‘Twisters’ Review: Maybe the Real Tornadoes Were the Friends We Met Along the Way
When Jan de Bont’s Twister was released in May of 1996, disaster movies were on the precipice of a huge comeback, a renaissance they hadn’t seen since the 1970s. Independence Day arrived in July, 1997 saw double volcano movies in Dante’s Peak and Volcano and 1998 was another duel, this one of asteroids, as Deep Impact and Armageddon carved out huge chunks of box office success. And of course, 1997’s Titanic steered its way to two billion dollars and 11 Oscars. Their popularity ambled through the 2000s, but with much less heft, and although a smattering came after, none really made an imprint like those films did.
In the new sequel (reboot? chapter?) Twisters, directed by Minari’s Lee Isaac Chung, destruction is on the menu once again and the action takes us back to Oklahoma, specifically Tornado Alley, which is set to see a “once in a generation” storm that intends to wreak havoc on denizens with a shocking lack of basements and storm shelters. Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones, Normal People) is a storm chaser cut from a different cloth; she doesn’t just want to find them and collect data, she wants to stop them in their tracks. A bit of a physics whiz, she devises a formula that includes the core ingredients also used in baby diapers to quite literally absorb a tornado from within, robbing it of its moisture and therefore its power. In the film’s thrilling opening sequence, she and her team, including her cohort Javi (Anthony Ramos) and her storm chasing boyfriend, puts her theory – which if proven can secure her grant for her Ph.D – but a miscalculation and a bit of bravado turn the experiment into a horrible tragedy.
Cut to five years later where Kate has traded the tank top and pulled back hair for a business suit behind the desk of the National Weather Service in New York. Still tracking storms, just from 1500 miles away. Climate change is never introduced in conversation the way it is in the real world, which is an odd choice. While Chung specifically said he didn’t want the film to be a “message,” half a dozen other weather-related disaster films have smartly highlighted it, even going back to 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow. Re-enter fellow survivor Javi, who visits Kate after a stint in “the military” (the vagueness around this is so odd) and with a new gig at a mysterious company named Storm Par with a three-dimensional scanning tool that could be used in data collection for and tracking tornadoes and dubious backers. After not much cajoling, Kate returns to the Great Plains with Javi as part of the team and it’s a good thing because as fascinated as they are with tornadoes, we’re here to see a disaster movie and it’s demolition time.
Enter Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), a self proclaimed “tornado wrangler” and YouTube sensation who could turn a tornado into dust with a wink and a smile. He and his team aren’t in for the science, just for the fame, staging themselves directly in the eye of the tornado (with a truck equipped to drill two feet into the ground to lock itself in) to shoot off fireworks for their million followers. The advent of phone cameras and GoPro since the first film have given us the closest looks at real tornadoes. You can watch storm chasers on TikTok get terrifyingly close with no CGI assist or director calling ‘Cut!’ when it’s time to bow out. Tyler’s group doesn’t really feel like them, they’re definitely the movie version of these teams, far more eclectic in makeup and personality.
The key element to de Bont’s disasterpiece was his keen sense of balancing incredibly good CGI (at the time) with practical set pieces; real tractors and cars falling from the sky as winds terrorized drive-ins and tiny towns gave seemingly real stakes to the thrills and drama. He also knew how to collect a ragtag group of actors that included early work from future Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman and actor-turned-Oscar-nominated director Todd Field right next to 80s icons Jami Gertz and Alan Ruckman. Chung recognizes this too, filling his ensemble with several stars in the making that feel ready to hit it big: Nope’s Brandon Perea as videographer and hype man Boone, Love Lies Bleeding’s Katy O’Brian as field mechanic Dani, American Honey’s Sasha Lane in her looks like what patchouli smells like glory as drone operator Lily and David Corenswet, who recently began shooting the new Superman reboot, as a corporate bad guy. They’re drawn even more flimsy than their predecessors but they’re an engaging group of performers.
Where de Bont’s cinematographer and action directing background make his films propulsive in nature, Chung gives nature its time to shine, highlighting the rich topography of Oklahoma – the red clay dirt, the green grass and gold wheat, all with a rich density captured by Dan Mindel’s 35mm lensing that offers enormous scope and depth of field whether it’s overlooking a wide expanse or corralling a tornado ripping through a movie theater. Chung’s more intimate style of filmmaking gets fair play here and doesn’t slow the tempo down but it deserved a better script than the story by Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski (who was initially set to direct this) and the screenplay by Mark L. Smith, who offers a janky mashup of science technospeak with the most boring platitudes and one liners like “You have a gift,” “She’s doing her thing, man” and “You don’t just face your fears, you ride ‘em.” Cheesy lines are a staple for disaster films, that’s kind of a given and even part of the enjoyment that allows us to call them ‘guilty pleasures’ but, is there ever a thought to be…more?
There’s something else missing from Twisters; a spark. While so much of the new film takes notes from the first (but smartly doesn’t tag on previous characters or ever allude to it directly outside of the Dorothy V), the friction and chemistry between Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton was a driving force and an underlying motivation. Here, Jones and Powell are meeting for the first time, there’s no history and their back and forth never feels like the seeds of romance against the backdrop of forces of nature that it’s supposed to be. Unfortunately, much of that blame falls on Jones, a remarkable actress that Hollywood hasn’t seemed to find the right place for yet. She’s kind of dreary here, a bit of a charm vacuum and the epitome of go girl, give us nothing.
Powell, on the other hand, with his toothy grin, wet t-shirts and please ruin my life charisma to spare is fantastic here, and he’s already proven himself a bonafide movie star, co-headlining the $100M-grossing romcom Anyone But You with Sydney Sweeney and securing rave reviews for Hit Man. But Jones remains untested as a potential movie or box office star. Her Normal People counterpart Paul Mescal will face a similar challenge when he enters the blockbuster arena this November with Gladiator II.
Still, there’s some great fun to be had with Twisters, not the least of which is the finale set piece as that once-in-a-generation tornado is on course to lay waste to one of the many single street towns the wranglers encounter and everyone takes cover in a lone screen movie theater for shelter. Lines like “We gotta get everyone to the movie theater!” and “This theater wasn’t built to withstand what’s coming!” have a wink-wink quality about them (if maybe a little too desperate) and the extravagant refinery explosion is breathtaking. But by the end, where the comic romance finally begins to pay off, it feels like an EF5 brought down to an EF1; more fizzle than sizzle, dissipating right before our eyes.
Grade: C
Universal Pictures will release Twisters only in theaters on July 19.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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