Twisters barely harnesses the gale force wind of 90s summer blockbusters
Stuff explodes, stuff catches on fire. There’s a lot of whooping and yee-hawing. It's also perplexingly anti-horny—truly a product of a stupid era in cinema.
Twisters. // Photo by Universal Pictures
Back in 1996, the Jan de Bont-directed storm chaser thriller Twister was a near-perfect representation of what a summer blockbuster in the 90s looked and felt like. It had a script co-written by Michael Crichton in the middle of a decade he dominated. It was a science thriller, in a decade defined by movies like Jurassic Park, Congo, Outbreak and Armageddon. The cast was full of Very 90s Stars—Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, an ascendant Philip Seymour Hoffman. It was big, bombastic and featured quirky, quip-spouting characters.
28 years later, Twisters, [the…reboot? Legacyquel?…] of de Bont’s movie, also represents what summer blockbusters in its era look and feel like, though the defining traits are less favorable. It’s big and loud, with a cast full of fresh-faced attractive people. It’s a retread of existing IP, and as such, is bogged down by convoluted plot points that don’t make a ton of sense—not that you’re supposed to be paying attention—and pull focus from the movie’s colorful cast of supporting characters.
Perhaps most tellingly, despite all those ads showing off Glen Powell walking in the rain in a tight white t-shirt, Twisters is aggressively anti-horny. This may be the thing that makes Lee Isaac Chung’s movie almost worthy of academic study as a product of its time. Movies don’t need to be horny to work, but the way increasing numbers of big-budget studio films choose to avoid horniness—by doing everything but the actual making out and/or making love—makes it conspicuous and weird.
All this to say, Twisters is fun, but Twisters is also a reminder of what’s changed in blockbuster filmmaking between the 90s and now. No longer do you get to feel a little smart, a little inspired and perhaps a little turned on watching a movie in a theater anymore. We are solidly (as we have been for upwards of a decade) in the era of turning your brain off completely the moment you plunk your butt in the seat.
Our heroine this time out is meteorologist Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones), who left storm chasing in Oklahoma for a life behind a computer screen in New York after a traumatic encounter with a tornado five years earlier. After she reconnects with Javi (Anthony Ramos), a fellow severe weather junkie and only other survivor of that momentous storm, Daisy goes back with him to Oklahoma to help his team of weather scientists try out some new data-gathering tech.
Twisters. // Photo by Universal Pictures
In Oklahoma, Kate meets Tyler Owens (Powell) and his ragtag team of “tornado wranglers” (Katy O’Brian, Tunde Adebimpe, Brandon Perea and Sasha Lane—their characters all have names, but you don’t need to know them), famous on YouTube for their live-feed tornado chasing. As a “once-in-a-generation” series of storms hit the state, Kate has to reconcile with the complicated reality of Javi’s approach to storm tracking and what his data is being used for. At the same time, hanging out in Tyler’s orbit helps her reconnect with her stormchaser roots and yearn to get in on the action again.
Twisters. // Photo by Universal Pictures
The action sequences of Twisters deliver in spades. There are, indeed, tornadoes, they wreak havoc, and a number of buildings and car windshields get smashed to smithereens. Stuff explodes, stuff catches on fire. There’s a lot of whooping and yee-hawing.
What’s missing is the interest in characters that helped make Twister the enduring nostalgic favorite that is today. Like Jo’s crew in the original movie, Tyler has plenty of cool, weird friends hanging around him. You’d be hard-pressed, however, to remember their names, or what their role on the team is, which is a real bummer considering the fun up-and-coming cast (and the frontman from your favorite band in college) that’s playing them. They’re mostly just a series of people wearing different kinds of headgear.
With an engaging ensemble no longer on the table, we’re left investing in the growing relationship between Powell’s Tyler and Edgar-Jones’ Kate, both so charming they could melt butter with their smiles. That might be enough, but while the movie clearly builds a romantic relationship between them, that relationship doesn’t go anywhere. It is, for some weird reason, happy to walk right up to the very edge of a payoff, complete with an airport chase.
Lest you think I’m saying Twisters is a bad movie, I’m not—it’s mostly a good time.
The things it’s choosing not to do, however, are wholly indicative of what Hollywood is doing with summer tentpole films right now. It’s entertaining enough, tries very hard to figure out what audiences want, and decides they want a big fat pile of nothing that special. You should feel free to see Twisters in a theater so you can yell at the tornadoes, because yelling at tornadoes is really fun. You should also feel free to drag Warner’s and Universal HARD, and in public, for not letting this be the movie it could’ve been.
