In one of the most anticipated films of the summer, Twisters brought along high expectations to match its super high-profile movie star, Glen Powell, and I’m happy to say that not even an Oklahoma tornado could blow this man off the top of Hollywood’s mountain of stars.
Twisters is the stand-alone sequel to the 1996 disaster action hit, Twister. I use the term sequel loosely as there are not many connections to the original, except for the brief appearance of the ‘Dorothy’ data gathering rig that helps obtain information about a nearby tornado. I enjoy that there is no connection between the two, though, as I think films that try to connect films that way or haphazardly mention characters from the past tend to do a very poor job. This film stands on its own and is just a straightforward disaster film where a normal group of scientists and a social media star chase a record number of tornadoes ripping across the state of Oklahoma. There has been much talk about director, Lee Isaac Chung omitting the issue of climate change and not mentioning it at all during the film. There is much to be divided about in the real world, so his decision to keep it out was a good omission and welcomed escape.
‘Twisters’ Review
We jump right into the action as we follow Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a storm chaser along with her team that includes Javi (Anthony Ramos), Jeb (Daryl McCormack), Addy (Kiernan Shipka) and Praveen (Nik Dodani), as they chase a growing storm in the hopes to test Kate’s “Tornado Taming” prototype. There is a lot of technical jargon that you kind of just have to accept and go along with for the ride. I have to admit I was trying to follow along then I just gave up and it made for a much better experience. Don’t worry too much about your knowledge of the periodic table because, after about five minutes of set-up and meeting the team, we are off and running into the heart of a tornado. It amplifies the stakes right away and offers a brilliant stroke of directing that puts us right in the action. Soon enough, we are on the ground with the team as they try to outrun the tornado and take shelter under an overpass. It is at this moment that Kate is faced with the harsh reality of facing down a monster F5 tornado.
The visual and practical effects are fantastic. The way they meld the sheer awesomeness of something as massive as a tornado to the intermittent shaking of brackets on a theater seat. This is great filmmaking and the type of filmmaking that made me fall in love with movies. What I enjoyed about the storytelling aspect of this film is that it was simple. Tornadoes cause massive amounts of destruction and these scientists are trying to figure out a way to cut down on that. Does this matter to someone in New York or Los Angeles? No, but that’s the beauty of this story. It is hyper-focused on the people of Tornado Alley and they aren’t trying to save to world from aliens. It’s just normal people trying to make the world a better place and that works really well for me.
We’ve made it this far in the review and haven’t addressed the elephant in the room.
Glen Powell plays “Tornado Wrangler” Tyler Owens, a YouTube star who chases tornadoes with his swashbuckling band of renegades reminiscent of the original. He appears in his cloud of dust set to a soundtrack of Luke Combs. Tyler pops his head out of the truck cowboy hat and shades and you know instantly, the movie star has arrived. Every moment that Powell is on screen, I’m locked in.
He just has that thing that makes you gravitate towards him. This is his third released film this year (Anyone But You and Hit Man) and his charisma and charm make you want to see more of him. He is great in Twisters — asked to be mysterious while still presenting an ungodly amount of bravado, which he does very well. Edgar-Jones is a phenomenal young actress and the emotional switch she made going from her fun and voracious personality we see at the start of the film to the trauma she endures after the loss of some of her fellow storm chasers is incredible. She serves as the connective tissue and carries a sense of responsibility that keeps the film on track and in this regard, lets Powell cook.
Kate returns with Javi to chase a generational storm season and uses a new military-grade radar system to create a better picture to study tornadoes. How is that supposed to help us stop tornadoes? I don’t know, but she’s on board and back to Oklahoma, which looks fantastic, by the way. As a note to all cinematographers, if you can film on location, do it. The sweeping visuals of a wide and green Oklahoma look great when projected on an IMAX screen. Shot by cinematographer, Dan Mindel, you never think for a second that you are on a soundstage. In fact, they shot on location during Oklahoma’s tornado season and it shows up on screen with a beautiful but ominous grey sky throughout the film.
This film steps up the number of tornadoes we actually see on screen. This however doesn’t lessen the effect it has on the audience. You can point to a few different set pieces that I can see becoming all-timers, starting with the tornado during the rodeo, which was even more spectacular even after seeing it dozens of times before each movie screening. It was also a clear ode to the original where a tornado tore through a screening of The Shining with a flash of lightning depicting its oncoming doom behind Jack Nicholson’s sadistic axe scene. The pure fear you feel as a horse trailer comes crashing down above Tyler (Powell) and the fiery inferno the final tornado creates as it barrels through a natural gas plant is nothing short of awesome.
What really sold me on Twisters was the theater experience. You can get lost in the technical parts of the film but when that storm starts rumbling and the speakers get turned up to eleven, you feel it to your bones. There were many moments when the storm chasers were put in tight situations where I, for a moment, thought they weren’t going to make it and leaned forward in my chair. I held on to the armrest trying to last long enough until the storm passed. This is all you can ask from a summer blockbuster — a film that gives you an approachable plot, movie stars given the room to act and look awesome doing it and maybe make a good amount of money so that we can do it all again next summer.
— Written by VSiN’s Brian Ortega
