In the original Twister they spent a lot of time showing the individualism of the storm chasers, the unique vehicles, ect. And even more time demonstrating the laid back esprit de corps mentality between the characters. I'm betting they really overdid it in the new one




Huh, the big studios can't afford to make art, they need seat fillers. I suppose that's why streaming is exploding like crazy with original content. Back when all the radio stars were moving to television there was a similar problem with the networks. Interestingly, it only took a decade to kill off radio as a mainstream entertainment.
I dug around and found this article about movie evoloution
[url]https://www.wired.com/2014/09/cinema-is-evolving/[/url]

Well, I look at it like this. When I go to the casino there are machines that will literally let you bet a quarter. I've played them before and they're boring because when you get three things to line up, you win like fifty cents. The payoff isn't worth the time invested, so instead I play the ones where you bet $2-$3 and when you hit the bonus, yeah, you win $50-$100 and it's all fun and you really feel like you won something. Nobody feels like a winner after hitting a jackpot and leaving 75 cents up.

And that's why Hollywood isn't making those small movies anymore -- because you can make a $50k movie and if it breaks even (which is great for a movie)... it's $50k. And if it doubles that... that's $50k. That doesn't pay a single guy's salary. That's some executive's car lease for a year. So instead you gotta make Avengers 14, something with a built-in fan base guaranteed to turn a profit even if it sucks.

When fellow text game creator and friend Adam Cadre was working on films, he told me that he was in a situation where, when working on scripts, everything he created had to be pulled from another movie, AND that movie had to have been a profitable one. (Stories like that are why I gave up ever trying to get paid in the entertainment industry a good 20 years ago.)

That is what I was reminded of, reading Flack's review. And it doesn't have to be that way. This is not a "capitalism just naturally causes this" problem, which we see here plenty. This is just ......... people in charge being shit.

I'd LOVE to know more about Oklahoma. I'd LOVE for a scriptwriter to either be able to insert their own knowledge of the people and area, or go out and do some research. That's interesting. That's art. That's something. I get that Twisters 2 ain't that kind of movie, but still. The stock beats are so uninteresting. The inability to say anything new is so uninteresting. And because every movie is now computer generated, you can't even ask yourself how they made the tornados look good.

I don't get it. What are we doing as a culture. Because I have been hearing about Twister 2 for so long, I assume it made a giant profit, so no lessons would be learned. But you read about people lamenting the death of the theater, and then you read Flack's experience where this is exactly the same movie as any other Man vs Environment one and I have to wonder: will they EVER make new movies, actual new experiences? It seems like they would rather the entire industry collapse and die than tell the people making the scripts, "It's ok for you to write what you know."

Also, and I'm sure people in Hollywood and New York City slap their foreheads at stuff like this in movies all the time, but in this film Kate and "bad boy" Tyler go see a rodeo (one of a few times an entire group of people are "surprised" by a gigantic tornado, which again is beyond silly). After the tornado hits and destroys the town, Kate hops into her car and flees back to her mother's house in Sapulpa.

In the film, the rodeo is shot in Stillwater. Kate pulls out and drives through downtown Yukon before arriving at her mom's home in Sapulpa. If you're from one of the other 49 states you wouldn't notice a thing but I'll let you in on a little secret... to do this, Kate would have left Stillwater, driven 70 miles southwest (in about 30 seconds) to hit Yukon, done a 180, and then driven two hours northeast to get to Sapulpa. Again, I'm not docking the movie for that -- movie magic, and all -- but when you live here, it's kind of funny.

Most of the quotes, like the plot and everything else, are just recycled from other stuff. In an early scene Kate says "I don't chase anymore," which I guess is a line from the first film. And when the chasers spot their first big tornado, one of them says "look at the size of that thing," the exact same words (and with the same cadence) Luke uttered when seeing the Deathstar for the first time. The film's new addition is "If you feel it, chase it!" which is the wild maverick's catch phrase that applies mostly to tornadoes but also to women and I suppose, life itself. But no, 25 years later people still remember the cow scene from the original and there's nothing like that in this one.

