Review: Twisters Isn't a Disaster, but It Won't Blow You Away

There is perhaps a grand total of one allusion to the climate crisis in Twisters, Lee Isaac Chung's belated sequel to the 1994 blockbuster. Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), once a student storm-chaser who has given up field work for a desk job in New York, is visiting her home in Oklahoma, looking over her old research. "I keep seeing more and more tornadoes, and floods, and droughts," her mother, a farmer, says, "and the price of wheat and corn just goes up, and up, and up."

Chung was recruited to make Twisters after his film Minari, based on his childhood in nearby Arkansas, earned six Oscar nominations, winning one. He apparently declined to use the film to discuss why tornados might be more prevalent these days, telling CNN he believes cinema shouldn't be "preaching a message" and should be "a reflection of the world." That admission mystifies me.

Perhaps I would cut him some slack if the film were as entertaining as its predecessor — this is supposed to be a big summer blockbuster, not An Inconvenient Truth. Yet Chung, working off a screenplay by Mark L. Smith from a story by Top Gun: Maverick and F1 director Joseph Kosinski, has abandoned much of what made 1994's Twister so thrilling. He jettisons the compact timeframe of Jan de Bont's roller-coaster ride original, stretching out the story and making it more character-driven. He's also added a star-studded country soundtrack, which has resulted in distractingly on-the-nose moments such as Kate's return home being soundtracked by Lainey Wilson cornily singing "[You] can't take the home out of Oklahoma."
Much like Helen Hunt's character in the original film, Kate is haunted by a horrible tragedy, the loss of her university colleagues to a massive tornado that only she survived. One day, another ex-classmate shows up at her office. Javi (Anthony Ramos) has also abandoned academia and now commands a slick startup using military radar tech to study twisters. He coaxes Kate back to Oklahoma, where a record-breaking wave of tornados has erupted. That's where she meets Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), a self-proclaimed "tornado-wrangler" with a massive truck, a 2,000-watt smile, and a million YouTube subscribers. In the first film, we rooted for a crusty pack of renegade tornado scientists against their corporate-backed rivals, both racing to beat the other to a crucial research milestone. Now we have the opposite dynamic: The protagonists, at first, are the buttoned-up nerds with corporate backing wielding defense industry tech, and their rivals are cowboy influencers who fire rockets into the twisters in search of likes and views. All the real academics died in the prologue — perhaps a sign of the times.

Of course, Kate doesn't stay in Javi's camp for too long. Tyler, on a charm offensive, reveals hidden depths (it turns out he's also a scientist, not just some thrill jockey), while Kate digs deeper into Javi's backers and finds a sinister secret behind the business — indeed, there is a twist in Twisters. With Tyler's help, she faces her survivor's guilt and recovers her original mission: finding a way to dissipate tornados before they cause untold destruction.

It is, frankly, a lot more plot than the first film, and the added focus on characters does not necessarily translate into more entertainment. De Bont's hot-blooded direction in Twister kept the tension high, and the thin story about a divorcing scientist couple reuniting over a shared affinity for storm chasing in the background. Chung's sequel, meanwhile, foregrounds Kate, her struggles with trauma, and her budding relationship with Tyler. "Budding" is really all there is to it — the lack of physicality between two people risking life and limb together leaves their relationship lacking. (It's not like people in red states don't have sex — just ask the Hawk Tuah girl.) Powell is just as electric here as he was in Hit Man earlier this year, playing Tyler with caddish confidence. Edgar-Jones, meanwhile, who dyed her hair blond to convey an All-American country girl, effectively transmits Kate's reticence over getting back into the field, but her performance falters a bit in the big moments.
Of course, the real stars of this movie ought to be the twisters, and there are plenty of them: big ones, skinny ones, and a monster that crashes into an oil refinery and becomes a billowing maelstrom of smoke and flame in a spectacular, climactic sequence. The scale is massive — helicopter shots and sweeping pans abound — yet you don't quite get the same sense of danger as in the original film. Twister's visual effects, supplied by Industrial Light and Magic, were (and still are) top-notch, combining painterly, powerful CGI storm footage with bracing practical sequences where whole sets were torn apart. The tactile feeling we get in the older film is crucial to its effectiveness, and it just isn't present in Twisters. In one late sequence, storm refugees cower in a movie theater as debris from the tornado rips holes in the roof and walls. Because the building is computer-generated, the threat of being lifted away doesn't quite come across.

Instead, it is on the small scale that Chung's direction is much more effective. In the prologue, after Kate's friends have all been sucked away, he pans in close on her, clinging for dear life. A fade to black as the winds roar is followed by a cut to sharp white, the light of day in which Kate wanders amid the wreckage. Small-town Americana also makes the film feel authentic. Chung may be from across the state line, but he knew the town of El Reno and its working streetcar would make a nice setpiece.

Is it irresponsible to make a weather disaster movie in 2024 and gloss over climate change? It would be one thing if Twisters ignored the issue and made an entertaining film. But truth be told, this tornado movie didn't exactly blow me away.

Twisters. Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung. Screenplay by Mark L. Smith. Story by Joseph Kosinski. 122 mins. Rated PG-13. Opens Friday, July 19; check for showtimes at miaminewtimes.com/miami/movietimes.