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    The Jack Bickham novel 
  • Harsher in Hindsight: It would be easy to dismiss the events of the book as being a product of their time, when tornadoes were still largely unknown and myths about them abound. Something like the Thatcher tornado family approaching the town virtually unwarned and killing over a hundred people couldn't happen in modern times, could it? Ask the people of Joplin, MO about that.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Donna Field's little blackmail scheme wouldn't have worked nearly as well in modern times, when politicians routinely get salacious information reported on them and usually end up elected, or re-elected, with even greater numbers. Then again, we have Real Life examples of unfortunate pictures sinking public officials' careers, so perhaps in the age of cell phones, there could still be a Donna Fields.

    The Jan de Bont movie 
  • Awesome Music: The main licensed track for the film is Van Halen's "Humans Being", which is basically an excuse for epically long Eddie Van Halen guitar solos. Van Halen also composed the instrumental played in the credits, "Respect The Wind", which basically IS an epically long Eddie Van Halen guitar solo. Shame that very song was what eventually made Sammy Haggar quit the band after Eddie rewrote his lyrics for being "too corny".
  • Designated Hero: Bill. He gets engaged to a woman while he's still married, drags her along into a highly dangerous situation to find his current wife (and obviously cares more about celebrating experiencing a tornado than being attentive to her very understandable fear of constantly being thrust in the middle of stressful, dangerous situations), assaults Jonas in front of news reporters, then finally upsets his fiancee enough for her to dump him after she hears him professing his feelings for Jo. Melissa didn't get engaged to you just because she's got a thing for meteorologists, Bill. You, sir, are an asshole.
  • Designated Villain: Other than being a Jerkass, Jonas doesn't do a thing that's villainous, but is seen as a sell-out for abandoning the team for corporate sponsors. He's rude, sure, but he does not attempt direct sabotage.
    • In addition, Bill really shouldn't be surprised to see Jonas. Bill says straight up that Jo's probably got the entire team in the field, NSSL is saying it might be a record outbreak. Jonas is there because it is literally why he's being paid by corporations. Yes, he's a bit of a jerk, but the man does have a job to do, and his results affect his TEAM results, and really, the only thing bad they did was trying to get past Bill's truck on the highway. Jonas' arrogance did cost him and Eddie their lives, but to be fair, Bill did assault Jonas and Jo had a few not quite pleasant exchanges with him. Can he be blamed for not wanting to listen to them?
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • It's hard not to like Dusty, since his enthusiasm is so infectious. Helps that he's played by the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman.
    • Jonas' driver, Eddie, is likable enough that many don't believe he deserved the fate he got. Especially since he was willing to take Bill and Jo's advice to drive away from the F5 tornado only for Jonas to yell at him to keep going.
  • Follow the Leader: Spawned an entire sub-genre of disaster movies.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Oklahoma was hit by a destructive tornado outbreak similar to the one depicted in the film three years after its release, on May 3, 1999. Considered the largest tornado outbreak in Oklahoma’s history, it produced 66 tornadoes across Oklahoma and southern Kansas (including six F3s, three F4s and one F5), killing 44 and causing $1.5 billion in damage. The most prolific tornado, rated F5 (the last such tornado recorded under the original Fujita Scale), caused catastrophic damage in the Oklahoma City suburbs of Moore and Bridge Creek, and holds the world record for the highest wind speeds ever measured (a Doppler on Wheels radar measurement recorded winds of 301 ± 20 mph [484 ± 32 km/h] at 105 ft [32 m] above ground level as it passed through Bridge Creek); 36 people were killed by this tornado (including two who died while sheltering under overpasses that the tornado crossed), and damage estimates totaled $1 billion (ranking the Moore–Bridge Creek F5 as the fifth-costliest single tornado on record not accounting for inflation as of 2023).
    • The iconic theater destruction scene would ultimately happen in real life just a week after the film was released in theaters, when a twister struck the Can-View Drive In Theater in Thorold, Ontario destroying Screen No. 3, the movie in question that it was planning to screen later that evening prior to it's destruction? Twister.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight: As goofy as the movie is, it's much beloved by storm chasers for giving a ton of attention to what had previously been an extremely obscure profession. After Bill Paxton's death, a ton of them went so far as to use their vehicles' satellite tracking to spell his initials across Midwest America.
  • Heartwarming Moments: After the untimely death of Bill Paxton at the age of 61 due to complications from heart surgery on February 25, 2017, 200 stormchasers spelled out his initials "BP" with their GPS coordinates over Oklahoma [1] where most of the movie was shot. Many of them were inspired to become stormchasers by Paxton and the movie. This was one of the few, if only, times that a non-chaser had been paid tribute in this way, making Paxton a posthumous honorary storm chaser.
  • Memetic Mutation
    • "The Suck Zone".
    • "We've got cows!" The scene was so iconic (and funny) that for a while it was a Stock Parody in late 90s and early 00s pop culture.
  • Narm:
    • Jo's explanation of why she's so terrified of tornadoes. Trauma is one thing, but the way she says it makes it sound as though she doesn't think she's a meteorologist chasing storms so much as a profiler who's chasing UnSubs.
      Jo: You've never seen it! You’ve never seen it miss this house, and miss that house, and come after you!
      The Nostalgia Critic: Yes, apparently a factually-bound scientist is convinced that tornadoes are, in fact, serial killers.
    • The way the whole team overreacts with dumbstruck horror when Melissa asks whether there's an F-5 category for tornadoes, as if she'd just accidentally summoned the Devil himself to the breakfast table. It's pretty clear they were recalling Jo's experience as child, but F-5 tornadoes are something every meteorologist is familiar with, the conversation was obviously heading toward the subject, and it's so awkwardly written and acted it still comes off as silly.
