You can make all the jokes you want about Twisters.  God knows I was prepared to snicker while watching it.  Before going to the theater, I asked my dad if he wanted to come with me.  Saying no, he chuckled at the title (and make another crack when I got home) and asked why they would make such a film.  I gave him the kind of answer indicative of my preparation for silliness: it is an excuse to show off special effects.  All of this is true, yet in the end I found that I was fine with the experience.  Sure, it has its eye-rolling moments, especially when it starts talking about science.  Why anyone thought it necessary to get into the jargon weeds is beyond me, but it did not derail my experience.  I purposely used that word twice because I think it best expresses what you get for the price of admission.  The group on which the movie focuses do what they do because they want to witness an act of God, as natural disasters are unfortunately sometimes called, like He personally moves his hand across the landscape for purely spiteful purposes.  We deserve it, but reducing His work to such simple terms does justice neither to the Almighty or the victims.  Instead, as I was surprised to find, there are deeper ways of looking at these powerful events.

When we think about those known as “storm-chasers,” we typically imagine these Twisters followers as adrenaline junkies.  There are plenty of those in the film, but the first set we meet is Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her fellow graduate students.  Instead of being there simply for thrills, they are hoping not only to study tornadoes, but prove a hypothesis she has that certain substances can be released into the vortex and cause it to dissipate.  They awaken one morning and her innate instincts put them on the trail of a storm destined to form a funnel spinning towards the ground.  Unfortunately, in addition to miscalculating what is needed to bring it to a halt, it intensifies beyond her early predictions.  As a result, everyone who is with her in the truck carrying her equipment dies, including Jeb (Daryl McCormack), her boyfriend.  As a result, she leaves her native Oklahoma to take a job with the National Weather Service in New York City, and does not speak to anyone from home.  Five years pass and she is visited by Javi (Anthony Ramos), the only survivor from her former team (mainly because he did not go with the others).  He has looked her up to see if she will assist the new company he is trying to form to collect data on the eponymous weather events.  He had joined the military in the intervening years and obtained highly advanced radar he believes will help save people from these natural disasters.  Initially, Kate says no because it means returning to Oklahoma.  What changes her mind is him sending her an article of a devastating tornado that recently struck a rural town, adding that he hopes his work will help prevent such things from occurring.  They get to the American Plains as tornado season is at its peak.  The rise in the number of these tempests has brought with it a number of amateur storm chasers upon whom Javi’s outfit looks with disdain.  This includes the bunch led by Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), who appear to be internet celebrities for their activities.  While looking to the skies to determine which way to go to find their first storm, it quickly becomes apparent that Tyler is more than his cowboy hat and big attitude.  While he knows how to read cloud formations thanks to his own meteorological studies, he follows in Kate’s wake despite her suggestion that Tyler’s outfit go in the opposite direction.  They all end up on the heels of a twister, though Kate’s trauma prevents Javi’s team from getting the data they need.  Meanwhile, they witness Tyler’s powerful red pick-up truck motor into the middle of the funnel and shoot off fireworks.  Javi is upset with Kate, but he says they will get another chance.  The next attempt does not go much better.  This time, though, there are people with shattered lives to help, and she is shocked when he hesitates to go to their assistance.  It is Tyler who suggests that Javi’s company is not in it solely for bettering other people’s lives.  This is primarily due to Javi’s primary backer, the real estate tycoon Marshall Riggs (David Born).  As Kate is beginning to research Marshall’s ventures, she is invited to a rodeo with Tyler.  Before it can finish, another tornado slams into the area and Kate and Tyler are forced to get as many people as they can to safety.  It is in the aftermath of this latest blast that Javi shows up and Kate confronts him about his boss.  He admits that he is not proud of some of what goes on, but it is necessary for him to continue his work.  Feeling used, she decides to return to her mother’s, Cathy Cooper (Maura Tierney), farm a few hours from her current location.  Tyler finds her there, along with the research she had done as a graduate student in trying to break up tornadoes.  He is excited by what he reads, but she does not want him looking at it.  Finally, she admits to what had driven her from the Southern Planes: the feeling that she had failed and that it led to others being killed.  Still, his interest, along with Cathy’s prodding, convinces Kate that she can still make an impact on the world.  Thus, she heads back into the field with Tyler, ready to continue her mission of dissipating a tornado.  Their first attempt is not successful, but that does not deter them.  Their next opportunity comes soon enough in the form of a massive storm.  However, directly in its path is another small town.  Thus, instead of conducting their experiment, they head towards the population to get them to safety.  Javi, whose co-workers prove themselves more interested in potential profit than the lives of others, abandons them to give his assistance.  Once everyone is indoors, though, Kate looks outside and sees that the power of the twister means they have a slim chance of survival.  Instead waiting to die, she jumps into Tyler’s truck alone and uses her material to bring the vortex to a stop before it directly impacts the theater in which they are all sheltering.  From this point on, as we see at the end and during the credits, Javi, Kate, and Tyler are inseparable.

