Twisters
Nearly 30 years after the original film, Twisters begs to ask the question did we need more wild tornadoes and storm chasers on the big screen? The answer is a resounding yes. This movie is the movie of the summer.
The general premise echoes pieces of the original film. Daisey Edgar-Jones’ character, Kate, is a storm chaser and PhD student experimenting with ideas of how to dissipate a tornado once it has formed. Her crew of rag tag scientists made up of herself, Anthony Ramos, Kiernan Shipka and a couple others go out to face a twister themselves. With a phone call from Kate’s mother, they know they’ll get some good food after the storm and their experiment, reminding us of the original when they meet up at Jo’s aunt’s for barbecue. Everything is going well, that is until their small little twister picks up in power, becomes an EF5, and sucks up everybody but Edgar-Jones and Ramos’s characters. Now traumatized and permanently changed, Kate goes to New York to be involved with the weather behind the screens, no longer chasing. That is until Ramos’s character, Javi, arrives on her front door asking for her expertise in storm chasing as he attempts to gather more data on twisters with new technology.
Back in Oklahoma, Kate meets Glen Powell’s Tyler and his rag tag group of Tornado Wranglers who are streaming their storm chasing to YouTube. At first they appear to be the enemy team, similar to Cary Elwes in the original Twister, but even though that crew is more dangerous and seems to take unnecessary risks, it is revealed that this competitive crew does have a heart of gold. As Kate and Tyler keep running into each other, their mutual understanding and passion for meteorology is a magnetic force as they grow softer and softer to each other’s hardened exteriors. When it’s reveled that Javi’s main investor is in fact a big businessman, who is more interested in benefitting off of the tragedy of other people’s loss, Kate leaves him to join Tyler’s team and attempts to do what she originally planned, disrupt a tornado while it’s in the air.
The flip of the original setup, making our main characters the people who are in bed with the corporate evil, is a fun change from the original. And ultimately, treating Javi with the respect of a complicated figure instead of how Cary Elwes’s Jonas, who was a mustache twirling villain of the original, is far more compelling and interesting of a plot. With updated effects, the tornado sequences are truly harrowing. They are a marvel to watch that will both have you cheering with Glen Powell’s group as they shoot rockets into them, and also be utterly terrified and devastated when the characters are immediately struck by storms that appear to come out of nowhere as they attempt to find shelter from it.
Glen Powel and Daisey Edgar-Jones have undeniable chemistry, and I found myself entranced in their meteorology jargon that they spit at each other as this confounding alien form of love speak. It seems every time the two get together to discuss the sky they fall deeper in love, and even though we do not get a breathtaking kiss by the end of the film, I have never felt more sure of a cinematic couple than I do of these two. Anthony Ramos’s Javi is compelling as well, trying to help people and reconnect with his old friend, while being in the tricky predicament of also needing money to fun his big projects. As the third lead of the film, he does not shine as brightly as his costars, but he is not overshadowed by them either.
Fun appearances from Shipka, David Corenswet, Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane, Katy O-Brian and more, round out this cast. Even with limited screen time the supporting cast is written and designed in a way that makes them unique and fun to watch interact with the other characters.
A movie that many probably questioned why it needed to exist, Twisters asserts itself as the movie of the summer, and a movie with a great rewatchability. It deserves to be watched on the biggest screen possible to soak up all of the updated effects of the original, and while it carries some similar story beats, a main character traumatized by a wreck of a tornado, two competing groups of storm chasers, and the entirety of Oklahoma to drive through and observe, it is still original enough and endearing enough to stand alone.