For what it's worth, the whole film is shot in Oklahoma. There's a shot of downtown Yukon on main street that you and ICJ probably wouldn't remember, but you've been there. The entire third act is shot in El Reno, which is where we went for onion burgers. Much of the climax takes place in El Reno's downtown movie theater, which is about two blocks east of where we had onion burgers, and two blocks west of that old house I showed you guys that we used to own.

As for achieving her goal and stopping the big one, of course they do -- but I would counter with, just how affective was the solution in the first movie, seeing that there was a sequel?

Does the movie have any memorable lines or scenes in it that will give it popular sustainability? Also, in the original Twister the stormchasers were able to achieve their goal at the end of the movie. Did these stormchasers do that, or are they losers?


THE
WE GOT COWS
AARDVARK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdok0rZdmx4&t=3s

Sometimes, when a viewer is too close to the subject material, it can be difficult to separate the technical inaccuracies from the story a director is trying to tell. Sometimes, it is downright impossible. Such was the case for me with 2024's windy sequel, [i]Twisters[/i].

The film opens as Kate and four of her friends from college are attempting to "disrupt a tornado" by putting themselves directly in the path of one and shooting chemicals up into the funnel. The plan fails. The storm is much larger than they anticipated and as a result, three of the stormchasers are killed. Kate and her then boyfriend, Javi, part ways as she takes a much safer job with the national weather service in New York City. Back home in Oklahoma tornadoes are growing in numbers and intensity, and after five years in the big city Kate is drawn back into the world of chasing tornadoes across Oklahoma.

But in five years, so much has changed! This time around Kate and Javi find themselves competing with YouTubers and social media stars selling merchandise before each chase begins. Before the end we'll learn the bad guy wasn't all bad, the good guy wasn't all good, and it'll be up to Kate to face her fear and finally defeat a gigantic tornado.

If you've seen one of these types of movies, you've seen them all. You could easily swap the tornadoes out for surfing waves, pulling off the perfect cheer, or any of a dozen disasters and keep all the beats. Wait, the bad guy was selling merch so that he could purchase food to give away at tornado disaster sites? Who saw that coming! (Everybody.) By the time we meet the good guy and the bad guy we know they'll all be working together with Kate in the end. None of that is surprising.

What [i]was[/i] surprising, at least to someone who lives here, is how Oklahoma -- and Oklahomans -- are portrayed. Throughout the film, people are "surprised" by tornadoes, their first warning coming from seeing one on the horizon, headed their way. In reality -- and it's been this way for decades -- we get warned sometimes days in advance. It is not uncommon here for a weatherman on Monday to warn views about "potentially tornado-producing storms" coming on Friday. Long, long before a storm produces anything that remotely looks like a tornado, the local meteorologists take over every television station for hours and hours, letting people know where the storms are, how fast they're moving, what direction they're heading, when they'll get to your area, etc. Tornadoes are a lot less like sneaky bogeymen than something like a tsunami that we track with satellites and know when they're going to arrive. In the film, stormchasers are constantly racing into cities to tell people what to do ("We've got to tell the people to find a basement!") but from the age we are in kindergarten here, kids are taught what to do when tornado sirens go off. In the film, Oklahomans are portrayed no smarter than the cattle, standing mindlessly in the path of impending disaster. Trust me, everyone who has lived in Oklahoma for more than five minutes has one or more weather apps on their phones. The thought of entire towns (and even the stormchasers) getting "surprised" by a tornado is ludicris.

Just as silly is the portrayal of the stormchasers unwinding after a big chase. In one scene, after a day's worth of chasing, hundreds of stormchasers meet in some fictitious town square. playing songs on acoustic guitars and dancing around in flannel shirts and cowboy hats and -- look, I know these people exist, somewhere, but stormchasers have way more in common with IT nerds than cowboys out trying to rope the wind. The guys in this movie set out to chase a tornado and ended up on the set of Three Amigos somehow.

As far as I know, the whole idea of distupting a tornado by launching anything up into it is bunk, but that's okay -- [i]Twisters[/i] is no more based in reality than [i]Jurassic Park[/i] or any other good science-fiction thriller. The fantasy parts aren't what the film gets wrong -- it's the facts they trample all over to tell their story. Stereotypes aside, [i]Twisters[/i] is a popcorn flick that's enjoyable as long as you keep reminding yourself that's not a tornado affecting your vision... it's just your eyes rolling over and over.