“Why would anyone do this?” It’s a question I asked myself somewhere in the second hour of Twisters, the latest legacy sequel to storm through multiplexes. It’s a reasonable question, I think, and one that could’ve just as easily been asked throughout its predecessor. There are reasons one might chase a tornado, of course—science, bravado, public good—but none seem good enough to justify the whole twister thing. These are nothing but pure thrill-seekers, hedonists masquerading as do-gooders who want nothing more than to spike their adrenaline to untold levels and possibly make out afterwards. Just as I’m processing all this overly harsh vitriol a new twister starts to form above the film’s vast Oklahoma plains, and for the next 15 minutes I shut my brain off, grip my seat, and imagine nothing more exhilarating and terrifying than diving headlong into a tornado’s path. I am the problem.
Of course, as with any high, the crash can be rough, and that’s certainly the case with Twisters. Following a similar trajectory as the 1996 original, the film makes sure to frontload a pretty gnarly tornado sequence, setting the stakes for our science-wonk hero Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones). It’s the first of many opportunities director Lee Isaac Chung gets to flex his set-piece muscles which, despite his background as an independent filmmaker (yes, he’s the Lee Isaac Chung who made Minari), are as toned and bursting as those of his leading man Glen Powell. The issues begin to form almost as the tornado finally subsides. Any movie of this kind—one built on massive action sequences—runs into the issue of how to make the dialogue stack up to trucks getting sucked up thousands of feet into the air. In this, Twisters suffer more than most.
The first portion of the film—which sees Kate reluctantly return to the field at the behest of Javi (Anthony Ramos) despite her obvious PTSD—relies on a lot of table setting, which Ramos and Edgar-Jones deliver with the energy of two people counting the minutes ’til they get to yell more exciting lines as hundred-mile-per-hour winds rush around them. Even as the story progresses and we get a better sense of how tornado science has both changed and stagnated since Twister, the time between the tornado sequences not only falls flat in comparison to the action but in simple plot mechanics. Edgar-Jones does little to liven up Kate’s trite trudge through trauma and finds only passing moments of chemistry with her many talented co-stars. Even speaking as someone who’s enjoyed Edgar-Jones’ acting in the past, it’s hard not to question whether the weight of this kind of broad summer blockbuster is where she’s best suited.
Any movie of this kind runs into the issue of how to make the dialogue stack up to trucks getting sucked up thousands of feet into the air. In this, Twisters suffer more than most.
This is put into even starker relief by those clearly poised for such a jump. When we first meet Powell’s Tyler, he’s all swagger—a cowboy hat of a man who purports not to chase tornadoes, but to wrangle them. At first glance, he and his ramshackle crew of tornado scoundrels (which includes Sasha Lane, Brandon Perea, and TV on the Radio frontman turned actor Tunde Adebimpe) are positioned in opposition to Kate, Javi, and their team of anonymous stuffed shirts. Soon, though, through charisma, a winning smile, and a bit more than meets the eye, Kate (and, by extension, the audience) is more than won over. So much so that it becomes frustrating to realize just how much time we wasted (about half the film) with the boring crew.
Even as Kate and Tyler’s burgeoning romance shares a similar issue in regard to clunky dialogue, Powell is able to sell it in a way that only a movie star really can, as charming while hooting and hollering at tornadoes as he is spilling pages of pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo. Powell, in short, does exactly what’s asked of him. In many ways, so does Twisters. As an experiential thrill ride, Chung and the special effects crew more than deliver the goods, even when the screenwriting and acting fall short. I still don’t know why anyone would do this, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a thrill out of watching them try.