    • Tornadoes are hardly pinpoint weapons of destruction; an F5 would by its very definition have levelled the best part of a town in passing, not just a random farm. Even if Jo was the only person to lose a loved one, she wouldn't be the only person to suffer. She had plenty of people to sympathise with her losses and yet pretty much chose to take it personally.
    • Even with Reality Is Unrealistic in effect, tornadoes literally 'roaring' like a tiger will never not be funny.
  • One-Scene Wonder: The cow that gets picked up by the waterspouts and sent flying only appears for twenty seconds at most, but the memetastic line it inspires ("We've got cows!") and its goofy mooing as it gets sucked to its doom has kept it fresh in viewers' minds.
  • Questionable Casting: Cary Elwes as the bad guy, for some. Westley and Robin Hood is the human villain? He had been The Rival a couple times in Days of Thunder and Hot Shots!, and for those that have seen Liar Liar, Saw or Ella Enchanted, it kind of makes sense, but at the time, this was way off type for Elwes. The extremely poor "Southern"(?) accent he's trying out, too, makes this miscasting much more apparent.
  • Realism-Induced Horror: The disaster scenes during or following a tornado in the film remain chilling to this day since scenes like that can and do happen in real life during real violent tornadoes. Of note are the tornadoes featured in the film that happen at night (the tornado that Jo's father died in and the drive-in tornado). Although a lot could be said for the film's overall quality, the two scenes in question absolutely nail the sheer panic and horror that results from nighttime tornadoes (which cause far more fatalities than daytime tornadoes), especially for people caught outside with a monster tornado that they cannot see.
  • Retroactive Recognition: A young Alexa Vega plays child Jo in the opening scene.
  • Signature Scene: As mentioned above, the cow! But many of the destruction scenes are memorable too.
  • Special Effect Failure: Most of the film's special effects were incredibly advanced and are still amazing to look at. However, the CGI cows just don't hold up these days, especially on the small screen.
    • In the final tornado chase sequence, when Bill and Jo haphazardly drive their truck through a house that had been torn off its foundations and rolled onto the road, the truck is seen driving upstairs, plowing through a bathroom and a child's bedroom. Even though this is clearly shown, their truck is somehow edited to have it exit from a window on the first floor of the house,note  instead of the second floor they had driven through.
    • Jonas's van crashing into the ground after being picked up results in a badly composited explosion that looks like it's pasted over top of everything else as though it were in a YouTube Poop.
  • Tear Jerker: The death of Jo's father is most definitely this, and is the cause of her obsessive pursuit towards stopping the very thing that killed him. The moment where Bill confronts Jo about this, and for talking like the tornado came for her family intentionally, just further drives the very real trauma she feels all the way home.
    • Bill's failing engagement to Melissa certainly counts, and eventually she elects to part ways with Bill as it is clear that he still has unresolved feelings for Jo. She even admits that sooner or later it would've ended, and the regret Bill feels for putting her through all this is readily apparent. It's even worse that despite everything she went through, Melissa doesn't seem to even be angry at Bill, just resigned at that point, even telling him to not worry about her and that she "knows [her] way home".
    • The destruction of Wakita, full-stop. the sounds of wailing, despairing survivors amid the hellish scene don't help matters.
      Jo: They had no warning...
    • That gets even Harsher in Hindsight when you consider the case of Joplin, MO, which suffered a direct hit by a mile wide EF-5 tornado with almost no warning and killed almost 200 people. The footage of storm chasers coming up on devastated neighborhoods with people crying for help from the piles of debris will haunt your dreams.
    • Foolish as he was, Jonas' death (Along with Eddie) at the hands of the F5 is pretty tough to watch, and the most anybody can do is watch as the two men are sent without mercy back into the earth below.
    • The confrontation scene where Bill delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech at Jo, which comes off more as a "Get a Hold of Yourself Please!" speech, considering he ends up delivering his declaration of love to her, which Melissa hears.
      Bill: Jo, things go wrong! You can't explain it, you can't predict it! Killing yourself won't bring your dad back! Sorry he died, but it was a long time ago! You gotta move on, stop living in the past and look what you got right in front of you!
      Jo: What are you saying..?
      Bill: Me, Jo...
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Other than Eddie to a minor extent, no one from Jonas' storm chasers gets any noteworthy characterization, which could have furthered the rivalry between the two storm chaser teams.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The actual rivalry between Bill and Jonas' storm chasers trying to get their weather machine into a tornado is very minimal. Had the rivalry been more developed, it could have served as a better overall plot than the Romantic Plot Tumor that was going on with Bill, Jo, and Melissa.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: Despite what's listed in the Special Effect Failure trope, the film still features some impressive special effects, and made the short list for Best Visual Effects at the Oscars, alongside Dragonheart and winner Independence Day.
  • The Woobie: Melissa. She gets dragged into tornado hunting with her fiance, his wife who he planned to divorce, and his old team. He spends the whole time with Jo, celebrating each tornado encounter with little regard to an unfamiliar civilian's very natural and understandable fear of these situations. And to top it all off, she hears Bill on the radio professing his feelings for Jo.
    • In a non-human example, Bill's prized red Dodge takes a lot of abuse throughout their attempts to deploy Dorothy, before it is ultimately sacrificed to ensure the deployment of the last pack into the funnel of the approaching F5.
    • Another non-human example occurs with the cow sucked up by the waterspouts. The poor thing was just grazing and minding its own business when a terrible trio of tornadoes sucks it up and flings it to its doom.

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