Twisters

The 1996 disaster thriller, Twister, starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, may have been a glorified B-movie with multiple flaws laced within its scripting, character choices and acting decisions, but this didn’t stop the film from becoming a big hit. Its success at the box office, its legitimate assistance in drawing attention and expanding the meteorology field, and its status as a guilty pleasure by those who are keenly aware of its shortcomings but like the wild ride it takes them on, proved that it was a dish that was heavily sampled in spite of its poor taste, and logically acted as a staple for the advent of disaster-based movies that came out around that era (at least it can say it was better than most of them). With all of this surprising acclaim for a simple ‘’turn-your-brain-off’’ movie, a sequel could probably have been scrapped together and tossed out without much thought and still performed well, but it took a full 28 years before they actually made one, with said sequel titled Twisters, being released around the middle of 2024.

After barely surviving a devastating tornado that claimed the lives of her friends and boyfriend, aspiring meteorologist, Kate Cooper (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones) has given up chasing tornados, but is drawn back into the field by her old friend, Javi (played by Anthony Ramos), who has helped create a groundbreaking new method of tracking tornados, and needs Kate’s bizarre precognitive ability to sense tornados, in order to get the best results. After agreeing to help Javi and his team in Central Oklahoma, Kate eventually meets Tyler Owens (played by Glen Powell), a reckless social media star who has gained a massive following for performing dangerous stunts alongside his crew within the depths of tornados, putting him at odds with Javi’s more respectable and scientific approach. After encountering several large-scale twisters (all of which cause mass damage to the people of Oklahoma), Kate starts to learn more about Javi’s providers, who seem to be profiting off these tragedies, and sees that Owen’s crew, while certainly foolhardy, aren’t as mindlessly callous as they appear, eventually agreeing to help them instead. With the rate of tornados still increasing in the area, Kate may be forced to use an old hypothetical concoction she created that may have the chance to halt tornados in their tracks, while also getting over the trauma she suffered all those years ago.

Twisters operates in a very similar manner to its original, matching its bombastic pros in a way that feels more intention, as well as its fault though in a more tolerable sense. While still very formulaic, outdated and maybe too modernistic for a throwback schlock flick, it carries enough basic engagement, likability and solid presentation, to come across as decent enough.

A point that should be made clear right from the beginning is that this is a stand-alone sequel that seemingly has no direct connections back to the original 1996 film. While never stating otherwise, no direct cameos or callbacks are ever mentioned (outside of Bill Paxton’s son, James Paxton, who only gets a quick background cameo) and that might throw some people off who were expecting a direct sequel. It was originally meant to act as one, with Helen Hunt herself pitching an idea in 2021 that she planned to direct and write alongside Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal while reprising her original role, but this was rejected and never came to fruition. In spite of this separation, the film does have a lot of notable talent behind the scenes; Universal returned as the original film’s international distributor alongside Warner Bros, Kathleen Kennedy herself didn’t return, but Amblin Entertainment as well as Kennedy/Marshall Company is still attached alongside Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall, Patrick Crowley, Thomas Hayslip and Ashley Jay Sandberg act as producers (people who helped produce the Jurassic World movies which this movie has noticeably similar posters to) and the choice of director certainly turned some heads. While there were many options on the table like Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasearheyji, Dan Trachtenberg and Travis Knight, the eventual choice was Lee Isaac Chung, who had recently risen to fame after being Oscar-nominated for his work on his semi-autobiographical 2020 drama, Minari. The choice to have a director whose style seems to be very dramatic, slower paced, realistic and cinematically rich, lead this obviously high-octane, low-thought threshold, popcorn-fluff blockbuster seemed like an odd decision, but when the trailers presented something that looked like a mix of traditional cinematic cheese and legit gritty atmosphere and tension, people suddenly saw potential in this.

The movie itself doesn’t contain much in terms of raw maturity or depth as the comfortable reigns of ‘’over-the-top theatrics’’ are still very present, its personality feels insanely corny and out in the open, the characters and dialogue feel at least 30 years too late, and the plot just tows the line between being so ridiculous that realism can never be a factor, but not only is the film likeably uncynical (making its outdated personality and mindless appeal more like harmless comfort food than demeaning trash), but Chung’s direction provides just enough of a grounded stability that the audience is willing to go with its choices enough to not be a totally mindless ride. It isn’t all perfect as it goes a little too long with a running time of about two hours, the scripting by Mark L. Smith is pretty useless with lame catchphrases, dumb lines and minimal investment, and the overall story by Joseph Kosinski isn’t very original or fresh, but for the kind of film it’s presenting, it could’ve been a lot worse.

