Twister is one of my all-time favorite movies, which may surprise some people. At its core, Twister is a pretty ludicrous summer popcorn flick filled with Michael Crichton technobabble—it was a perfect marriage of smart meets silly. With the passing of almost 30 years, and a huge leap in science and technological advances, does Lee Isaac Chung’s sequel—very obvious once you watch the opening scene—blow away the original? No. It also never really tries to either. Thankfully, screenwriter Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) forgoes the typical barrage of nostalgia dumpster diving and manages to give Chung the freedom to make his own disaster movie with new characters stuck in the worst weather imaginable.
Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) wants a college grant to help her prove her theory that you can disrupt tornadoes. Unfortunately, she winds up losing all but one of her friends in the middle of an EF5. Five years later, Kate is working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration when her surviving friend Javi (Anthony Ramos) hunts her down to come back to Oklahoma. Javi managed to get his hands on some new military prototype 3D scanners thanks to working for a tornado radar company called Storm Par.
Reluctantly, Kate gives in and is whisked back home where she slowly starts to learn that Javi may have ulterior motives. Meanwhile, Kate and Javi find themselves dealing with another ragtag crew of storm chasers, led by the viral “Tornado Wrangler” himself, Tyler Owens (Glen Powell). With a record outbreak of tornadoes on the horizon, Kate finds herself struggling with the animosity of science vs influencers, swept up in a race to make peace with the last time she attempted her own experiment where literally anything bad that could happen probably will.
Everything you could hope for in a Twister sequel is front and center in Twisters. The only thing really new are the characters, even if the story does manage to branch away from just trying to analyze data from inside a tornado to trying to find a way to possibly stop them and save entire communities from devastation.
I’ve never been on the Glen Powell bandwagon, Twisters puts him on my radar. Usually relegated to snarky face-punchable supporting characters, it’s great to see him finally find something to match his off camera charm on screen. Daisy Edgar-Jones brings the humanity and gravity of the situations, while this time we get two hilarious sidekicks with Javi and Tyler’s right-hand man, Boone (Brandon Perea).
It was interesting to see Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy, Oblivion, Top Gun: Maverick) credited with the story. A long time ago, he was attached to direct, leaving Twisters another film where you wonder what could have been. Not that there’s anything wrong with Chung’s set pieces, he’s just clearly better at channeling emotion from the smaller character scenes, while Kosinski is better at directing amazing action sequences. With Minari and Twisters both being set in the Midwest, Chung fills Twisters with a true sense of small town ruralism that feels completely authentic, which may be the film’s biggest strength. Ultimately, Twisters is the perfect kind of cinematic comfort food and I wouldn’t have it served any other way.
