Confronting the Finger of God in 'Twister'
Spoiler Alert! Especially for Global Warming enthusiasts!
The most violent thunderstorms draw air into their cloud bases with great vigor. If the incoming air has any initial rotating motion, it often forms an extremely concentrated vortex from the surface well into the cloud. Meteorologists have estimated that wind in such a vortex can exceed 200 knots; pressure inside the vortex is quite low. The strong winds gather dust and debris, and the low pressure generates a funnel-shaped cloud extending downward from the cumulonimbus base. - Aviation Weather
The 1996 film Twister is a fine American movie: romance, wild-ass tornadoes, and not a word from any character on the threat of global warming. The special effects are beautifully integrated into each scene: a bedroom’s white curtain billowing with menace on a summer night, or an eighteen-wheeler flying over endless farmland.
The soundtrack gives voice to nature’s destruction. In a flashback, actress Helen Hunt hears that nighttime growl as a young girl and soon witnesses her dad being devoured by the twister. In the present, her character, Dr. Jo Harding, works as a storm-chaser, testing an early warning system, but also bent on getting inside the monster to discover what makes it tick.
When talking of tornadoes in a rowdy, lighthearted breakfast scene of steak and eggs, one character refers to an F-5 tornado as the Finger of God. Dr. Harding will bear witness to “God’s finger” in the last scene. She and her husband, actor Bill Paxton, are caught inside a well house. With nowhere else to run, they strap themselves to pipes buried thirty feet in the ground. In a cacophony of sound and biblical destruction, they wildly fly off the ground yet remain tethered as the tornado takes apart the well house. Helen Hunt’s character finally sees the monster’s core -- a long finger-like swirl of violence pointing to a piece of blue sky.
Through most of the twentieth century, Hollywood spent its talent and capital exploring evil and redemption in both nature and the human heart, sometimes poorly, sometimes brilliantly. However, Twister couldn’t be made today. Our small-fry masters of the universe insist that all evil, even tornadoes, springs from white men and global warming; not from nature’s inherent destructiveness, or mankind’s passions and follies as observed by Shakespeare and the writers of Frasier.
Since there’s a greater chance we’re probably headed toward a global cooling cycle (no fault of our own), sit down and enjoy this fine summer movie while we still have summers and movies like Twister!
