Powell’s charm almost saves lackluster Twister follow up
Director Lee Isaac Chung, who garnered well deserved attention and a Best Director Oscar nomination for his affecting indie family drama Minari back in 2020, tries his hand at a big summer blockbuster with Twisters, a sequel of sorts to Twister, the box-office success that opened way back in 1996. Lee should stick to indie fare. Twisters is at best a serviceable piece of entertainment, and, at worst, an uninspired and unimaginative virtual reboot of the original.
I’m using the phrases “sequel of sorts” and “virtual reboot” because the relationship of Twisters to its nearly 30-year old source material is hard to pinpoint. The film contains brand new characters and is set in the present day, but has throwbacks both overt and subtle to the original film, including plot elements, story arcs, and even word-for-word lines of dialogue. If you saw the 1996 original and didn’t much care for it, you’ll feel the same way here – there’s no reason for you to see this retread. If you missed the earlier version and want to give this a go, you won’t be startled by its redundancies, but you also won’t be anything more than merely mildly amused.
Daisy Edgar-Jones (Where the Crawdads Sing) stars as Kate, an Oklahoma-bred weather aficionado and academic who suffers a PTSD-inducing tornado trauma as a grad student, much like Helen Hunt’s Jo did as a child in the first movie. Years later, now living in New York and working for the National Weather Service, Kate is sucked back in (pun intended) to tornado-chasing when her former colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos, In the Heights) tempts her with promising new research capabilities that could finally enable Kate’s dreams of a tornado warning system and a disruptor solution. Once back in Oklahoma, Kate and Javi and their team run into rival tornado seekers helmed by Tyler (Glen Powell, Top Gun: Maverick), an out-for-a-good-time, self-appointed “tornado wrangler” who seemingly cares more about social media hits than saving lives–or does he!?
What follows, of course, is nearly two hours of the two teams chasing, dodging, screaming, and alternatively avoiding or narrowly escaping tornados. These action scenes all follow the same pattern and become repetitive after the first two or three, with the exception of one that finds our heroes sheltering in an empty swimming pool, which is genuinely thrilling.
That this movie has cred goes without saying, so the fact it falls so flat is disappointing. Besides Lee at the reins, the screenplay was penned by Mark L. Smith, whose previous output includes The Revenant, one of the decade’s best action/survival films. Yet here, cliched banalities like, “The air feels heavy – – this isn’t good!” and “That’s impossible!” litter the script. And an early scene in which Kate earnestly declares, “Man, I love Oklahoma!” is not only cringeworthy, but also the most obvious way of foreshadowing that she and her pals are about to be in for a world of Sooner State hurt.
As Kate, Edgar-Jones, who was so heartbreaking in Normal People, lacks the vulnerability of that role. Here she seems to be phoning it in, half–heartedly attempting an Oklahoma accent that alternatively sounds like her normal British speaking voice, a southern belle, and a midwesterner from a Coen Brothers movie. Glen Powell fares better. At the advance screening I attended, the only real collective audience whoop came when Powell strides confidently across the screen in his jeans, fitted white t-shirt and cowboy hat. Remember when you first saw Harrison Ford as Han Solo in the original Star Wars? Powell exudes that type of sexy-rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold energy.
Country music star Lainey Wilson composed a new original song titled “Out of Oklahoma” specifically for this film. But by the time it starts blaring, you’ll be ready to be Out of the Theater. “Can’t take the home out of Oklahoma,” Lainey sings, in what I guess is supposed to be creative word play. What you can take, however, is your movie ticket money to a different movie.
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Twisters is in theaters now.
