It took 28 years, but storm season is here again. Yet Twisters barely classifies as a sequel to the beloved 1996 tornado chasing blockbuster Twister. The only star of the original to appear is Dorothy, the vat of miniature probes designed to be sucked up by a tornado. However, a few big plot points do carry over: first, that the lead succumbs to the allure of tornadoes after a terrible tragedy. In the original, Helen Hunt’s gutsy and sarcastic tornado chaser Jo lost her family to a twister, but this time it’s Kate (Edgar-Jones), a student storm chaser from Oklahoma who gets most of her ragtag research team killed when she drives straight towards an EF5 monster. Jo just wanted to research twisters; Kate thinks she can kill them using diapers (a plot point that may leave meteorologists in the audience fearing they’ve been concussed by flying debris). Lured back into the field by the outright emotional abuse of Javi (Ramos), the sole survivor of the disaster, she luckily runs into Tyler Owens (Powell), a YouTube sensation of the storm chasing scene, all ego and denim and “aw, shucks, ma’am” good old boy nonsense.
The original worked because it balanced the VFX spectacle of rampaging forces of nature against the undeniable charm of Hunt and Bill Paxton as her equally tornado-obsessed soon-to-be-ex-husband. This time around, it’s only when Kate adopts an ambiguous Southern drawl that the meet-cute the film craves and demands has any sparks, and that’s halfway through the film. Prior to that, the audience is left asking one of two questions: “When’s Glen Powell going to turn up?” and “when’s Glen Powell coming back?” Anytime he’s off screen, even giant tornadoes aren’t enough to pull you in.
Maybe if director Lee Isaac Chung and writer Joseph Kosinski had swapped roles, Twisters would be a better movie. But instead of a script by the writer of character-driven family dramedy Minari directed by the man behind the camera on Top Gun: Maverick, it’s a by-the-numbers summer screen filler script from the Top Gun guy uninspiringly filmed by a director best known for subtle, quiet moments.
Worse, Kosinski’s script is gutless. Every five minutes, someone talks about “once in a century conditions” and unprecedented weather: In a film where the heroes are supposed to be scientists, have the courage or common sense to say “climate change.” That said, everyone here is kind of an idiot. Twister portrayed its characters as nerdy adrenaline junkies working in the world’s most dangerous lab conditions. Yet half the time there’s an opportunity to get real data, Kate and Tyler turn around and start pointing locals towards shelters. An astounding amount of the plot turns on the idea that no one in Tornado Alley knows what to do when the sirens go off, all just to make the heroes look more heroic. There’s only one moment when that works – a nod to the not-so-secret philanthropy of Guy Fieri – but it’s mainly just an excuse for another windswept set piece.
Heavy-handed and stuffed with cardboard characters, everything about Twisters save for Powell feels like a pale imitation of what made the original such an unexpected smash of a disaster movie. Lightning definitely does not strike twice.
This article appears in July 19 • 2024.