Twisters (2024)

Twisters-(2024)
Twisters (2024)

There is something quite evocative about the film “Twister” that makes one wish for an adventurous outdoor landscape. The thrilling nature of this 1996 film showcases people chasing and running away from the tornadoes, which as a kid you would hope someday to see. Tornadoes function in a distinct manner they exist, they wreak havoc, and then they collapse. There is a simplicity and childlike wonder in the very concept and the story that the film sets up.

All of this culminates in the best part of the film the people. It is safe to claim that the greatest success of Twister is portrayed in how human lives and emotions are shown along with the destruction of a tornado. Having classes in the mid-90s and an incredibly in-depth secondary cast, the film is a surefire winner. It’s necessary to highlight one essential idea and it’s simple: the film is viewed today by its overwhelming majority because it’s classic. In the diverse medium that is American television, it airs so frequently that you can turn it on at any random time and know exactly what’s going on. The plot starts with two tornado chasers having trouble in their married life that is all one needs to know!

Fast forward three decades, ‘Twisters’ bears the burden of being a sequel to ‘Twister’ wherever its premise stands. The reality of a no-villain story has been killed and buried long ago, lost to the superhero genre and franchise culture. Yes, There are fans of Twister, but the only thing connecting the 2 movies Twisters and Twister is the tornado.

And as for tornadoes, they do say a storm is always followed by a fall but does it matter when the storm is a tornado? There I was walking out of ‘Twisters’ and turning my phone on and boom a message popped up from my mom who surely knows all about blizzards but little about these death twisters. I was surprised to know that the National Weather Service was warning authorities about thunderstorms, flash flooding, and tornadoes.

Nobody ever mentions the term global warming in the film Twisters, but of all of us who have experienced being at the center of climatic calamities, everyone has been feeling the change. It is quite possibly an understatement to state that this hurricane season will be the worst one to date. Those who traveled over the Memorial Day weekend can vouch for the fact of how things have been lately what with the sheep herding viral turtles blasting you all over. Twisters now seems to have a mind of its own and many seem to follow the lead. Hence the title is plural.

It’s one thing to complain about inconvenience due to weather. But tornadoes and other extreme weather events can be life-shattering for the people who live through them which is what “Twisters” is more fascinated about than the last installment. This is about entire communities being wiped off from the face of the earth and people losing homes, lives, and means of livelihood because of vicious and erratic weather patterns. It is also about those, who benefit from that increased risk, be it speculators, social media influencers, or the likes. “Twisters” is marketed as an attempt to capture a wider audience, which is a difficult task. And this mostly succeeds.

The main character of “Twisters” is Kate Carter played by Daisy Edgar Jones, who is a meteorologist and, just like Helen Hunt’s character in the previous film, suffered a traumatic experience with a tornado some years ago. This time she is an employee at the National Weather Service located in New York City where she has some sort of an analogy for Edna in clouds. Kate was raised in Tornado Alley and she seems to have developed some spatial awareness as to how tornadoes operate in their direction when they will rise to strength and, most importantly, if there is the possibility of fighting back.

However, when her old friend Javi (Anthony Ramos) asks her to join him in chasing tornadoes for a new life-saving project, she postpones her immediate travel to the east and agrees to go towards the west. (Although Javi is from Florida, he is a college mate of Kate’s and has a personal interest in the impact of extreme weather on people.) Once in Oklahoma, Kate’s expectations regarding the American audience that had turned up to witness the start of the new and very active tornado season are somewhat more normal than what she finds clowns. Tornado chasers are in abundance. The most obnoxious and the most oblivious of them all is Tyler Owens (Glen Powell). He is part of a group of tornado chasers that incite tornadoes through fireworks and drone shooting to capture videos on YouTube. Tyler portrays himself as a ‘tornado wrangler’, hawks caps and t-shirts with his logo, and claims to be a cowboy. His first impression of Tyler made Kate detest him.

As you probably expect, “Twisters,” with a story from the director of Top Gun: Maverick, Joseph Kosinski, and text by Mark L. Smith, looks like it comes from the world of the 90’s blockbuster. (Kosinski himself was supposed to be a director of the Twister reboot). Most memorable for today’s audiences, however, is the action-adventure-disaster premise, whereby ordinary people strive to do extraordinary things hoping to defeat Mother Nature’s wrath. In many respects, however, that too is unsurprising.

That’s also an important part due to the creative input of Lee Isaac Chung, who previously worked on the acclaimed project “Minari” depicting the story of a Korean immigrant family and won six Academy Awards. There’s a significant difference in genre between “Minari” and “Twisters,” though they both depict people who know the American heartland and especially its terrible storms, people like Chung, raised in Arkansas. There could not be a better director for this material, whose focus is on the survivors yet retains all the excitement associated with the expedition.

That enjoyment is drawn from the other 2024 aspect of “Twisters.” Who else but Glen Powell who is the actor everyone seems to be talking about this year? No wonder. This is his big third picture within a year (the earlier one being the rom-com Any But You, which sounded like a box office winner just with new year’s onset, and Netflix’s Hit Man). There are times when Powell looks like he’s just enjoying himself, but at times throughout Twisters, it feels as though there’s a totally different person who is in a different movie. His tornado wrangler is a cross between a cowboy and a romance: He begins jerkish then winds up revealing he has a heart in there somewhere.

Compared to Powell, Edgar-Jones comes out as very bland in the sense that she is all-look and has no substance. There is not much chemistry to write home about the pair, which becomes even more apparent when Maura Tierney is introduced as Kate’s mother. (This said there is plenty of Ramos’s charisma shown even in his short presence). It can be said that Edgar-Jones acted her part far too cautiously and all that, and we are left forever focused on when Powell will next appear.

That mismatched relationship hurts “Twisters,” and as a result of that, the movie drags. It is pretty easy to envision a different type of actress playing the role of Kate one who perhaps has a better spark and comedic chops that could potentially make her bounce against Powell most significantly. But that does not imply that “Twisters” is a failure. It is packed with entertaining and at times comical set-piece moments and just enough threats to keep you alert.

It is worth noting, however, that there is more to it than that. The narrative is therefore about a monster whose origin is clear-cut but enigmatic and who we need a hero to vanquish, as one recent scene explains. In “Twister,” the storm was an entity that was always simply there, waiting to be chased after. The heroes hoped they could chase a storm and catch it, although they were not certain. In “Twisters,” the target is no longer to trace the course the monster will take, although that is what science has for the most part managed to resolve. The focus is, instead, to combat it, to fly it, to defang it. It is the fundamental point of the impossibility of such an undertaking that is being challenged.

And that is quite frightening and disturbing, especially if you are sitting down to enjoy the film and not receiving texts buffing tornado watches. But if we can’t solve the reason for climate change, can we instead go on to combat it? And if so, who benefits from it? In the future who will be able to exploit our weather systems, and who will the weather systems be able to exploit? The apocalyptic aspect of “Twisters” comes a lot closer than one might expect. A tornado as a monster now is a very informative metaphor. But the tornado itself, and the destruction it causes, is very, very real.

For More Movie Like Twisters Visit on 123Movies

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top