Taglines: Go for a ride you’ll never forget!
Twister movie storyline. In June 1969, 5-year-old Jo Thornton, her parents, and the family dog, Toby, seek shelter in their family storm cellar as a powerful F5 tornado hits their farm in Oklahoma. This tornado is so strong, that the storm cellar door is ripped off, causing Jo’s father to be pulled into the storm to his death. Jo, her mother, and Toby survive.
In 1996, 32-year-old Jo, now a meteorologist, is reunited with her estranged husband, Bill Harding, a former weather researcher and storm chaser, who has since become a weather reporter. He is planning to marry reproductive therapist Melissa Reeves. They need Jo’s signature on the divorce papers and have tracked her down during an active bout of stormy weather. Jo has built four identical tornado research devices called DOROTHY, based on Bill’s designs.
The device is designed to release hundreds of sensors into the center of a tornado to study its structure from the inside, with the purpose of creating a more advanced storm warning system. Bill and Melissa join Jo and her team of storm chasers, and the team encounters Dr. Jonas Miller, a smug, corporate-funded meteorologist and storm chaser. When Bill discovers that Jonas has created a device based on DOROTHY, called DOT-3, he vows to help Jo deploy DOROTHY before Miller can claim credit for the idea.
During the first tornado, Jo’s truck and DOROTHY I are both destroyed (the truck is picked up and lands upside-down). They continue storm chasing in Bill’s truck, with Melissa in the back seat. They find a second tornado, a confirmed F2, and head off on a back road when the twister shifts its track. They soon find themselves driving through heavy rain, and instead collide with a cluster of two violent waterspouts, one of which splits, spinning them around on the highway until the waterspouts dissipate. They’re fine, but Melissa becomes hysterical from the ordeal, and Bill has to calm her down.
The team visits Jo’s Aunt Meg in Wakita, Oklahoma, for food and rest. While Jo is busy showering, Bill tells Melissa about his relationship with Jo and reflects on the day Jo’s father died. They soon learn that an F3 tornado has formed near some hills, but they have trouble finding it. Jo drives ahead of the team to intercept the oncoming tornado, but a telephone pole falls on the back of Bill’s truck and knocks DOROTHY II out onto the road, scattering its mini sensors all over the road. As Jo jumps out to gather the dozens of mini sensors, the tornado lifts and touches down closer. Bill pulls the upset Jo into the truck and moves to safety. The two confront each other over their marriage and Jo’s obsession with stopping tornadoes, due to being devastated about her father’s death.
The following night, an F4 tornado devastates a drive-in cinema during the showing of the 1980 horror film, The Shining, forcing everyone to take shelter in a pit in a car repair shop warehouse, which is severely damaged due to outer winds associated with and large projectiles tossed into the structure by the tornado, by which the shop misses a direct hit. By this time Melissa has been traumatized by the experiences and recognizes the unresolved feelings between Bill and Jo. In desperation for her own safety, and realizing that Jo needs him more than she does, she peacefully breaks off the engagement with Bill.
The tornado continues on to Wakita, devastating the town and injuring Meg while destroying her house. Bill and Jo rescue Meg and her dog from the collapsing house. Meg’s injuries are not serious, but she is taken to the hospital for safety while her dog stays with the group. The team then hears that an even stronger storm, an F5, is forming 25 miles south of their position. Inspecting Meg’s wind chime sculptures, Jo realizes that the most likely method to successfully deploy DOROTHY’s sensors into a tornado would be to add additional body surface to catch the wind.
Twister is a 1996 American disaster film starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt as storm chasers researching tornadoes. It was directed by Jan de Bont from a screenplay by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin. Its executive producers were Steven Spielberg, Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald and Gerald R. Molen. Twister was the second-highest-grossing film of 1996 domestically, with an estimated 54,688,100 tickets sold in the US.
In the film, a team of storm chasers tries to perfect a data-gathering instrument, designed to be released into the funnel of a tornado, while competing with another better-funded team with a similar device during a tornado outbreak across Oklahoma. The plot is a dramatized view of research projects like VORTEX of the NOAA. The device used in the movie, called “Dorothy”, is copied from the real-life TOTO, used in the 1980s by NSSL.
The film opened on May 17, 1996 and earned $41,059,405 from 2,414 total theaters, making it the number-one movie at the North American box office. It went on to earn a total of $241,721,524 at the North American box office. As of November 2012, it has earned a worldwide total of $494,471,524. It currently sits at number 76 on the all-time North American box office charts. Worldwide it sits at number 105 on the all-time earners list, not adjusted for inflation. It was the second-highest-grossing film of 1996.
Twister (1996)
Directed by: Jan de Bont
Starring: Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Cary Elwes, Jami Gertz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck, Sean Whalen, Todd Field, Wendle Josepher, Jeremy Davies
Screenplay by: Michael Crichton, Anne-Marie Martin
Production Design by:
Cinematography by: Jack N. Green
Film Editing by: Michael Kahn
Costume Design by: Joseph C. Nemec
Set Decoration by: Ronald R. Reiss
Art Direction by: Dan Olexiewicz
Music by: Mark Mancina
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense depiction of very bad weather.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures (North America), Universal Pictures (International)
Release Date: May 17, 1996
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