Lets face it—after watching that crazy movie, I caught the weather bug. I was obsessed with geology and volcanology then. Twister came along and that did it. Dante’s Peak happened next and scared me off geology and volcanology. My conclusion is that Dante’s Peak was more realistic. (Whether it really is, I’m not too sure. Well, I lost the volcano madness!)
I was initially attracted by the movie poster. Whatever it was, the tornado on it looked convincing enough. I never saw one, nor did any of my other fellow Singaporeans tell me about a tornado. (Some don’t even know the difference between a tropical storm and a tornado…) Of course the twister on the poster looked realistic. It was a real ‘nadar taken by a real storm chaser called Warren Faidley.
Well, so much for the poster. The special effects were no match even for a tornado photo by that. I watched the entire movie without gripping the edge of my seat. I was casually munching my tidbits (ironically, the goodies were called "Twisties") and trying to fall asleep. However, I was eyeing suspiciously at the windmill which was turning to face the tornado. I just got this gut feeling that there were a whole lot of mistakes such as that one in the movie. I watched it on tape at least a dozen times more. It’s lively, fun and fun, fun, fun.
No doubt, 3 years later, my fears were justified. Within 3 years, I would have definitely have heard much about how thin the realism in TWISTER was. The movie started to get more fun and funnier every time I popped the tape into the VCR. It started to get even more stupid too. The bad thing was, I also noticed that many, many Singaporeans still associate storm chasing with the movie. Well, that’s okay because nobody wants to chase here. The weather wouldn’t let us no matter how hard we try. (Actually, nobody even thinks of trying except me!) The only problem I had with the movie and with other people is that stereotype of storm chasers/chasing/tornadoes.
So I found myself with a friend watching the movie again. Now here’s the twist, no pun intended. Instead of laughing and tossing our Twisties, we were all serious, sitting in front of the tee vee with a clipboard and pen in hand. The mission was to identify all the mistakes in twister. My friend had the remote control of the VCR in hand.
Was it easy? For the 1st 10 minutes it was rather interesting. ("… where’s the inflow… lightning isn’t seen as the same time as thunder is heard… my, what a nice storm, but why isn’t everyone staring at it in awe… how reckless can these ‘research scientists’ get… wait, hold it, what’s ‘sisters’?!") Then old mistakes were repeated and new ones were made. By then, my pal was killing the PAUSE button on the remote and my arm was aching after writing, sheet after sheet, the mistakes I saw. At one point, I thought we were gonna lose the VCR after repeated usage of the PAUSE button. Talk about nitpicking. Ah that’s serious nitpicking!
It became so bad that after the scene of the 1st tornado the fictitious team encountered, we gave up. We spent more than an hour on it. At that rate, I figured, we’d never get to the end. Remember that that was only the beginning of the movie. There were definitely a lot more errors to discover, especially the scene when the two main characters strap themselves to a pipe and ride out a monster tornado. We decided to call it a day and finish nitpicking someday. Later on, the tape went missing. One of my friend’s family members saw the copy of the tape and put it where it belonged. (The bin, that is.) I kind of got a little mad but what the heck…
…I don’t have to watch it again!!!