Twisters
Cinestudio
Hartford
August 27, 2024
This review contains spoilers.
I never saw Twister back in 1996, but that made me determined to not miss this cultural moment when the sequel Twisters came to Cinestudio.
Twisters tells the story of Kate (played by relative newcomer Daisy Edgar-Jones), a meteorologist haunted by her earlier life as a tornado chaser. She was attempting to discover a way to disperse tornadoes when a costly mistake cost the lives of three people on her crew, leaving her and fellow storm chaser Javi (Anthony Ramos) as the only survivors. Five years later, Javi convinces her to come work for a new company called StormPAR that’s gathering data on tornadoes.
That’s where she meets Tyler, played to great effect by Glen Powell. Tyler leads a team of rough-and-tumble “storm wranglers” as they call themselves, who in contrast to the methodical scientific approach of StormPAR, live stream their storm chasing shenanigans such as shooting fireworks up the funnel.
Powell is, as usual, a joy to watch on screen as the “stud with a heart of gold” archetype. In fact, Twisters is replete with tropes and cliches: the team of loose cannons who are more than they appear; the cold scientist more interested in data than lives; the shadowy real estate villain, etc. But that’s not a bad thing at all. People tend to forget that the reason something becomes a cliche is because it works, and Twisters puts all of its cliches to work in the service of a perfectly entertaining summer flick.
The one area where Twisters falls short is in properly defining the conflicts between its characters. The twisters are the star of the show, to be certain. The visual effects, and particularly the sound design, are phenomenal, and really convey the feeling that our heroes are fighting to survive against one of the most powerful natural forces on the planet. As the final twister of the film tears across rural Oklahoma, the film manages to kick the visual spectacle up a notch, which is a testament to the imagination and skill of the visual effects team.
But ultimately, even a movie like Twisters is about the people, and it’s not always entirely clear what motivates the characters into conflict. About halfway through the film the audience discovers that StormPAR aren’t the do-gooders they claim to be, as they’re working with a real estate magnate to…I’m not entirely sure honestly. He needs the data they’re collecting for something, but it’s never quite explained clearly, we just know that it’s bad. Javi says he’s working with them because he needs the money to help people, but again, how he’s going to help is left to the viewer’s imagination. There are a few exciting car chase scenes where StormPAR and Tyler’s team race to make it to the twister first, which introduces some conflict, but yet again, why does it matter who gets there first?
The lack of clarity especially harms the central relationship between Kate and Tyler though. Kate really hates Tyler at first, despite the fact that he clearly respects her skill and, aside from being a bit of a showboat, doesn’t seem to have any flaws. It’s revealed until an hour into the film’s brisk two hour runtime that Kate feels like Tyler is profiteering off of people’s suffering, because he sells storm wrangler merchandise in the wake of the destruction the storms leave behind. Of course it’s all a misunderstanding and Kate is immediately disabused of that idea, but her dislike of Tyler persists. Not to sound like a broken record, but why?
In a movie like this, chemistry between the male and female lead is essential, even if it’s not romantic. As I looked at the time while I was watching, I had to factor in the 30 minute wham-bam third act, so I found myself thinking: When are these two going to start getting along? The eventual development of their friendly relationship just didn’t have enough time to grow naturally, and by the time the big gesture between the two happened at the end, I felt unconvinced.
It’s a shame too, because Twisters is a good, fun movie that delivers exactly what it promises to. Yet it had the potential to be a great film, if only the human characters had been treated with as much care as the tornadoes they were chasing.
NEXT
Twisters is playing at Cinestudio through Aug. 29.
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