I did not give any Catholic insights into Twisters while summarizing it because its cinematography lends itself to something I mentioned in the introduction, namely the problematic nature of referring to tornadoes as “acts of God.”  I get it.  When we see a movie like this and the massive, whirling clouds carving destruction across the landscape, who else could we ascribe such moments to but God.  I am also not here to tell you that He is not the one directly responsible for them.  He has the power to cause them or stop them as He so chooses.  Understandably, when such devastation occurs, we can get angry with God.  Why does He allow this kind of tragedy?  Survivors, too, can feel the sting, this time in the form of guilt.  A person who goes through a natural disaster unscathed might wonder why their home was spared while their neighbor lost everything.  Even if God did not exist, I suspect people would ask themselves these questions anyway.  The answer to them is never easy in any case, no matter your belief system.  It does not seem like it, such as when you lose your boyfriend and two others based on your decisions as we see with Kate in the movie, but God loves us beyond our ultimately pitiful attempts to reason with terrible events.  Kate allows herself to feel defeated, as many would, and give up her desire to save the world.  Conversely, this is something Jesus could have done, especially on His way to Calvary to die for our sins.  Like the formation of tornadoes themselves, as discussed in the movie, these things are mysteries with perfect solutions that only Faith can provide.  We do not know why some things occur, but they do, and God will love us through it all.

It is the mystery of it all that elevated Twisters above the dumb excuse to show off special effects that had me incredulous going into the movie theaters.  At one point, storm chasing is described as “part science, part religion.”  Such words will always catch the attention of a Catholic film reviewer.  Along these lines, it has a great way of approaching Faith as enumerated by Tyler when he says, “When you love something, you spend the rest of your life trying to understand it.”  This is a beautiful sentiment when applied to practicing Catholicism.  It is a vast religion with so many expressions of worship falling under its umbrella, if you will pardon a partial meteorological pun.  The other day while listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, Father Mike Schmitz addressed the section of Church teachings that covers the various rites within Catholicism.  There are a few main ones, the Latin Rite being the one to which myself and most Catholics belong, but there are almost thirty.  This alone creates a breadth of experiences of God that are difficult to completely grasp by any one person.  I also do not think it is useful to attempt to do so.  It is good to be aware that there are so many different modes of worship, but to try to fully know all of them can potentially blur your own relationship with God.  This ultimately brings me back to Kate.  She has an innate ability to commune with God, so to speak, that manifests in how she reads storms.  It is a gift that she runs away from for a while, but eventually learns to share it.  She may never fully utilize it, as is the case with all of us, but God asks us to do the best we can with what He gives us.  Eventually, she realizes what I wish more of us would: that they are best utilized when helping others.

I may have seen the original Twister, but I do not remember it.  As such, I have no real frame of reference for how Twisters speaks to it.  I am also not sure it matters.  In the introduction I framed this as an experience, and I think this is best done in a movie theater.  Either way, it is worth a view, despite some of the unnecessary exposition.