July 22, 2024 · Watch the official trailer
Decades after Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton rekindled their romance while chasing tornadoes across Oklahoma, Hollywood decided to update one of the most iconic 1990s summer blockbusters with a legacy sequel to the classic movie “Twister.”
Lee Isaac Chung, Academy Award nominated director for his semiautobiographical drama “Minari,” helms a pseudo-reboot of the storm chasing thriller with the larger scale, tech-heavy “Twisters,” now in premium theaters.
This time, rather than simply hunting tornadoes to collect data, rival teams are vying to ride the wind by either showboating inside the storm itself or by launching a polymer into tornadoes to stop them completely.
There’s significantly more nuance to the character work in “Twisters” than one might expect for such a bombastic blockbuster, especially when it comes to the triggers and trauma responses that Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Kate goes through over the course of the movie that both hinders and helps her ability to track and understand tornadoes to save small Oklahoma towns.
Edgar-Jones has a terrific ability to keep things level and grounded emotionally despite often acting against a blank wall or green screen and her ability to process and capture the gravity of each moment is a refreshing change of pace for these sorts of disaster films.
While there’s less nuance to his Tyler Owens, Glen Powell radiates off the screen every frame he appears in in true movie star fashion as his overwhelming charisma offsets the sort of antagonist role that Tyler takes on early in “Twisters.” Over the course of the film, Powell takes some very light emotional work and make it feel authentic and true.
Though it does not sync up in the best chemistry with Edgar-Jones, Powell easily melts into these moments with a genuine affability that deepens and changes the audiences’ perceptions of his character.
Although the rest of the ensemble cast has important secondary roles to play throughout the course of “Twisters,” none of the performances – especially “In The Heights” star Anthony Ramos – have a scene-stealing nature in the same way Philip Seymour Hoffman did in the original “Twister” and much of the plot emphasizes tornadoes as a third lead alongside Edgar-Jones and Powell over any of the other actors on screen.=
Visually, “Twisters” gives off the thrills and chills that one might expect from a two-hour drama about tornadoes though the mass proliferation of CGI technology in moviemaking does leave the film feeling a bit more standard than special. Much of the action sequences have a superficial, almost comic book quality to them that still makes “Twisters” worth seeing on the big screen but perhaps not on a premium or IMAX format.
While Chung keeps the film focused on its central characters in frame, it’s often difficult to see the true massive scale of some of these tornadoes even as technological advancements allow the filmmakers to plausibly place drones in the sky to let audiences see above and around the wind tunnels a bit better.
Largely the production design and filmmaking behind “Twisters” keeps in line with a big-budget action blockbuster and there is a moderate amount of nostalgia to the original film. Although aside from the vintage throwback feel to a mid-90s summer blockbuster, there’s very little tie-in to the first movie and viewers need not to have seen “Twister” prior to heading to theaters for this pseudo legacy-sequel.
Much of the film’s character work and dramatic nuance falls by the wayside at the end of the movie in typical Hollywood fashion, but the lengthy action set pieces stand out enough to make the entire film a drastic improvement over the original “Twister” so much so that viewers should take a chance with “Twisters” on the big screen.
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