Hollywood's latest weather disaster blockbuster, "Twisters" (a standalone sequel to the 1996 film "Twister"), features plenty of extreme weather — yet it has a somewhat incongruous scorn for scientists who study the weather.
The discordant note is subtle, but at the same time hard to entirely miss. Without spoiling too much of the plot, "Twisters" depicts most of its PhDs and other professional scientists as cynical, selfish, cold and intellectually narrow. By contrast, the movie's fictional YouTubers and amateur storm chasers are overwhelmingly shown as idealistic, compassionate, colorful and far more knowledgeable about science that those stuffy official scientists.
