Almost three decades (woof) have passed since Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt darkened the skies and lit up the box office in the tornado disaster flick Twister. Now, a new generation of storm chasers are getting the chance to ride the wind. Twisters, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones (Where the Crawdads Sing), Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick), and Anthony Ramos (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts), may lack the charm of the original, but still packs enough of a thunderous punch to thrill summer audiences again.
Aside from the use of the “Dorothy” sensor system and a few dialogue homages, Twisters is primarily a spiritual sequel to the 1996 film. Director Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) decides against the now requel/reboot cliche of introducing “legacy” characters i.e. children of the original characters or proteges, etc. This is just a disaster thriller that relies on the chemistry of its cast and the strength of its action sequences in the spirit of its predecessor. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t realize that until about the halfway point.
Much of the early padding of the film has Kate (Edgar-Jones), an ex-storm chaser from Oklahoma turned desk-jockey weather-tracker in New York after a tragic tornado accident, pulled back into the game by her ex-teammate and college friend Javi (Anthony Ramos). After we get past all the “recruiting the hero to come back” tropes, the story makes an interesting dynamic shift from the original film to propel the plot.
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Instead, Kate and the initial protagonists of the film are on the well-funded, corporate-sponsored team as opposed to the hippie “for the love of science” team led by Paxton and Hunt from the original. Their rivals are this film’s equivalent of that with the raucous, ragtag team of YouTube storm-chasers, or “tornado wranglers”, fronted by the charismatic Tyler Owens (Powell). The action is sadly toothless during this stretch of the film. There are no stakes, just “whooping” and grandstanding with corny dialogue and bad catchphrases: “If you feel it, chase it!” The characters are one-dimensional stock personalities, and the talented cast themselves seem uncomfortable in their own skin.
Thankfully, once Kate and Tyler ditch their respective teams, everything gets soooo much better…it just takes half the movie to get there. Powell finally gets to unlock his undeniable range of talent, Edgar-Jones becomes significantly more endearing and the storm sequences finally get your heart pounding and those palms sweaty. Even the supporting cast starts to find their footing as the tension-relieving comic relief. Sadly, poor friend-zoned Javi (Ramos), the only consistently written and performed character from start to finish, is primarily dragged around solely to create a poorly executed pseudo-love triangle: one that never ends up with any physical on-screen affection between the two leads.
But let’s be honest, no one is going to Twisters to see one of the great love stories of our time. Audiences are going for a rockin’ country soundtrack playing over attractive people as they escape elaborate death-by-tornado scenarios while driving kickass trucks throughout the countryside of rural America and Twisters eventually comes through with exactly that.
Score: 3.5 out of 5