltzer for the first half of the movie. The two have a close relationship as they are usually together in scenes. Beltzer physically moves Haynes away to give Jo and Bill space in the beginning and even holds Haynes to give her comfort when Aunt Meg got hurt. The two also sing Oklahoma together when everyone was excitedly chasing after the first tornado of the day. Haynes for her part seems to be one of the data technicians. She helps monitor the data reports and she knows what she is looking at, being the one to identify that the F5 tornado at the end of the movie was going to shift before anyone else did. She is also usually handling data print outs.

In the next vehicle you got Robert ‘Rabbit’ Nurick. Rabbit is a pretty heavily featured character and part of that is because he is the primary navigator of the group. The cab of Rabbit and Sanders’ truck is full of maps which Rabbit uses to help find the fastest and most efficient ways for the group to chase the tornado. Rabbit has to know the area well, has to fully understand how to read maps, and how to quickly adapt. Rabbit is also particular. His first scene is him snapping at Sanders due to one of his maps being folded instead of rolled. He also tries to sooth others, explaining very patiently to Aunt Meg that she can’t drive herself to the hospital due to her car being in a tree.

Rabbit rides is a car with Sanders. Sanders is one of the younger members of the group. He is still pretty excitable, being one of the people to chime in over the radio when they were looking at a tornado and having nothing useful to really add except that it was ‘beautiful’. Sanders also helps with data analysis and navigation.

The next vehicle is probably the most green members of the group. Joey and Laurence. Both of them know Bill, so they were there when Bill was earlier, but they are more inexperienced than the rest of the team. Laurence was probably on his first major field project. Jo had scolded him at the beginning for not properly maintaining the equipment and he referred to Beltzer as ‘Sir’. He is only one to suggest they throw in the towel after the first close call and when they are taking cover in the drive in, Laurence was the only person to try to hide in a car instead of underground. He also froze in fear and Jo had to pull him out. So he likely hasn’t done this before. Joey in addition was a little inexperienced but he and Laurence were monitoring the satellite data. Joey is also a little looser in his priorities. When the others are excited about the data they were getting from ‘Dorthy’ finally flying, Joey yells ‘we are going to be so popular!’

The two also appear to be close. Not only are they in a truck together but at the end of the movie when Laurence collapses on the ground in relief, Joey immediately starts playing rock-paper-scissors with him until Dusty interrupts and Laurence then clings to Dustin’s leg. They are younger, more playful, and Dusty clearly enjoys that.

Speaking of Dusty, let’s talk about Dustin Davis. Dustin is probably the most goofy one, and the craziest after Jo and Bill. However unlike those two, he doesn’t have a death wish either. Dustin is one of the older and more experienced members of the team. He knows a lot about tornadoes but he’s very unorthodox. He knows the principles and the concepts but he has no patience for the scientific terms so he makes up his own that make sense to him. He is also the most outgoing of the group, going out of his way to look after Melissa and try to make her feel welcome to the group. He keeps the rest of the team smiling.

Then we have Jason ‘Preacher’ Rowe. Preacher is another older more experienced member. He seems to be in the middle of experiences, with Dusty, Rabbit, Haynes, and Beltzer on one side with Sanders, Laurence, and Joey on the other. He likes upbeat music and judging from his name and his ‘finger of god’ comment, he was likely religious.

The entire team are very intelligent individuals. They are working hard on their research project, something they are on one of their last field projects for if they don’t get results judging from Dusty’s comment about the grant money running out at the beginning. They are all adrenaline junkies for the most part (minus Laurence) but they aren’t crazy either. The entire team shows they know when to have fun and when to get serious. They know when the danger is too much and when the risks are not worth the potential rewards.

They are also a very ride or die team. Jonas was portrayed to be an enemy of Bill’s. According to Bill; he, Jo, and Jonas started in the same lab together (it’s quite possible that Jonas was part of Jo’s group when they met Bill and eventually Jonas split off to do his own thing). Jo mentions that Jonas would let Bill take the lead and then swoop in and take his ideas or the credit. It has created a huge rivalry between Jonas and Bill, which Jo’s team clearly takes Bill’s side on. Jonas doesn’t once acknowledge the others but they are quick to make fun of Jonas and his team.

