Unpacking Twisters: Grief, Redemption, and Nature's Fury

Can a film about tornadoes also explore the depths of human grief and redemption? On this episode of Blood Drops, we unpack "Twisters," the electrifying sequel to the 1996 classic "Twister." We dive into the paths of Kate Carter, a reformed storm chaser grappling with loss, and Tyler Owens, a thrill-seeking social media star. With unprecedented weather phenomena wreaking havoc in Oklahoma, we explore how their intertwined journeys reveal deeper truths about facing fears and finding redemption.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Blood Drops. We're going to do a review of Twisters, a fun, engaging disaster film, twisters. The storm season intensifies. The path of a former storm chaser, kate Carter, and a reckless social media superstar, tyler Owens, collide when a terrifying phenomenon never seen before are unleashed. The pair and their compelling teams find themselves squarely in the paths of multiple storm systems converging over central Oklahoma in a fight for their lives. For their lives that's the description on the website. This is actually a really, really fun sort of disaster film. It was kind of like they took the 1996 Twister movie and put it in 2024 and updated the technology. I think they did really well with the technology.

Speaker 1: 1:08

Kate Carter is trying to implode tornadoes or stop tornadoes to save lives. I mean, scientifically it doesn't make sense, but the movie isn't really about that. It's kind of a sort of ignition point for Kate's character. One thing I did like about this movie is they used the F5 system of storms to kind of explain grief. It was kind of an interesting little thing. You know, tyler Owens, the social media superstar and the romantic interest in this movie, has a few lines in here that I thought were kind of fun. You know, a tornado raining it isn't based on the size of or wind speed, it's based on damage. You don't face your fears, you ride them Right.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Kate is dealing with this grief of something that happened five years earlier when she was testing her theory to implode a tornado or stop a tornado. Take away the power of the tornado and she gets all of her team killed, except for one, javi, which is a main character, and he kind of turns out to be kind of a scuzzy character until he has a moral crisis. See, javi is using technology to map storms better and he's using military technology to do this. Well, the way he's funding it is having a big, rich land developer come in and predatorily take land after a disaster. What is happening isn't necessarily illegal, it's just kind of scuzzy, because you're using the disaster as a basis to take land from people to bolster up your own financial interests in that area, probably for land development. Kate inevitably ends up saying I don't want nothing to do with you, and then halfway through the movie towards the end, actually he becomes a good guy because he's like what I'm doing isn't necessarily a good thing. This was a perfect balance between the buildup of the hero though of that character anyways, kate. On the other hand, they used tornadoes as a basis for her to get over her guilt and her grief about losing her friends five years earlier. Grief is only as powerful as you let it be. Don't let it hinder your dreams. Kate was trying to make amends for what happened five years earlier by isolating herself in New York and working for Noah. The best way was for Kate to face her grief, overcome her grief, test the town and redemption. Ultimately, tyler was the driving force behind Kate to pull her out of her shell and setting her on a path to gain that redemption.

Speaker 1: 4:55

The cinematography in this movie was amazing. It was shot in 35mm which, if you don't know, 35mm holds CGI a lot better. For some weird reason it just does. They did a lot of shots that you would see in the 1996 movie, but I feel like there's only so many ways you can do a tornado. I feel like there's only so many ways you can do a tornado. But they gave us some new stuff, like two tornadoes merging twins or fire feeding a tornado making it bigger, which I don't know if that actually happens. I know there are fire tornadoes when you look at fire, forest fires and whatnot, forest fires and whatnot. The massive tornado at the end, which was huge, was the end boss that ultimately gave Kate her redemption.

Speaker 1: 5:51

This is a standalone sequel to Twister and I think they did an effective job. I like the hype around the storms. So you have Tyler's character, who is a YouTube star and storm chaser, who's shooting fireworks in the eye of storms, driving his truck into the middle of them, just doing crazy stuff, and he has a posse that follows him around. He has his team, and then you have all of these people who are following him around because he's a social media hit and he kind of comes off as arrogant. But when you dig into the character it's like no, he knows what he's doing, he has a degree, and I think that was a nice balance between the two characters there. I don't know if you've have you seen twisters? What do you think about twisters? Thank you.