Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

For my wife, if she doesn’t watch Twister at least once between June and August, then summer didn’t happen as far as she’s concerned.

Naturally, when Twisters with an S was announced I knew we’d be getting tickets or I’d be sleeping in the bathtub until Halloween. The couch is actually better for my back. I don’t use my bed for sleeping.

I saw someone comment “I already saw Twisters… back when they just called it Twister.”

Har-har. Yes, at first glance this whole thing seems rather unnecessary. What kind of plot can you write about storm chasers beyond someone losing someone in a storm and now they want revenge? I mean besides adding sharks to the tornado… or a bunch of one guy named Tony.

And at first it did feel very derivative. There were a lot of similarities. Honestly it felt like we were watching the same movie from the perspective of the “Evil Storm Chasers” from the last film. But there’s a good reason for that. A very good watchable reason.

About half way through, the whole plot turns on its side. It may have been a bit predictable but it still broke the mold so i found it refreshing.

I don’t know how to say this without making the first movie look bad but I appreciated the focus of Twisters with an S. Twister No S was a good movie. It mentioned a drive to enable earlier storm warnings for people in general. But the character development wasn’t so much a moral dilemma as it was simply a will they/won’t they between Bill Paxton and Hellen Hunt. The characters in Twisters with an S had some serious soul searching to do and the need to help people in general was center stage. I really appreciated that difference. Yes, it made these two different kinds of stories, but they’re both good.

I’ve heard there was supposed to be a pass-the-torch scene that involved Hellen Hunt which would have explained how the characters got the Dorothy Technology but it was either cut or just never happened. Pity, it might have been interesting.

I do miss Philip Seymour Hoffman but I’m also glad they didn’t try to tack on an equivalent. So tally some points to Twisters with an S for not doing a couple things simply because it happened in the first movie. A surfer stoner guy would have been kind of old hat today anyway.

About the title: I do wish they’d (gnomes) would stop differentiating movies from their sequels by simply adding an S or a THE. It kind of worked for Alien/Aliens because there was only one alien in the first Alien and Aliens had multiple aliens. It made sense. Predator and Predators made sense as a multitude of predators were prevalent throughout the third Predator film. Twister No S had multiple Twisters already. It even had a scene with someone saying “We got twins” referring to a double tornado formation. By rights the original should have been called Twisters already and this new film should be called Twisterses or something stupid like that.