directed by Lee Isaac Chung
written by Mark L. Smith and Joseph Kosinski
I was big fan of the 1996 disaster-film Twister, starring Helen Hunt and the late, great Bill Paxton as estranged storm chasers Jo and Bill Harding. It was actually a pretty silly movie, with a paper-thin plot and visual effects that have not aged too well, but there was something about its storytelling, from the pacing, to the exposition about tornadoes to laypeople like me, to strong performances from nearly the whole cast that charmed my socks off. In particular, I loved the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman's wacky turn as dusty, a member of Bill and Jo's storm-chasing crew. I also remember that this was one of the first movies I ever saw in a THX-equipped movie theater, which was a big deal back in the 90s. In short my affection for this film prompted me to check out the sequel: Twisters.
It's a movie that, to be fair, does not seek to emulate the original film in any way, but an unfortunate consequence of that is, to my mind, at least, it does not replicate any of its charm.
When the film begins, Kate (Daisy Edgar Jones), her friend Javi (Anthony Ramos) and their crew of Oklahoma-based storm chasers are on a mission: to "tame" a tornado using several barrels of their chemical cocktail similar to what baby diapers use to absorb moisture. Unfortunately, the tornado taming chemicals don't work, and everyone in the crew except Kate and Javi suffers a horrific fate.
Years later, Kate is working a desk job detecting storms for a government agency from New York when Javi hits her up to go storm chasing out in the field one last time. Javi has gone into business chasing and studying storms, but his main financial backers, basically a real estate company don't exactly share his altruistic intentions when it comes to dealing with tornadoes. Also, his partner Scott (David Corenswet) is more interested in the money than the science, as well. Notably, nobody on Javi's crew has Kate's storm-detecting skills, which is why he looks her up, and for old times' sake, she agrees to help him out, and they both head out to where it all began: Oklahoma, where a slew of tornadoes appears to be taking place. Complicating things, though, are the presence of other storm-chasing glory hounds racing to the same spots and disrupting their efforts, including, most notably, the crew of YouTuber Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) who are more interesting in stunts like shooting rockets into tornadoes than actually studying them. Worst of all, out in the field for the first time since the catastrophe that took the lives of her crew, Kate loses her nerve.
As Kate continues chasing tornadoes with Javi and his corporate crew, she starts doing some soul-searching, especially when the tornadoes start tearing up towns in the area and both Javi's backers and Tyler's crew start showing what kind of people they really are. One group is only interested in buying up the land that's just been wrecked, while the other are actually giving out supplies.
After a verbal spat with Javi over what his people are doing, Kate asks herself: should she get back in the game, and finish what she started years ago, with her mission to tame tornadoes? This time, she may actually have an unlikely ally: Tyler. Under his glory-seeking veneer, Tyler is apparently a very gifted weather nerd, just like Kate, and he takes a keen interest in helping her (and in her). Together, they might be able to pull of the impossible, though they're running out of time.
The good news is that like Helen Hunt before her, Daisy Edgar Jones turns in a commendable performance as the lead. Her back story does have the air of cliche about it, but she sells it, along with her American accent, pretty darn well. She has an easygoing chemistry with Javi, her colleague with a bit of an unrequited attraction to her.
One of the bigger problems of the movie, though, is that while Glen Powell is a competent enough actor, his character was just awfully written, and worse, the chemistry between him and Edgar Jones just wasn't there. Virtually everything about their interaction, from their eyeroll-inducing "meet-cute" to her discovery of his "heart of gold" is ripped straight out of Hollywood's playbook of awful romantic cliches. Producer Steven Spielberg has openly admitted to having their one kiss cut from the movie, and quite frankly I couldn't agree more with the decision. It honestly grated on me how hard the film "shipped" these two.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the film's only problem. The ingredients were actually there for a worthwhile sequel; the plot was easy enough to follow, Kate and Javi were likable and played well by Edgar-Jones and Ramos, and the updated visual effects promised more spectacle than the first film did. However, uneven pacing, stilted dialogue and ineffective staging of the action sequences resulted in a film that failed to live up to its charming but already flawed predecessor.
Maybe I'm just too hung up on my nostalgia for the first film, but this one really didn't do anything for me.
6/10
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