I Watched Twister (1996) For The First Time

Pretty gay movie.

My wife was recently appalled to learn that I had not seen the movie Twister (1996), so between this weekend’s WNBA games, we watched it, and now I have written a timely and essential review of it for you.

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Twister (1996) is a film about a lesbian Storm Doctor named Jo. Her lesbianism is established in the opening of the movie when her father — a farmer who is trying to hold a cellar door closed against a tornado like it's some kind of regular human burglar on the other side — is pulled out of the safety of his family's underground bunker and sucked up into the F5 funnel. This happens right in front of Jo's very face. She decides right then and there, at the tender age of four, that her childhood trauma will become her entire adult identity and her profession, and so she goes to college to get a PhD in Tornado. This, plus the fact that she is named "Jo" are the first two indicators that she is gay. 

There is plenty of other evidence. For example, she wears a standard issue Lesbian Action Uniform for the entirety of the film: a khaki jumpsuit, a white tank top, a necklace that reminds her of her deepest emotional wounds, and a beat-up brown leather jacket. This is how you know she is a lesbian and not a bisexual. Bisexual characters, of course, wear black or maroon/burgundy-colored leather. Jo is the Kristy Thomas of Cyclone Club, a ragtag group of Oklahoma storm chasers with names like “Rabbit” and “Dusty.” She’s so bossy that everyone simply calls her "Boss." She is the most competent person in every situation. She has a messiah complex. She is single-minded; myopic, you might even say. And, at one point, rather than going to sleep at night, she orders eight coffees. 

Also, of course, she is played by Helen Hunt, who got her lesbian start in the 1983 made for TV movie Quarterback Princess, in which she plays Tami, a girl quarterback on a boy football team. And continued her gay for pay career most recently as Winnie Landell, a queer network executive and pickleball dom on Hacks. I would be remiss not to mention that Helen Hunt has, on more than one occasion, spoken about being mistaken for Jodie Foster, which makes sense due to the fact that she could, in fact, be Jodie Foster's half-sister. Like Jodie Foster, she does that lesbian voice thing where it kinda sounds like she's chewing on her words. And she has that angular face that's like the world's most homosexual geometry problem. Like if Sappho did math instead of poetry.

In Twister, Jo cosplays heterosexuality by being married to Bill Paxton.

Jo is studying tornadoes because you only get about three minutes of notice when one's coming at you, and she would like to increase that to 15 minutes, so no more fathers get sucked up out of basements in front of their children. To accomplish this goal, she and Cyclone Club need to get as close to a tornado as possible, so they can toss up their science balls into the funnel and decode its mysteries with data. It's not just Cyclone Club that's chasing tornadoes across Oklahoma, though. Cary Elwes leads a team called Storm Sellouts, and not only do they all drive solid black vehicles, which is how you know they're bad guys, but also they've got corporate sponsors. They're out here risking their lives for profit. 

Joke's on Storm Sellouts, though, because they trust science only. Bill Paxton is a tornado whisperer! All he's gotta do is hold Oklahoma dirt in his hands when the clouds start rolling in and — boom! — he's Raven Baxter. He sees where the tornado's gonna go and how it's gonna get there in his mind. This gives Cyclone Club the advantage during the one single day Twister takes place. Or, well, as much of an advantage as you can get when you're driving your car into the kind of 250 mile per hour winds that whip cows back and forth in front of your windshield. 

That's basically the whole plot of Twister. Jo and Bill Paxton and Cyclone Club rush all around Oklahoma trying to get directly underneath a tornado to release their science balls, while Storm Sellouts creep on them and try to get to the tornadoes first so they can get their science balls up in there. And the whole time they're like, "Convective instability!" "Cluster outbreak!" "Clone flow region!" "Dewpoint surge line!" "Frontogenesis!" And, at one point, "DEBRIS!" There's about ten people on the squad. Alan Ruck is in charge of navigation. There's a queer lady sidekick named Haynes, who is in charge of making propellers for the science balls out of Pepsi cans. Philip Seymour Hoffman is in charge of vibes. My wife knows a lot about weather and space and stuff and she says all storm chasers need a vibe guy. 

Cyclone Club tries and fails a bunch of times with the science balls, then they stop at Aunt Meg's house for lunch, then they try and fail some more with the science balls, then rush back to Aunt Meg's house to save her and her dog when a tornado rolls into her town, and then they finally succeed with the science balls. 

Both dogs and both horses in the movie are okay, but we do lose at least one cow, some chickens, and Cary Elwes. He meets the same fate as Jo's dad — absorbed by a tornado! — but because he's a bad guy, he also gets exploded. Cyclone Club is like "oof!" when the Storm Sellouts die, but then a few minutes later they have a giant post-F5 party, so I don't think they're really that sad. 

Bill Paxton has a fiancée throughout most of the movie Twister, but she wises up at the end of the second act and leaves him. She's a therapist, but you don't need a doctorate to see that Bill Paxton, like all men who are in love with lesbians, will continue to follow Jo into each and every stupid and dangerous situation she concocts for the rest of her life — until she finally comes out and gets a girlfriend — arguing with her the whole time about who's gonna get to drive the truck.