Twisters: Storm und Drag
While it follows the previous film’s general roadmap — two competing teams chase the mother of all tornados across Oklahoma for different reasons — Twisters also refuses to kow-tow to its ancestry, offering few referential winks and zero cameos from its surviving cast members.
That’s maybe good, maybe disappointing depending on one’s expectations. But its stars are very pretty. On Team Earnest, we have delicate Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kate, a meteorologist and former storm chaser who early in the film is sidelined by tragedy that she feels responsible for.
After relocating to New York in hopes of putting it all behind her, Kate is reluctantly called back into action by Javi (Anthony Ramos), her former storm-chasing buddy and fellow survivor of the above-mentioned tragedy who has financial backing (and sketchy motives) for getting back into the game.
Javi needs Kate’s almost otherworldly abilities to intuit where the fiercest tornados will land to push forward with his underhanded scheme, of which sweet-natured Kate is late to learn about.
But getting back in the game offers Kate a chance to atone and to finally, finally, put the potentially storm-busting Dorothy device — the clearest holdover from the original film, though presented without much backstory — back into action.
On Team Grandstand we have magnetic Glen Powell as Tyler, a meteorologist of uncommon swagger with a YouTube channel, a posse of daredevil misfits riding shotgun, and an anxious British journalist trying to craft a feature story about them. Tyler, too, can intuit where the tornados will touch down, but he seems, at first blush, motivated less by altruism than by thrill-seeking and racking up online views.
Who the real good guys and bad guys are in this scenario is a key part of what propels the narrative but the white-knuckle, storm-chasing set pieces, and there’s many, keep things flowing across two hours made to feel longer by the apparently obligatory (see “very pretty,” above) attraction brewing between Tyler and Kate, whose mutual love of storms apparently trumps their wildly dissimilar personalities and drags us into scenes that feel like anathema to the action.
In fairness, the original Twister was lightning in a bottle. Da Bont directing a script co-written by Michael Crichton, exec-produced by Steven Spielberg and starring Helen Hunt, Cary Elwes, Alan Ruck and the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman and Bill Paxton is much more than a bill of goods. It’s unlikely anyone went into this sequel expecting to top it.
Twisters gains some traction from technology, which in the 30 years since the original, has improved exponentially. The whirling tornadoes, inky skies, and flattened towns look very real. There’s also unambiguous messaging about climate change and how the adrenaline buzz of social media can make smart people do stupid things.
Director Lee Isaac Chung, best known for the hugely moving, Oscar-winning Minari — about a family of Korean immigrants trying to start a new life in Arkansas, and not an obvious precursor to a film like this — takes considerable stylistic and genre leaps here with great confidence and panache.
As a summertime popcorn film, it’s fine. But Twisters lacks the breathtaking je ne sais quoi oomph a film of this scope should have. We get spun alright, but the landing feels very safe and predictable.
Twisters. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung. Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney and Harry Hadden-Paton. In theatres July 19.