THE STORY – Haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado, Kate Cooper gets lured back to the open plains by her friend, Javi, to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. She soon crosses paths with Tyler Owens, a charming but reckless social-media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures. As storm season intensifies, Kate, Tyler, and their competing teams find themselves in a fight for their lives as multiple systems converge over central Oklahoma.
THE CAST – Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney & Sasha Lane
THE TEAM – Lee Isaac Chung (Director) & Mark L. Smith (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 122 Minutes
The phrase “they don’t make ’em like they used to” gets thrown around a lot these days regarding movies. Usually, it refers to one of two things: The weightless, rubbery CGI that has replaced more realistic-looking in-camera effects or the relative lack of Hollywood star power of the modern era, when audiences care more about the legacy character an actor plays than the actor themselves. But there’s a certain je ne sais quoimissing from the blockbusters of the 2020s that can really only be defined by a direct comparison with blockbusters of the past. There’s a certain generosity and joie de vivre in films like “Die Hard” and “Speed,” a willingness to be cheesily entertaining that disappeared when filmmakers started feeling the need to reclaim genre films to prove that they, too, could be Serious Works of Art. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the self-seriousness of modern blockbusters (even in something as seemingly lightweight and poppy as last year’s “Barbie“) can get a bit exhausting. Whatever happened to the popcorn films of yore, which gave us practical spectacle, star power, and serious entertainment without needing to be taken completely seriously?
Enter Lee Isaac Chung’s “Twisters,” the decades-later sequel to Jan de Bont’s 1996 classic “Twister.” Calling it a sequel feels wrong, especially in the modern era; the two films share no characters or named locations in common, just the premise of storm chasers trying to get groundbreaking scientific equipment into a tornado. However, Chung’s approach to the film places it firmly in the lineage of this particular era of blockbusters. The decision to shoot on film gives the finished product a grit that digital still can’t fully replicate, which in turn lends a tactility to the titular characters that are essential to the film’s success. There’s not a single moment in “Twisters” where it feels like characters are staring at a green screen or a tornado stand-in. The visual effects feel real, heightened by the unflinching look at the devastation left behind after the thrill of the tornado is gone. As he did with his breakthrough film “Minari,” Chung proves adept at treating the natural world as a character in its own right, a perfect, unfeeling foil to the emotional human story at the film’s heart. While the overall tone here is quite different from the understated family drama of “Minari,” the sensitivity Chung brings to the quieter scenes serves as the perfect counterbalance to the high-octane thrills of the action sequences, making the film feel like a well-rounded piece of entertainment, not just a roller coaster ride.
Mark L. Smith’s screenplay (from a story by Joseph Kosinski) follows the template of the first film almost to the letter, a smart move given that “Twister” is one of the most well-structured action films of the ’90s. This film centers on Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a meteorologist in New York City who grew up chasing storms in her home state of Oklahoma. She had been conducting field research into stopping tornadoes dead in their path, but a tragic incident five years ago resulted in the death of all her other crew members except for Javi (Anthony Ramos). Now, Javi is seeking out Kate’s legendary storm tracker skills to put him in the exact right spot for his new technology to get a 3D mapping image of a tornado. After reluctantly agreeing, Kate joins Javi and his overly professional crew in Oklahoma for a once-in-a-lifetime slew of storms. There, she instantly gets the attention of Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), a self-proclaimed “tornado wrangler” who livestreams his tornado chases to social media. Will these two groups of storm chasers be able to come together to figure out how to stop tornadoes and save the people of Tornado Alley? This flip of the original’s dynamic, where we were embedded with the ragtag crew of less-well-funded tornado chasers, sets up certain expectations that the film delights in dismantling, allowing for some sneakily potent commentary about disaster relief in Capitalist America. As thrilling as the film’s action scenes are, it is this focus on the aftermath of the tornadoes, on the destruction they leave in their wake, that is the secret ingredient keeping the film from being an utterly disposable piece of entertainment, giving it a weight that’s difficult to shake.
Edgar-Jones, nothing short of a revelation as Kate, embodies the film’s ethos by showing how Kate’s youthful idealism has hardened into risk aversion and how she had to subsume her desire to help the world to ensure her own survival. As is par for the course with disaster flicks, all the characters are pretty thin on the page, but Edgar-Jones finds Kate’s emotional core early on and never lets go, drawing us ever closer to her as the film goes on. She’s perfectly matched by Powell, who radiates such charisma that you almost believe he could stop a tornado all by himself. He’s so innately watchable that you nearly don’t notice that the romance plot between Kate and Tyler is practically nonexistent. In “Top Gun: Maverick,” it was clear Powell had the goods to be a major star, and now, with “Twisters” coming hot on the heels of rom-com hit “Anyone But You” and his bravura performance in Richard Linklater’s hilarious “Hit Man,” the inevitable has come to pass. The man is a superstar, able to seamlessly jump between genres and create believable chemistry with any co-star.
Those who have been complaining about the death of originality in Hollywood may have several bones to pick with “Twisters” – it is a sequel that essentially recreates the original, after all. However, so much of what the film does well feels anathema to current filmmaking trends that it feels like an inspired throwback instead of a mindless rip-off. The thrilling action sequences, backed by Benjamin Wallfisch’s rollicking score, would feel equally at home in any of the past three decades, as likely to hold on wide shots to get across the scale of the awe-inspiring, terrifying destruction as they are to use fast cuts and wild camera movements to put you right in the middle of the chaos of a giant, overwhelming storm. Against all odds, Chung has managed to have his cake and eat it, too, perfectly walking the line between serious and fun to create a well-rounded piece of entertainment that takes its characters and their plight seriously without taking itself too seriously. Instead of apologizing for itself or bending over backward to justify its existence, “Twisters” proudly sets out to be the best version of itself it can be, which turns out to be just as entertaining, if not more so, than the original.
