Ok, before we take this movie for a spin, can I take a quick poll? Was there actually a call for a legacy sequel to Jan De Bont’s fun and blustery blockbuster that somehow fashioned a big screen thrill-ride out of the concept of a shit load of wind?
I can assure you that I’m not taking a cheap pop, but surely even the most ardent lover of this neo-disaster movie must have been as stunned as a flying cow when the news was announced that an extraordinarily belated sequel was suddenly blowing in.
And thus we get Twisters, a sort-of sequel that follows very much in the same style as that other “add an S” follow up, Aliens, that updates the premise slightly with newer tech and bigger stakes as our windswept protagonists look to not just study tornadoes, but to “tame” one entirely.
So hop into the nearest pickup, pop on a cowboy hat and prepare to weather some weather as we go storm chasing one more time…
In her younger days, Kate Cooper was something of a bright spark who had an unerring gift for being able to predict weather changes virtually on gut instinct and her talent for science got her all revved up to perform an ambitious experiment to utilise various compounds to actually forcefully dissipate (or tame) a tornado prematurely. However, after disaster strikes her and her group of friends, we pick up with her four years later living in New York having left the plains of Oklahoma (and hopefully her trauma) far behind her.
However, her past catches up with her in the shape of Javi, the only one of her friends who managed to survive that terrible day, who approaches her out of the blue with an intriguing prospect. You see, Javi’s gotten hold of some funky new sensors from the military, and after setting up his own slick new company he hopes to use Kate’s gift for predicting storms to get vastly detailed new data. However, after a first couple of tries, it seems that our heroine still carries a lot of guilt over what transpired four years ago that essentially turned her friends into meat kites.
Enter Tyler Owens, a cowboy hat wearin’, tornado chasin’, YouTube sensation known as the “Tornado Wranger” who is prone to driving his tricked out truck into twisters in order to shoot fireworks up into them for clicks. While there’s an undeniable attraction and the two share a deep kinship in their respect for the skies, Kate initially writes Tyler off as just another adrenaline freak, while, in continuing rom-com style, Tyler assumes Kate is just another city girl out of her depth.
And yet, while Oklahoma witnesses a previously unheard of spate of tornados, the slowly warm to one another – which is probably for the best considering Javi’s business isn’t quite and honorable as it seems.
Aside from the fact that I’m probably going to be assaulting you all with as many wind based puns as I can, its probably best to know going in that Twisters is probably the least legacy serving legacy sequel I’ve ever seen, so anyone harbouring any hopes of a random cameo from Helen Hunt or anything should probably adjust their expectations. Oh, Lee Issac Chung’s spiritual follow up is certainly set in the same world, what with a rusted Dorothy unit from the first film fully on screen from the first scene and the occasional resurrection of some lines of dialogue such as “I’m not back.”, but if I had to line it up with that other Amblin revival – Jurassic Park – then it’s probably more Jurassic World than Dominion. Basically what that means is an entirely brand new cast and souped up tornados, but once Twisters manages to get its gust up, it strangely ends up being the most un-blockbustery blockbuster of the year (or should that be blockbluster).
Anyone familiar with Chung’s filmography prior to this will note that the director usually focuses on smaller, intamate, more character based fare that usually don’t have cars literally flying through the frame at any given moment, but remarkably, he manages to bring thing sensibility to the Hollywood big time as the story concerning the small, squishy humans ends up being far more compelling than the natural disasters that keep blowing in without an invitation. It also helps that he’s secured enough talent in front of the camera to help put that off.
The original Twister saw the love story between Helen Hunt and the late, great Bill Paxton have to occur while trying to bellow over 80mph winds, and thus, at times, felt a bit staged, however, the relationship between the three leads here, is given far more room to take a breath and is at times legitimately thoughtful and even charming – something that often gets overlooked when the budget reaches a certain level. Daisy Edgar-Jones gives Kate believable vulnerability while never playing her gift for storm spotting off as some sort of unearned superpower and it’s too the actresses credit that she makes gazing at the clouds with wonder or fiddling with dandelions genuinely beguiling instead of hokey. Similarly, Anthony Ramos does impressively well with the more thankless point of the love triangle as he dangerously veers towards the corporate side of storm chasing – but with no surprise whatsoever, it’s once again Glen Powell who mosies on in in a pair of clanking cowboy boots and breezes off with the entire movie.
Powell is quickly establishing himself as one of the more watchable “new” talents to come along and while it probably was tempting to play up the “yeehaw” attitude of the character, Powell brings nuance and depth to a guy who, in any other movie, who probably be a walking caricature – and he’s certainly going all out to make science fuckable, that’s for sure.
However, while the character stuff is top-notch and Twisters is technically a better film than its predecessor for it, one place where the movie stumbles is, oddly, in its scenes of blustery destruction. While the action scenes back in 1996 were laid out almost as if they were a ride at Universal Studios and framed the twisters almost as roaring, sentient Kaiju, the new film takes a more relaxed approach. They certainly look impressive and there’s no argument that a fire twister looks bitchin’ as hell, but you don’t really feel like anyone is particularly in danger until the end and the sequences are lacking the visual exclamation points of a flying cow or plummeting farm vehicles that gave De Bont’s action such weight.
In a year where the box office has taken something of a buffering, it’ll be interesting to see whether audiences takes to a large scale distaster movie that give way more of a shit about actual humans and their genuine emotions than pixelated bombast, but I found it legitimately intriguing, if a little low stakes. The characters don’t even claim to want to “kill” a twister, only “tame” it, which pretty much tells you the tact the film takes.
Still big, still full of bluster, but this latest whirl maybe a bit too breezy for those hoping for the rollercoaster tone of the original.
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