Franchise duties drag Twisters’ competent thrills down to earth

When it’s not trading cows for chickens, Twisters is a pretty good time. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, presumably because his Oscar-nominated Minari also featured Southern property damage, this 30-years-late sequel is best enjoyed by ignoring the original. We know. Lore is currency in this age of continuity, but Twister’s legacy weighs this sequel down. Chung overthinks Twisters, delivering breathless action and a charismatic cast in an unsatisfying way as he tries to spin a legacy sequel out of thin air.

With a script by Mark L. Smith, based on a story by Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski, Twisters has sights on the summer’s Top Gun spot. But while the 35mm grain and characters with personality are appreciated, Twisters gets swept up in Twister memes. Like all legacy sequels left in J.J. Abrams’ wake, Twisters remixes the plot beats of the original, swapping one detail for another and, hopefully, passing it off as something entirely new. It’s not, and its attempts at subversion are more dishonest than surprising.

Five years after a weather experiment ended in tragedy, Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar Jones) trades her jeans for slack and leaves the country for the city. Now working for New York’s weather service, Kate no longer has the stomach for storm chasing, even though no one sees tornados like her. Kate possesses a borderline supernatural “Twister Sense” (or what the MCU would call a “Twister Tingle”), allowing her to track a tornado’s path instinctually. She believes that releasing dehydrating powder into a tornado could cause them to dissipate, essentially curing the world of these deadly cyclones. Tracked down and recruited by her college buddy Javi (Anthony Ramos), she joins his shady startup, which uses military-grade technology to create scans of tornados that allow for earlier warnings. Kate returns to Tornado Alley, Oklahoma, experiencing a drastic increase in activity and destruction. Next to Twister’s “Dorothy,” which gets an unnecessary and distracting cameo, and its tactile aluminum baubles, Kate’s barrels of digital dust are a step down. And we never even get a clear look at whatever Javi’s device is. Both are okay ideas in search of better props.

Storm chasing has evolved since Kate left the game. No longer a purely scientific pursuit between weather-loving scientists and well-funded Weather Channels, “tornado wrangling” has been taken over by the likes of Tyler Owens (Glen Powell). Something of a meteorological Mr. Beast, Tyler has a million YouTube followers devoted to watching him shoot fireworks up a tornado’s ass. Like the crew of Jan de Bont’s original, Tyler’s scrappy team of drone obsessives and pyromaniacs gives Twisters its energy. As Boone, Brandon Perea remakes his over-caffeinated character from Nope. With a screaming enthusiasm for unnecessary risks, Perea takes the Philip Seymour Hoffman position, juicing up the movie in its downtime. Though this new crew lacks the original’s improvised charm, the ensemble survives the storm modestly weather-beaten, their throats sore from screaming, “Woooo!”

Superficially, it’s hard to find the Minari director in this blockbuster, but Chung injects humanity into the film by treating Twisters more like a monster movie than a disaster film. He frames the tornado like Godzilla, with characters running and hiding from its massive footprint, inching ever closer to them. Debris from around Oklahoma takes the place of falling buildings as Javi and Kate try to speed out of its path. Through this perspective, Chung finds a far more empathetic and human angle on the material, focusing more on rescue and destruction. There’s hardly a scene of tornado excitement without a rescue and a trip to the town most recently destroyed.

And like any good monster, the tornado has a way of following its main characters. The tornado becomes an unexpected third wheel when Tyler and Kate depart for a romantic rendezvous at a local rodeo. One of the movie’s pleasures is watching Kate and Tyler rescue others from the storm. Jones threads the needle of playing a vulnerable woman who can overcome her fears without needing a man to rescue her as she goes toe-to-toe with a white-hot Powell and a sensitive Ramos. All of them are smart, competent, and ready to work, giving the movie a “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore” feeling that comes from capable people being able to do their jobs. The plug-and-play plot is predictable, but as in the original, Twisters is a functional thrill ride driven by charismatic, believable performances.

Twisters mainly falters in the payoff, overthinking the right move and creating a series of minor disappointments that add up. Climate change, for example, is not something these weather scientists ever mention, which reeks of studio fears of Red State reactions. Smaller details, like the dog Tyler rescues (and Powell has spent weeks doing press with), never make it to the final cut. These issues become unnecessary distractions. Chung teases the identity of Kate’s estranged mother so hard that those trained by Abrams’ Star Wars movies will expect an incoming cameo. When Maura Tierney shows up to play Mom, it feels like a last-minute pivot because Helen Hunt, who attempted to write and direct the film, does not appear. It would’ve made sense to cut the moment, but as we all know, Twister also had a scene where the female lead stopped home with her tornado-wrangling would-be suitor. These would all be minor quibbles, but Twisters also gets cold feet regarding its romance. The movie positions Kate, Tyler, and Javi in a love triangle built like a romantic comedy without resolution. Though relentlessly teased, Chung never pays off the love story, and the deflating final shots will leave some wondering if another reel is missing. We know that the kissing police complain on Twitter, but that’s no reason to kneecap the movie.

Those looking for summer fun could do much worse than Twisters. After a plodding first hour, it settles into a nice rhythm, balancing its utopian technobabble about curing the world of tornados with breathless action sequences that rely on character over spectacle. Yet, it seems like revisions in Smith’s script are often made in real-time, hoping to get it closer to the original movie while also accounting for production impossibilities. If only there was more faith placed in the film itself, because at its best, Twisters doesn’t need Easter eggs to blow audiences away.

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