From the producers of the Jurassic, Bourne and Indiana Jones series comes Twisters, a current-day chapter of the 1996 blockbuster, Twister. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, Twisters stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell as opposing forces who come together to try to predict, and possibly tame, the immense power of tornadoes. Edgar-Jones stars as Kate Cooper, a former storm chaser haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado during her college years who now studies storm patterns on screens safely in New York City. She is lured back to the open plains by her friend Javi ( Anthony Ramos) to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. There, she crosses paths with Tyler Owens (Powell), the charming and reckless social-media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures with his raucous crew, the more dangerous the better. As storm season intensifies, terrifying phenomena never seen before are unleashed, and Kate, Tyler and their competing teams find themselves squarely in the paths of multiple storm systems converging over central Oklahoma in the fight of their lives.
What We Thought:
I’m not of the generation that views Twister as a beloved classic. It’s a perfectly fine film, but I hadn’t seen it in well over 20 years. I rewatched it recently to prepare for Twisters and thought it was fine. As for Twisters, well it will probably take me 20 years to rewatch it. It’s also fine, but it’s just not my thing I guess.
My biggest issue with Twisters is that it’s dumb, but not dumb enough to be fun. I laughed at it a few times, but I wanted to laugh at it the entire movie. It takes itself too seriously at times despite Glen Powell’s entire character being a social media influencer type with a big smile and good looks. Yes he has much more of an education to him than you realize at first, but a tornado wrangler cowboy type should be more fun.
Daisy Edgar-Jones’ character being the straight laced one makes sense. A tornado changed her life drastically in the beginning and she moves to New York to be more of the city girl type. Her being scientific and the “straight man” to Powell’s wild card is expected, but also having Anthony Ramos in the mix skews the double act dynamic. Twister had Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton with a supporting cast, why Twisters added a third lead doesn’t make sense to me.
I guess because Twisters pretty much stole the entire story from Twister they needed something new (a third lead) to be different, but it didn’t work. There needed to be more changes to make it feel like a different movie. Twister had two teams, one the ragtag group, the other with all the new tech and science. Twisters has two teams, one the ragtag group, the other with all the new tech and science. Twister had a will they/won’t they love story (Will former lovers Hunt and Paxton reconnect?). Twisters has a will they/won’t they love story with Edgar-Jones and Powell. Twister had a flying cow caught in a tornado. Twisters has a chicken caught in a tornado. If you are of the generation that loves Twister you will eat up Twisters.
I will say the biggest positive of the movie is that it never mentions climate change. They could have very easily beaten you over the head about climate change causing the tornados and the effect man has on Earth. It would have been completely hypocritical to do that considering Twister has monster weather as well and that movie is almost 30 years old. I actually respect the filmmakers for not going the easy route and pandering to an audience and beating you to death with a message.
I’m clearly not the audience for Twisters. Other people around me thought it was fun, but I didn’t think much of it. It’s heavy on the CGI and somehow looks worse in that aspect compared to the first film from three decades ago. It feels more like a rethread or outright remake (let’s throw things into the tornado to capture data to see if we can stop it) than the legacy sequel I was expecting. I do think it will be a surprising box office hit because generations have grown up thinking Twister is a classic and that crowd will most likely show up to the theater for it. By the end of the year I’ll forget it even came out in 2024.
TWISTERS – In Theaters July 19
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The Nerds Templar 