The entire team also adores Jo’s Aunt Meg. Aunt Meg is the team aunt. They all adore her and she loves them. She knows this is what they ‘live for’, so she uses her home as a rest stop for them. A place where they can recharge and regroup. They come by for showers, changes of clothes, food, and momentary rest. She cares for them all and they care about her. Knowing she was in danger, the entire team rushes out to find her without a moment of hesitation. They all try to make Meg feel better and even look after her dog while she is in the hospital.

I honestly always loved this movie because of the chemistry with all the characters, how they interact, and how they all weave through the story.

I will probably watch it again soon, but I just wanted to gush about how much I adore these characters!!!!

#twister #twister 1996 #Robert rabbit Nurick #Tim Beltzer Lewis #Haynes #Sanders #Laurence #Joey #Dustin Davis #Jason Preacher Rowe #Aunt Meg #character analysis

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robinchan-hananomi · 11 months ago

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Today’s movie is Twister!!!

Now I love this movie. I love it so much for so many reasons. The first is the characters.

Now the central characters are Dr. Jo Harding and Bill Harding. Jo is a scientist working on a grant for her own personal mission of combating tornadoes. How does she plan to do this? By learning enough about them to make earlier warning systems to protect people so they won’t have to go through what she did, watching her father get taken to his death by a tornado. It gives us some background into why her marriage failed, because the only thing she is focused on is her work. Her ex-husband Bill came to see her at the beginning of the movie so they can finalize said divorce and he can get married to his new girlfriend and retire from storm chasing to be a weatherman.

The only problem with that is it’s not Bill. Bill is an adrenaline junkie obsessed with storms like Jo, but not for the same reasons. We learn they met when Jo and Dustin (possibly others) were chasing a tornado and Jo was recording it. Bill drives up in a green car, drunk and naked, and tells the tornado to ‘have a drink’ before tossing a whole bottle of Jack Daniel’s into it while Jo is screaming at him to get back. Somehow this encounter leads to a partnership and eventual marriage. Also led to the nickname ‘the Extreme’.

Now at the start of the movie, Jo and her team are coming toward the end of their funds and the beginning of one of the biggest cluster of storm cells in years. They are trying to launch a pack of sensors to get readings of the inside of the tornados. And Jo has an interesting team helping her.

First is Dustin ‘Dusty’ Davis. He’s full of energy, usually yelling and jumping around. He’s a kind hearted man and for most of the movie he’s helping look after Bill’s new girl Melissa. Then you got Jason ‘Preacher’ Rowe. Like Dusty, Preacher is in his own vehicle. He’s slightly older than some of the team. He apparently likes more classical music and gets just as excited about a chase as the rest. He’s also pretty dedicated to their work, because after getting a nasty head wound he still helps drive the team out for one last attempt to get the sensors to fly. Tim ‘Beltzer’ Lewis and Haynes share a vehicle. The two are very close and at times I honestly thought they’re characters were either best friends or in a relationship. They are pretty invested in Jo and Bill’s relationship though, watching the two while working. They are fun characters who had wonderful chemistry together and the part they sing Oklahoma together is one of my favorites. In another vehicle you got Allen Sanders and Robert ‘Rabitt’ Nurick. While the others are more of scientists, these two function more like the team’s GPS system. Rabitt has the cab of their truck full of maps (rolled, not folded like he scolds Sanders for in the beginning of the movie) and he’s usually determine routes to take while Sanders drives. Sanders is a bit younger, wears his baseball cap on backwards and is usually more along for the ride than anything. I think my favorite scene with him is when Aunt Meg serves them ‘real lemonade’ and he announces he’s moving in with her. The last vehicle are the two younger members of the team, Laurence and Joey. Joey is a bit more goofy, saying he wants to get struck by lightning at least once to see how it feels and mentioning how popular they are going to be at the school when they get the research data back there. And Laurence is most likely new. In the beginning Jo is explaining to him why he needs to maintain his equipment, he is the only member of the team to propose stopping from chasing tornados, and at the drive in he initially hides in a truck and Jo has to coax him out because he is terrified.

Bill wanted to just get the divorce papers and leave but now he learns that they are putting up the sensors, his initial design, and agrees to come with them for that day. Melissa decided to tag along. Partially because she knows Jo still loves Bill and she thinks this is all a last ditch effort of Jo’s to keep Bill.