The characters are very one-note and are written as very generic archetypes you’d see in movie of this type. What makes this a little worse than usual is that while these would still be seen as lazy unoriginal characters in the 90s (when this type of film was very frequent), seeing these kinds of characters in 2024 feels extremely noticeable, especially because most of them are incredibly forgettable. There are a lot of actors in this movie who, while certainly not huge names, are recognizable nonetheless with examples outside of the leads being Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane, Harry Hadden-Paton, Daryl McCormack, Katy O’Brian, David Corenswet, and Kiernan Shipka. It’s hard to say anyone is doing a bad job as everyone is trying (outside of Kate’s crew during the opening who feel like they are just positioned to die, so act as accordingly), but the familiar lines and scenes to play out just results in any moment of character building being incredibly hard to connect with.

This is felt the most with the bad guys, who are presented as so one-note evil yet so blandly delivered that it can’t even be laughed at. They don’t even have that much screen time, but any moment they do have just feels so lazy and empty. It’s not like the heroes are that much better, with most of them being cartoons with little backstory and only defined by a single trait (and sometimes not even that), but at least most of the acting is decent. Daisy Edgar-Jones plays a fairly generic lead in a fairly generic way, nothing bad by any means, but certainly not enough to showcase her true strengths as a performer. She is held down by a pretty poor script and she does at least have decent chemistry with the other actors, but it feels like she needs another role to really showcase what she can do. Anthony Ramos is fine although he feels very wasted in a pretty thankless role, and Glen Powell is yucking it up like crazy with his portrayal of this thrill-seeking online celebrity who caters towards a euphoric-seeking crowd by taking part in dangerous stunts, he definitely feels like the most realized and memorable part of this film (he’s a total trope, but at least he’s having fun with it).

When these effects-heavy features dominated the 90s, the effects would usually be the main and only star, but thankfully we are in an era now where character, plot and fresh content is put more in the focus, and even though it isn’t great material to work with, it does feel like this movie is trying above just putting some flashy scenes in front of people to keep them mindlessly entertained for a couple of hours. The effects this time around are perfectly decent and every once and a while, it taps into that mindless fun factor through a truly ridiculous spectacle that would only be present in one of the sideways-adjacent B-movies (a flaming tornado feels right at home in this universe), but it doesn’t really feel like it’s showing anything that wow-worthy, especially for the current market where movies have gotten far more interesting and experimental with what kind of visual marvel they can showcase on screen.

Most of the twisters are very bland looking with dull colors and smoky designs, which could honestly be said for the rest of the movie too, which has an oddly dull and weepy atmosphere that doesn’t look that nice most of the time. What balances this out is that not only are the tornado scenes fairly well done when they involve a group of people running away from the carnage (for such a popcorn flick, it does feel decently suspenseful and terrifying), but the cinematography by Dan Mindel is also pretty nice in moments. With his experience with large-scale blockbusters through franchises like Star Wars, Mission Impossible, and Spider-Man, he knows how to showcase something in a visually pleasing manner, but even some of the slower moments have great framing, angles and cinematic delivery that feels like a component from Chung’s more aggressively grounded visual style, it meshes pretty well. The soundtrack is packed full of country songs that really capture not only the hyperactive, almost chaotic flavor of this environment, but the entire movie seems to ooze this Americana atmosphere to a level that just barely borders on self-indulgent. It’s not painful, and while it does feel like the movie has a few too many songs as opposed to an actual musical score, it’s not that much of an issue.

Twisters is exactly the kind of movie you’d expect to get from a stand-alone follow-up to a beloved film that probably earned most of that positivity through self-aware guilty pleasure rather than actual merit. As an unneeded sequel released several years later, this doesn’t feel like a brand-new elevated experience helmed by an Oscar-nominated director, but it also doesn’t feel like a soulless cash-grab banking on nostalgia in order to continue people’s incapacity to say no to flavorless mush (it’s getting better, but it is still an issue). If you’re looking for something that directly ties into the first film, it isn’t that at all (while it is a painful trend, it’s kind of weird that there’s no connection at all), but for someone who just wants to go into something with mass destruction, tornadoes ripping up buildings and Glen Powell pulling off his best Matthew McConaughey impression, you’ll do just fine with this rodeo. Probably not going to inspire the same level of adoration as the first, but otherwise, a whirlwind that can be driven through at a steady pace.