‘Twisters’ Puts A New Spin On A Classic: At The Movies With Kasey
When Twister came out in 1996, I was just a girl totally enamored by Helen Hunt’s hair and her aunt Meg’s mobiles. Since that summer, I have watched the classic disaster film countless times, most recently before heading to the theater to see the sequel-but-not-really, Twisters. The original film holds up beautifully, but in a time of increasing anxiety about the climate, I was curious what Twisters could add.
In the new film, Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her classmates (Kiernan Shipka, Daryl McCormack, and Nik Dodani) are trying to test a theory that they can destabilize a tornado, causing it to collapse and preventing death and destruction. After a tragic accident, Kate moves away from Oklahoma, but years later, her friend, Javi (Anthony Ramos), tracks her down, offering her a chance to test a new technology to help better model tornados and the damage they cause. She just has to help him find the twisters. She arrives back in Oklahoma around the same time as Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and his band of YouTubers, The Tornado Wranglers (Brandon Perea, Sasha Lane, Tunde Adebimpe, and Katy O’Brian), plus a reporter covering their storm chasing (Harry Hadden-Paton). Tyler and Kate strike up a feud, quickly tested by a dangerous outbreak of storms.
My initial impression of Twisters was that was overdone. The film references the Dorothy sensor pods from Twister but also adds a bunch of new bells and whistles. A prominent country music soundtrack accompanies many scenes. There are a ton of characters. There were also so many giant pickups, frequently reminding me that car accidents are, statistically, a much bigger threat than tornadoes are, whether your truck is equipped with rockets or not. As the story progressed, however, those elements started to click into place, and the characters I thought were peripheral started to evolve. The music is still stuck in my head. The technology started to feel less like Ghostbusters plus tornados. Once it got revved up, Twisters was thrilling, moving, and a lot of fun.
Great casting might be what makes Twisters come together so well. The characters develop in plausible ways, but the story happens at an accelerated speed that makes their relationships and epiphanies feel weirdly paced. There are a lot of genre tropes at work—the sensitive cowboy, the haunted heroine, the dorky tag-along journalist—but all these characters become lovable in the hands of such a charismatic cast. Glen Powell is an obvious choice for a sensitive cowboy, but Sasha Lane’s Lily won me over as a goofy, drone-driving YouTuber, and I did not see that coming. I can only imagine the actors had a great time working together to make the film, and that energy comes through in the finished product. Daisy Edgar Jones and Glen Powell have such strong chemistry that they paper over some of the more cliched elements of their dialogue. Sadly, Anthony Raomos’s Javi is one of the more two-dimensional characters and his performance does not overcome that weak writing.
Although I missed the relative simplicity of the original Twister’s plot, Twisters delivered more satisfying romantic comedy vibes than a lot of the romantic comedies I have seen recently. Furthermore, without explicitly commenting on climate change, it also touches on the growing severity of storms and the problems homeowners face, caught between an insurance market not set up to handle an increased volume of weather disasters and predatory real estate investors. The combination of a thoughtful approach to the subject matter, good character development, and a lot of fun make Twisters a satisfying new spin on a classic.
Twisters was written by Mark L. Smith and Joseph Kosinski based on characters created by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin. Lee Isaac Chung directed. It runs 122 minutes and is rated PG-13.
If you are gearing up to watch the Olympics, Netflix’s new documentary Simone Biles Rising spends two episodes examining the accomplished gymnast’s withdrawal from the 2020 Tokoyo Olympics and her mental and physical preparations for the 2024 Paris Olympics. Biles, widely considered the Greatest of All Time in her sport, has become a poster child for mental health, knowing when to take a break, and coming back better for it. The documentary gives audiences an inside look at what caused her to pull out of the Tokyo games and her work to stage a comeback.
From a filmmaking standpoint, Simone Biles Rising offers a straightforward approach familiar to this genre, but the content covers a lot of context around COVID, Larry Nassar’s abuse, the 2020 games, Biles’s personal life, and the various pressures she faces at the top of her sport. I am not especially interested in the Olympics (sorry) but still found the documentary riveting.
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