Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos
Runtime: 2 hours, 2 minutes
Rating: 3 / 5
By now, we can all agree that Hollywood has run out of ideas. Producers and studio execs are plumbing the depths of their back catalogs, digging deeper for that one slight-forgotten-but-still-nostalgic film that they hope can unlock the next franchise. The problem here is that many classic films aren’t well suited for a second act. Trying to force a sequel onto a movie that doesn’t warrant one usually involves cheap tricks like rehashing plot points (“The Hangover 2”) or nostalgic fan service (“Ghostbusters: Afterlife”).
“Twisters”, the newest summer release from Universal Pictures, manages to avoid these traps. However, in doing so it ends up being basic and banal.
Despite what the title implies, “Twisters” is not really a true sequel to the 1996 film starring Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, and a herd of flying cows. Viewers can follow along without having seen the original, and besides a few callbacks in the opening scene, there isn’t much to link them together (which is probably good considering much of the audience won’t have been alive when the original was released). Rather than a continuation of the story, it’s more of a reboot for the Gen Z crowd.
Action scenes backed by pop country music? Check.
Cell phones and social media? Check.
Girlboss protagonist? Check.
The film focuses on Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a storm chasing savant who can predict when and where tornadoes will touch down by judging the wind. She has a new idea of how to use chemicals to “tame tornadoes”, and at the film’s start, her team is chasing a tornado in order to test this method. However, a disaster leads her to give up her dream and take an office job as a meteorologist in New York. But Kate can only stay out of the field for so long, and so when Javi (Anthony Ramos), a friend and former teammate, comes to her with a plan to use military-grade radar to map tornadoes, Kate can’t help but get drawn back in, encouraged by the promise of being able to fully understand, once and for all, how tornadoes work – and, she hopes, how to stop them and save lives.
Amidst the two’s storm chasing escapades, we also meet Tyler Owens, a self-proclaimed “Tornado Wrangler” who, along with his team, makes exciting, death-defying YouTube videos of themselves driving into tornadoes and shooting rockets while jamming out to rock music. Owens is played charmingly by Glen Powell as a handsome, rugged cowboy type, complete with a 10 gallon hat, massive belt buckle, and smooth southern drawl. Though the film initially wants us to dislike Owens and his reckless bad boy ways, it’s not clear why they’re so bad. Powell’s charm draws us in, and I often found myself wanting to spend more time with his fun-loving group rather than Kate and Javi’s team of serious scientists.
This leads to one of the movie’s problems, mainly that I struggled to get invested in the stakes or the characters. In the original “Twister”, the stakes were more grounded and simple – Jo and Bill wanted to release sensors into a tornado to learn more about them. But here, it’s less clear. Are they trying to stop tornadoes? Make 3-D models of them? I wasn’t always sure and so it was hard to root for the protagonists. In the 2nd half, we learn a secret about Javi and his company that upsets Kate, but this “twist” is so poorly explained (not to mention foreshadowed so blatantly) that I found myself shrugging at this development. As for the characters, many of them are flat or verge on stereotypes, and even the earnest attempts to add depth (such as Kate’s portrayal as a smart girlboss who secretly harbors doubt and regret) left me indifferent about whether they escaped the tornado or got blown away.
The plot points are as predictable as sunshine on a Florida summer day, but it’s executed with enough skill by director Lee Isaac Chung (most recently nominated for his work on “Minari”) that it’s a fun ride if you don’t dig too deep. There’re fun scenes of people running into and away from storms, cars get thrown around, buildings get destroyed, and there are some occasional bits of humor. Enemies become friends, friends become enemies (and then friends again), characters reckon with their past, and there’s enough will-they-won’t-they tension to keep most viewers engaged. There are some missed opportunities to say something deeper – The impact of climate change? The effects of social media? – but the film doesn’t bother, and that’s probably for the best.