For all the destruction and flying cows, at its core, the 1996 blockbuster Twister was a love story. When the audience meets Jo (Helen Hunt) and Bill (Bill Paxton) their marriage is on the brink of divorce, but one of them is reluctant to sign the papers to make it official. Of course, over one final week, for Bill at least, of their beloved storm chasing, they rekindled the romance that was never fully blown out.
Almost three decades later, Twister’s blueprint for disaster event romance has been taken out of the freezer and served lukewarm on a plate of nostalgia. While Lee Issac Chung’s reboot Twisters features all the same ingredients, it somehow manages to have even less flavour than the original. This time around it is meteorologist and former storm chaser Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) who must inherit the mantal that Jo and Bill once carried.
As if spliced together with elements of the two leads from the original, Kate is both saddle with guilt of losing her friends while chasing a storm that turned into an F5, and posses the uncanny ability to see things in the weather that others cannot. Living in New York, Kate is pulled backed to her storm laden home of Oklahoma by her old friend Javi (Anthony Ramos), the only other survivor of the tragic event fiver years earlier. In possession of special military technology and working for a company backed by a wealthy donor, Javi believes that they might finally be able to make a 3D model of a live tornado, which could help detect the severity and save lives.
Agreeing to give Javi one week of her time, despite still not being over her PTSD, Kate’s presence does not immediately infuse excitement in his team of corporate storm chasers. The meteorologist is the least of their worries though, as the team finds themselves in competition with a ragtag storm chasing group head by the reckless Tyler Owens (Glen Powell). A Youtube sensation known for putting himself inside the tornados, Owens uses his bad boy with a catchphrase image to hock merchandise during his live streams.
Immediately intrigued by Kate, and realizing her gift when it comes to identifying storm patterns, Tyler tries his best to get close to this mysterious woman who is not afraid to knock his ego down a peg or two. Owens is a bit of an enigma himself as Kate slowly discovers. The Pretty Woman of storm chasers, it turns out this bad boy has a heart of gold and uses his online fame to raise funds to help those who have been impacted by the nature’s destruction.
In making Tyler and Kate the moral compass of the film, Twisters gets lost in the fog of its own cloudy sermonizing. The film condemns of the ills of profiting on the pains of others, but that is exactly what this blockbuster doing. Its thrills rely on making the devastation as grand and thrilling as possible.
To its credit, the film’s best moments arrive when Chung is conveying the sheer power of the tornadoes. Whether it is an early encounter with an F5 or an unexpected storm causing havoc at a rodeo, the tension in the action is felt. However, once the winds die down, there is nothing left for the film to construct a foundation on.
Recycling many of the same beats as the 1996 version, the film struggles to build a world outside of the storm of the day. Javi may plead for Kate to join his team because the storms “are coming after the ones we love”, but Chung never gives us insight into those bonds outside of Kate’s mother (Maura Tierney). Frankly, one barely learns anything about the members of either Tyler or Javi’s teams outside of the obvious (e.g. woman who control drones, corporate dude that follows the rules, etc.).
Couple this with copious amounts of underwritten dialogue and you have a film that is simply going through the motions. Fans of the original will no doubt have fun with the sense of nostalgia that the film evokes, but that is not enough to sustain the film. While it is nice to see Chung, coming off his award-winning drama Minari, get a chance to helm a blockbuster, his directorial voice is overshadowed by the spectacle of overturned trailers and damaged chicken coops.
While Minari offered an intimate exploration of the American dream through the lens of a Korean American family, Twisters captures the country’s stereotypical worst traits. It’s a boisterous spectacle that clings to past glory but, within all its swirling bluster, is rather hollow.
