Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Writer: Mark L. Smith, Joseph Kosinski, Michael Crichton
Stars: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos
Synopsis: A retired tornado-chaser and meteorologist is persuaded to return to Oklahoma to work with a new team and new technologies.
While watching Twisters, I found it funny that people have such reverence for films decades later. The original Twister, which many enjoyed, was praised for its special effects and panned for its story. (My favorite quote to describe the Jan de Bont film is by Roger Ebert when commenting on all the tornadoes in the movie, “It was a real good day.”) Yes, Twister was a movie that made a huge chunk of money because they decided to digitize a cow caught up in a tornado.
You see, Twister has had a resurgence in critical praise, with nearly half the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes coming since 2020, giving a remarkable positive resurgence to the Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt vehicle. That’s because the audience, not the critics, always decides a movie’s place in history. So, imagine my surprise at the complaints about the dumb Twisters story.
My question is, what exactly did you expect going in? They’re chasing tornadoes, people. Let your mind go, and just enjoy the ride.
The story follows Kate Cooper (Where the Crawdads Sing’s Daisy Edgar-Jones), who grew up in the Great Plains and has a haunting past from a devastating encounter in college. She works at the National Weather Center and is approached by her old friend, Javi (In the Heights’ Anthony Ramos), who has been developing state-of-the-art storm-tracking technology that will forever change tornado safety precautions in Oklahoma.
Kate returns for a week only of storm chasing. She is a straight-arrow character, and she is about to meet her wise-guy counterpart in Tyler Owens (Top Gun: Maverick’s Glen Powell), a charming social media superstar who chases storms and shares them with the world. (I half expected Powell’s character to tell Kate, “You don’t chase the storm; the storm chases you.”) Of course, Kate’s team of eggheads and Tyler’s cowboy crew clash, but they soon realize they must work together to prevent a weather phenomenon the world has never seen.
But don’t worry—they are all equipped with pickup trucks, charisma, belt buckles, and their wits to survive, or it wouldn’t be as much fun to watch.
Directed by Minari’s Lee Isaac Chung, working from a screenplay by The Revenant’s Mark L. Smith, Twisters is more of a remake than a sequel, with significantly superior (and more common, as will be explained later) special effects and better-looking actors. I’m not sure if Edgar-Jones and Powell have chemistry or it’s the fact Powell can have chemistry with anyone on screen.
Frankly, Smith has had a declining trajectory in his scripts since the Academy Award-winning film mentioned above. Besides the enjoyable Overlord, his filmography is littered with disasters such as The Marsh King’s Daughter, The Midnight Sky, and The Boys in the Boat, all of which were box office and streaming failures. The characters are paper-thin and wooden, akin to beautiful mannequins, and the film is rife with action-film clichés.
I will say that many characters and scenarios are not carbon copied, but reproduced from the first. You have the opening tragic situation. One of the supporting characters is just like Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Dusty Davies. You have an incredible amount of scenes where people are going out to public events during the tornado storm of the century, so common sense would think that softball, movies, and bull riding would be off limits.
However, the thing is, Twisters is so much damn fun! Yes, movies can be a transformative, artistic experience, but there is a reason people look back at films like Speed, True Lies, and The Rock. These films have compelling stories, well-executed action sequences, and engaging characters. (Yes, they are retreads, but characters like Kate and Tyler give the older audiences the nostalgia factor, and younger ones won’t know any better.) Where else can you get a “firenado,” twin twisters, and a movie screen being ripped from the wall so the character can watch a real disaster flick for the ultimate disaster experience?
Yes, I will admit that Twisters is exactly what you think it’s going to be. However, Man (or woman) versus nature movies can be water cooler films if done the right way. Twisters will elicit that type of talk in droves with its thrilling whirlwind of nonstop action and jaw-dropping special effects. Then, with its charismatic cast, let’s face it, Glen Powell is the new Tom Cruise and made to entertain the masses.
For God’s sake, power your brain off, and just enjoy the ride.