Almost thirty years ago Director Jan de Bont (Speed) brought one of nature's deadliest forces, tornadoes, to the big screen. Warner Bros. Twister, starring Helen Hunt (As Good As It Gets) and Bill Paxton (True Lies) told the story of a group of storm chasers and their scientific endeavors to learn more about tornadoes to create better warning systems. Liked by critics and loved by audiences, the movie became a bona fide box office success and made people look at cows in a whole new light. This week, a highly anticipated, stand-alone sequel, Twisters comes to theaters nationwide.
While in graduate school Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar Jones; Where the Crawdads Sing) devised a substance that theoretically could suffocate a tornado stopping it before it could do any damage. However, while testing the material, it failed to collapse the tornado and the category EF5 event claimed the lives of three of her friends and stopped Kate from storm chasing. Five years later, the only other survivor of the group, Javi (Anthony Ramos; A Star is Born) comes to visit Kate in New York City and asks her to help him chase tornadoes so he can collect data with the new equipment he has.
After initially turning Javi down, Kate joins him in the field for a week. At the meeting location, Kate is introduced to Tyler Owens (Glen Powell; Anyone But You), a social media sensation who records him and his team storm chasing. With a huge following, Tyler is cocky and obnoxious and, while Kate hates him at first, they eventually end up working together to modify Kate's initial design with the hope of dissipating the funnel.
Director Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) brings together a solid cast and creates some intense scenes but he also misses on a few marks. First, he intercuts some real weather scenes into the film with clouds moving at an accelerated pace to give a sense of realism. However, he does more damage than good as the real-life weather is a stark contrast to the computer-generated ones. He also doesn't create the kind of tension de Bont did with Twister or perhaps, because we have seen it before, it doesn't create as much tension as it did the first time around. The CGI was pretty good but when the tornado takes out some oil tanks, the fire that ensues looks sort of fake.
The incorporation of social media this time around will appeal to younger audiences but it also makes Tyler come off looking a bit bad. While Powell's smile is disarming it can come across as plastic at times which doesn't make him look any less like a smug tool. Edgar-Jones does a very good job and I can see for several reasons why she was chosen. I don't think Ramos was well cast and that mistake pulled me out of the film more than once.
The plot was ok for the most part. It certainly wasn't as cohesive as the 1996 version and it didn't do much of anything to swerve away from the tried and true, which may be part of the problem. Having loved Twister, I got the impression that this repeat was just more of the same and it wasn't as exciting as the first time around. Had Kate's parents been Jo and Bill, it would have tied the second film to the first and would have added a whole other layer to the story and the legacy as a whole but I guess Hunt turned the producers down which is a shame. It is obvious how the story was originally meant to be but it had to pivot without Hunt's involvement.
For younger generations, who may not have seen Twister, Twisters is a wild ride and I can imagine how they feel seeing for the first time, just as I did when I first watched Twister. However, for those of us who saw the 1996 movie, there is a sense of "been there, done that".
Grade: C
