Twisters
Warner Bros + Universal
The cinematic experience is something that needs to be treasured. Entering a dark auditorium, watching as the seats fill up with eager moviegoers, chuckling during the previews, and anticipating the beginning of the film: this is a ritual that is special precisely because it can happen only in a movie theater. At home, such excitement is lost. In the cinema, every emotion is heightened. Sure, the film you watch on the big screen may still work at home, but it will never hit as hard.
While this definitely applies to good films, it also applies to bad ones. Actually, watching a poorly written, messy film in the cinema will always be better than experiencing it at home: at least there are no easy ways to get distracted, and the giant images and loud sounds can lessen some of the negatives. Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung, is one such film, a sequel to a then-maligned but now-beloved disaster actioner that starred the late, great Bill Paxton and Philip Seymour Hoffman, plus the magnetic Helen Hunt.
Now that so-called legacy sequels are all the rage, it only makes sense for Universal Pictures to hire one of the stars of arguably the best legacy sequel of the 2020s. Glen Powell has proven to have the charisma of a true movie star, and he is perfectly cast as the leader of a team of stormchasers with a large YouTube following. Opposite him, there is Daisy Edgar-Jones, a meteorologist who, following devastating loss after chasing a tornado, is convinced by her former colleague (played by Anthony Ramos) to help his mobile tornado radar company with predicting where new twisters might form.
As a premise, it is as decent as they come: two teams with different work ethics and equipment are pitted against one another, and they will manage to put aside their differences and unite for a larger cause. However, the screenplay by Mark L. Smith seems content with just doing the bare minimum work in setting up character motivations and goals, as there is very little development that feels genuine or, let’s be honest, even present at all. The main focus of the story is on Edgar-Jones’ character, one that has very little personality or charm on paper, with the British actor doing the best she can to elevate what is on the page. Her growing friendship with Powell’s happy-go-lucky “Tornado Wrangler” lacks any of the chemistry that has been heavily featured in Twisters’ promotional campaign. There is no spark, no energy, no love between them, to the point that it is unclear whether they were badly miscast or if the director just did not care about this relationship.
One thing that Chung has been vocal about is not wanting Twisters to be “message-oriented”. While exposing a film’s message in a blunt, forced way is something to avoid, having a message per se is not something to avoid or be ashamed of, especially when working in the realm of blockbuster cinema. More importantly, when the film in question features an increase of deadly tornadoes that are destroying entire communities, with moguls and magnates profiting on the devastation by buying up the wasteland for pocket change, how could you not have a message? Why never explore the increased number of tornadoes? It is a surprisingly toothless, safe choice from the filmmaker that is ultimately present in every element of the production.
The scenes of destruction are fittingly grand and thrilling, primarily due to the perfect sound design that immerses viewers into the horror of being surrounded by flying debris. Yet, it is all in the service of nothing. The two heroes never really feel in danger, and none of the action sequences do something creative with the natural disaster at its centre (rather emblematic of this is a homage to the drive-in sequence in the original, which here features Whale’s Frankenstein with none of the visual uniqueness of 1996 original). Not only is every plot point deeply predictable, but all of the non-tornado scenes are very flat, wasting a really solid supporting cast that has nothing to do for the entire runtime (shoutout to Brandon Perea, Katy O’Brian, Harry Hadden-Paton, and Tunde Adebimpe, who all do the best they can in thankless, limited roles).
Twisters is a perfect showcase of the bad contemporary Hollywood blockbuster: a sexless (literally and metaphorically) linear progression of cheap thrills that work more due to overstimulation than any genuine emotion or passion for the characters. While it is a serviceable, mildly entertaining watch on the big screen, the more one thinks about it, the worse it gets. Due to its poor character work and dull politics, it is unlikely that Twisters will hold up in any way once it releases on video, while Jan de Bont’s original will continue to excite with its earnest silliness and memorable cast of characters.