5.5

Twisters Has Two Spectacles, the Tornadoes and Glen Powell, and Not Much Else

By Brianna Zigler  |  July 18, 2024 | 2:30pm
Movies Reviews Lee Isaac Chung
Twisters Has Two Spectacles, the Tornadoes and Glen Powell, and Not Much Else
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A follow-up to his poignant, Oscar-nominated autobiographical drama Minari, Twisters might seem like an odd fifth feature for director Lee Isaac Chung. Odd, yes, to those with little knowledge of the film industry and a lot of straightforward common sense—why hand a filmmaker by all accounts concerned with small, personal features the keys to a blockbuster franchise sequel? But that’s just Hollywood de rigueur, seen with the likes of Jurassic World and the MCU, often to, shall we say, mixed results. Studios like to slap an indie up-and-comer’s name on a feature while allowing them little to no real creative leeway, giving the illusion of artistry and progress while the suits at the studio pull all the strings.

And while there is no outwardly auteurist stamp on Twisters to make it feel like anything other than that Chung was a hired hand, Twisters certainly isn’t Eternals. On the contrary, Twisters is, at best, pretty fun—a decidedly breezy two hours. It has thrills, and chills, and Glen Powell doing his darndest to bring the concept of “movie star” back into the year 2024. The tornado effects are impressive (special effects supervisor Scott R. Fisher was also in charge of the VFX on Oppenheimer), especially on an IMAX screen. And there is a not insignificant push of focus onto the casualties of tornadoes in contrast to the original 1996 film, which gives the sequel a more present sense of scale and tragedy. Of course, what the original Twister has over Twisters is the chemistry of its star-studded cast, and a screenplay (co-penned by Ann-Marie Martin and Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton) with an emotional anchor that lifts the silly disaster film into something more human. Twister saw incredible will-they-won’t-they chemistry between its leads, ex-spouses and tornado lovers played by Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. In Twisters, Powell is matched with Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones, whose nice-girl act has nowhere near the natural charisma of her romantic foil.

They’re large shoes to fill, but the grit of Helen Hunt’s tornado-chasing country girl Jo is lost on Edgar-Jones’s Kate, a character very much meant to be a spiritual successor but who lacks almost all personality, dimension and assumed expertise in her field. Jo’s loss of her father at the start of Twister turns into Kate’s loss of three of her friends, including her boyfriend, while attempting to utilize new technology meant to tame a tornado by absorbing its moisture. The endeavor leaves Kate grief-stricken and scarred, and she abandons her passions for a cushy job as a meteorologist in New York City. That is, until her only other surviving friend, Javi (Anthony Ramos), surprises her with a visit to urge her back to Oklahoma. Tornadoes are getting worse every year (yet no outward mention of climate change?) and Kate’s potentially game-changing technology is needed now more than ever. Wary, Kate returns to her home turf now crawling with wannabe storm-chasers trying to emulate popular YouTube Tyler Owens (Powell) and his ragtag team of redneck meteorologists. As a change of pace, the character dynamics are flipped in this sequel: Where Twister saw us aligned with Jo’s motley crew (including characters played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck and Todd Field) side-eyeing Cary Elwes’s corporate funding, Twisters has us on the side of the suits. Javi’s team, led by a comically prim David Corenswet, is aligned with a shady investor, while Tyler’s gaggle of loose cannons are the ones concerned with the preservation of human life.

Unfortunately, this altered dynamic forces us away from the characters who are actually fun to be around. Powell’s Tyler beams like a beacon of charisma upon a barren land, followed closely by an extremely charming Brandon Peara (Nope) as Tyler’s videographer Boone, Love Lies Bleeding’s Katy O’Brien, Sasha Lane, Tunde Adebimpe and British actor Harry Hadden-Paton as a frazzled journalist attempting to profile Tyler. Every time Kate and Javi are on screen together it’s a total snore, and you count down the moments until the presence of either Tyler or one of his friends to break the tension. The fun of Twister was that, despite her grit, Jo was much more outwardly straitlaced than her crazy team full of wild personalities, but she’s still crazier than Bill (Paxton) is trying to pretend that he isn’t anymore; together, they’re all united against the Big Business of Elwes’ Jonas Miller. By allying Kate with the Miller stand-in, a lot of Twisters is spent, quite frankly, waiting for Glen Powell to come back and make things interesting again.

Daisy Edgar-Jones isn’t at all talentless—in Hulu’s Under the Banner of Heaven, she fills the buoyant and bright character of Brenda Lafferty with a tragic pathos. Edgar-Jones works wonders as a do-goody yet conflicted Mormon wife, but she doesn’t sell as a grieving science nerd from Oklahoma. The film attempts to imbue her with hardship from the loss of her friends, and she gets what’s meant to be an emotional sequence back home with her mom (Maura Tierney), but it all feels incredibly shallow. The material is paper-thin (screenplay credited to Mark L. Smith, who co-penned The Revenant), and Edgar-Jones is woefully miscast. It’s all the more pronounced up against Powell, who is disarmingly handsome and devilish, slowly worming his way into the no-nonsense woman’s heart, helping her to loosen up a bit—a classic dynamic. In the end, the two teams—and the two people, Kate and Tyler, of course—need each other, as a succession of powerful storms lead up to the mother of all tornadoes, and the disparate groups must work together to save civilians while Kate seeks redemption in her tornado-tamer. And while it’s not like we get to see a CGI cow blown around this time, the number of the people who get sucked up into the tornadoes in this film is kind of commendable. The film pulls no punches in visualizing the sheer power and horror of such a natural disaster.

And yet Twisters, puzzlingly, can’t even be bothered to allow its two leads a satisfying kiss in its romantic conclusion. It’s a grand finale which informs the film’s overall lack of character and definition, aside from its storms and its Glen Powell. This isn’t meant to be The Glen Powell Show, but that’s what it ends up being. In spite of (and because) of this, I should emphasize that Twisters is still a pretty good time, and it’s not like the Twister of ‘90s yore was much more than a fun, entertaining thrill ride. But the differences between the two are crucial, and boil down to simple screenwriting. Sure, one can wax poetic that films were better when they had Bill Paxton and Philip Seymour Hoffman in them (objectively true). But there is no replacing either actor, and it’s fruitless to make comparisons. Still, it’s disheartening how sanitized modern blockbusters are, glossing over basic tenets of a good story and good characters halfheartedly, perhaps assuming that audiences would rather you just get to the smashing and crashing and fighting. Having seen Twister, you can’t really watch Twisters without understanding that a better world is possible—Hollywood just doesn’t want to give it to you.

Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Writer: Mark L. Smith
Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane
Release Date: July 19, 2024

Brianna Zigler is an entertainment writer based in middle-of-nowhere Massachusetts. Her work has appeared at Little White Lies, Film School Rejects, Thrillist, Bright Wall/Dark Room and more, and she writes a bi-monthly newsletter called That’s Weird. You can follow her on Twitter, where she likes to engage in stimulating discussions on films like Movie 43, Clifford, and Watchmen.

 
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