Through the movie we follow the team as they chase after a few twisters and have a few run ins with Jonas. Jonas was a fellow lab worker with Jo and Bill. Jo and Bill stayed on the ‘academic’ side, working off grants and out of universities. Jonas went corporate and has a number of big sponsors. It’s a sore spot for Bill and we are told the two have always had a rivalry trying to prove which of them is better.

After Melissa decides she is having one of the worst days of her life with how terrifying it is and how she is being passed from vehicle to vehicle, we end up at Jo’s Aunt Meg’s house. Meg and Jo are very close and Meg is very fond of the entire team. She opens her house to them, feeds them all and even makes them good for the road. The team love her dearly in return. In a way we, like Melissa, are the outsiders here and we have been seeing the good and bad sides of what they do.

I don’t know much about Jo’s job, but I imagine in a way it’s similar to what I do in Archaeology. By that I mean that almost the vast majority of it is in research and data analysis. Digging is the ‘fun’ part that I look forward to when I can do it and it’s what most people think of when they talk about Archaeology, but in reality I spend most of my time in the lab or the library. So yeah, I imagine that for them this is like a good few days of the year they chase storms, get data, and the rest of the time they are analyzing it. So we are seeing them on the ‘fun’ field part, and that is how the team treats it.

The scene at Aunt Meg’s is by far my favorite part of the movie. We get to see the team all relaxed and having fun. Because while it’s clear they love their jobs and they love being in the field, they can’t relax or hesitate. If Rabbit messes up on directions, at best they miss valuable data and at worst they can’t escape from a storm and get killed. If Laurence, Beltzer, Haynes, Sanders, Preacher, Joey, and Dusty can’t get good readings on what is going on or collect data, then they can’t keep the team safe and the entire event was a waste of time. And if Jo can’t get the instruments to collect the data, then it was all for nothing. They have to be at their best in the field so they can’t really take it too easy.

After Aunt Meg’s though, things get intense. All through the movie the storms have been getting progressively worse as they have been building, and the team has failed twice to get their sensors off the ground, almost losing Bill and Jo nearly three times in the process. And while Melissa is losing her mind about it all, she hears Bill admit to Jo he still loves her.

As the team is resting in the evening they get brushed by a massive F5 tornado. Preacher is hurt and Melissa is done. She tells Bill she can’t do this and he needs to go be with the others. The others who just learned Aunt Meg is in the path of the tornado and are all rushing to go to her because while she is Jo’s aunt, she is all of their family.

They find Meg’s home is devastated and Bill and Jo are barely able to pull Meg out of the collapsing house. Meg actually reminds me so much of my grandmother. I was visiting family when my grandmother, who was in her late 80’s fell off a stone patio. I’ve been trained in emergency first aid, which is probably why everyone at the family gathering allowed me to take over. As I was stopping the bleeding my grandma is telling everyone ‘oh I’m fine. No, I can’t feel it. Well if you insist on me going to the hospital I can drive myself’. Meg was exactly the same in that scene.

I remember watching a review of Twister and someone ranting about Aunt Meg telling Jo she had to stop it, saying that it suddenly became a story about Jo ‘fighting’ the twister. And maybe that was the intent. I always took it as Meg telling Jo she needed to keep going, to finish her research because she had to find a way to get people more warnings. She even emphasized that she had no chance to leave her bedroom between the warning and the storm hitting. I just took it as her telling Jo to get back out there and do what she needs to.

And the next morning we see everyone making a run for the F5. Jo and her team only has two tries left, and when the first one doesn’t work they realize where they went wrong. They prepare to go for a second attempt but learn Jonas and his team have a better chance. Bill and Jo want to do this themselves. They have their reasons, Jo needing to get this validation and Bill needing to execute his plan. But after Meg and everything else, they care more about the data being gathered at this point then being the ones to do it, especially because the storm is destabilizing and could end soon.

Jonas however doesn’t want to accept their help. And when the two try to warn him that he’s in danger since they can see the storm but he is too close to, he ignores them. A mistake that ends up killing him. Bill and Jo decide to get the data no matter what. So they head straight for the storm, sacrificing Bill’s truck to successfully get the sensors in. After that they have to run and find shelter or they would be killed.

The movie kind of ends on a hopeful note. The team is celebrating as Jo and Bill reconcile their marriage. They talk about their plans for the data, the analysis and the lab, getting the grants, and working on the alarm system. We know the entire team is going to keep working toward it.

I don’t know accurate things in this movie are, but it is by far my favorite disaster movie and I will forever watch it.

#twister

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