Twisters
★ ★ ★ ½
It’s been nearly 30 years since the movie ‘Twister’ hit the big screen to mixed reviews from both critics and audiences alike. Still, it was a box office success, and the second-highest grossing film of 1996, just $60 million behind ‘Independence Day.’
‘Twisters’ is the kind of film that gets away with making up its own science to serve the story and give its characters something important to do. It’s loud, filled with the fictional fury of Mother Nature, and gosh darn it, a lot of fun to watch.
Glen Powell saves Sasha Lane from a tornado
© 2024 Universal Pictures
This is a sequel in name only, as the only thing that connects these two films together is a piece of tech from the original with a continued name and number sequence – a large electronic barrel that houses several sensors designed to be released inside a tornado when one crosses its path. The tech in the last film was called “Dorothy IV.” Here, we have an identical looking “Dorothy V” as the only real connection to the story in the first film.
Twisters begins with a group of storm-chasing college students about to hunt down a developing cell in hopes of intercepting a tornado. Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) leads the team with her own set of tech barrels designed to release sodium polyacrylate, which according to the film, can absorb 300 times its volume in water. Kate believes the material, when the right amount is released into a funnel cloud, can stop a tornado in its tracks.
I’ll leave it to you to fact-check the science.
Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anthony Ramos & Glen Powell
© 2024 Universal Pictures
The intercept doesn’t go well as the team quickly discovers they’re in over their heads. What was supposed to be an EF1 turns out to be an EF5 (the most destructive tornadoes on Earth). The first film made us wait until the final tornado to see an EF5. Here, we get it right away.
Kate’s entire team is eventually sucked up by the tornado, except for Javi (Anthony Ramos) who hangs back at a safer distance to observe the data. Kate survives the tornado by hanging on to a metal railing under a highway overpass.
Five years later, Kate is working at the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) in New York City, analyzing weather patterns and advising on what threats warrant an alert warning.
She reconnects with Javi when he appears at her office with a proposal to join his new team of storm chasers. They haven’t seen each other since the EF5, and Javi is now a partner in Storm Par, a company testing technology that can scan and produce a 3D rendering of a tornado with the right placement of equipment. Like the team in the first film, the hope is that this data will help prevent destruction and loss of life.
Kate refuses to join Javi at first, still reeling at the loss of her colleagues five years earlier. A tornado levels an Oklahoma town overnight, and when Javi sends Kate footage, telling her they have a chance to prevent this kind of destruction, she agrees to join him.
Daisy Edgar-Jones drives toward a storm
© 2024 Universal Pictures
Kate is introduced to Javi’s Storm Par team in Oklahoma. His crew includes his business partner Scott (David Corenswet), who works closely with Marshall Riggs (David Born), a tycoon looking to capitalize on storm damage.
Rival celebrity storm chaser, and self-proclaimed “tornado wrangler,” Tyler Owens (Glen Powel) arrives in obnoxious fashion with his team: Boone (Brandon Perea), Dani (Katy O’Brian), Lily (Sasha Lane) and Dexter (Tunde Adebimpe). Tyler is also being shadowed by Ben (Harry Hadden-Paton), a British reporter trying to write a book on storm chasers.
Both teams compete against one another to be the first to intercept tornadoes with Tyler challenging Kate’s ability to predict where they will touch down. The more she’s challenged, the more confident Kate becomes.
Daisy Edgar-Jones & Glen Powell
© 2024 Universal Pictures
Eventually, Kate rediscovers her reasons for chasing storms and finds they align more with Tyler than Storm Par. Kate and Tyler eventually work together to see if Kate’s project from 5 years ago really can stop a tornado.
Like the first film, Twisters has a light-hearted approach and echoes some of the scenes and scenarios of its predecessor. When it does echo, it outshines the original in almost every way. The chemistry among the characters works well in this film with Edgar-Jones and Powel having better chemistry than Helen Hunt and the late Bill Paxton in the first film.
Despite its light-heartedness, the action might have you digging your fingernails into the theater chair armrest. The action scenes are very well choreographed and serve up a high level of tension. The delicate dance between light-hearted adventure and intense danger is expertly balanced.
The science in Twisters is certainly fiction, and that’s okay, because it’s a fun story with impressive visuals that suck us in with characters we really want to root for. It’s one of those big, dumb, good, old-fashioned summer blockbusters you’ll want to see in a theater with a buttery bucket of fresh popcorn.
Rated: PG-13 (Intense Action and Peril, Injury Images, Some Language)
Running Time: 2h 02m
Directed by: Lee Isaac Chung
Written by: Mark L. Smith
Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane
Action, Adventure, Mystery & Thriller
