INTO THE STORM

Went last night with a dear friend and her husband to see INTO THE STORM, which Bill Paxton has termed "the spiritual sequel" to TWISTER.
That I'd see this in the theatre was a given:  I'm partial to disaster movies, because even the most banal of them tend to show humanity at its best. Also: WEATHER!

I should have been a meteorologist, I think. Weather fascinates me: always has. My daily diary from 1988-90 included, first thing, a summary of the day's weather, with high and low temperatures and a complicated code to denote conditions. I don't do that anymore, now that anybody can read my "diary"...but it did follow me into adulthood, albeit only on special occasions, like my wedding day (pc 18/13) and in trip diaries.

And of course I've been through more than my share of bad weather. The earliest I can recall was the fringe of this monster. I lived in Bramalea, near Toronto, at the time; I was five years old. As Wikipedia notes, Toronto was not hit badly, certainly nowhere near what Niagara got...but it was bad enough. The winds gusted to somewhere near 80 km/hr and caused drifts taller than I was.

I've seen tornadoes, too. A weak one barrelled right down the opposite side of the street from my house in Bramalea--might have even been the same year, 1977. The worst weather I've lived through wasn't even officially a tornado. It struck the town of Ingersoll in  July 1990.
It hit after dark. I was listening to the Blue Jays in bed, my headphones cranked: I remember I had to turn them up at least once to overcome the sound of the wind. Then I heard a twinnnnnnng!...a high-pitched thrumming kind of noise I couldn't place. It wasn't until morning that we discovered a tree had taken out our garage, with our car inside. The sound I'd heard came from the clothesline that ran from that tree to another being snapped. It was the only noise I heard, other than the roar of winds that were estimated to be gusting to 140 km/hr. That was a downburst, and let me tell you, they're not fun either. The power was out to some places in town for over a week.

Now Eva's seen worse than I have, and she actually had a weak tornado skip right over her while driving north of town here in 2005.

Tornadoes and hurricanes amaze me. Bad weather in general amazes me, because once it gets bad enough, the only thing you can do is try to survive it. It's a reminder that we are far from the all-powerful beings we make ourselves out to be, and anything that knocks humanity down a peg or two is a-ok in my books. Of course I don't want to see anyone hurt, let alone killed. With one exception, and I share that exception with Ron White:



And so disaster movies, specifically weather disaster movies, are about the only violent flicks I'll clamour to see. Somehow I'm able to shut my brain off at the door (which I can't do for most other movies) and not bother myself with thoughts like gee, that's an awful lot of tornadoes taking exactly the same path  and that tornado that's about fifty feet away's going to pause now for just long enough to get this heartfelt scene out.

INTO THE STORM was pretty damn good, considering it was filmed on a budget roughly half of TWISTER's. Of course the script was hackneyed and trite, the characters were cardboard cutouts and the acting was average at best: nobody pays to see Oscar-worthy roles in these types of films. What really made me laugh in hindsight was how the unprecedented tornado outbreak was described..."once in a lifetime storms seem to happen every other year now", with name-drops of Sandy, Katrina and the Joplin monster tornado...but let's stop just short of saying "climate change", because that might be construed as political.
Reading through reviews, the biggest complaint after the ones I just noted was the 'found footage' aspect: there are people filming everything in this movie, even when -- especially when -- they shouldn't be. I didn't even notice this. I've watched people with their phone cameras in what used to be called "real life", you see.  It isn't real anymore unless it's through a lens. The idea that somebody would film every second of a tornado outbreak that repeatedly put his life in the most extreme danger...completely ridiculous...but totally plausible.

The dialogue in TWISTER was better: full of witty repartee. Not that this movie wasn't without comic relief. Where INTO THE STORM surpassed its twisty progenitor, in my opinion, was in the actual tornado-on-the-ground scenes. The damage and devastation, as it happened, was nothing short of incredible.

That little bit of escapism was badly needed. It was especially nice to escape it...into a sunny, picture-perfect evening with nary a wall cloud or funnel in sight. Thanks for having me along, you two...it was a blast.