1 of 5 | Glenn Powell holds onto Sasha Lane in “Twisters.” Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures & Amblin Entertainment
LOS ANGELES, July 16 (UPI) — 1996’s Twister was a groundbreaking visual effects spectacle but not beloved for its plot or characters. Twisters, in theaters Friday, now follows 28 years of similar effects and has not improved its storytelling.
Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) introduces her joyful storm chasing friends as they attempt to launch barrels of sodium polyacrylate into a tornado in an attempt to dissipate the storm. Don’t get too attached to them because only Kate and Javi (Anthony Ramos) survive.
Five years later, Kate is working for the National Weather Service when Javi returns with a new project. His current team wants to place military-grade tracking equipment in the paths of Oklahoma tornados to create 3D models of the storms.
The actors in Twister movies bear the responsibility of shouting lines like “Go, go, go!” and saying just enough science to justify the catastrophic scenes. The backstories of Kate and Javi are so formulaic they make the divorce papers subplot of Twister look like Chinatown.
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Kate has lost her edge since she feels guilty for putting her friends in harm’s way years ago. Twisters gives her a redemption arc so perfunctory it’s hard to feel inspired.
Javi has a mysterious corporate sponsor with whom he has several secret meetings. By the time the sponsor’s true intentions are discovered, they are absurdly villainous. Yet it takes a minor screaming a mustache-twirling villain speech suddenly at the end to drive it home.
As Kate regains her storm-chasing fortitude with Javi’s team, they compete against Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and his team of “tornado wranglers.” The wranglers pull stunts like launching fireworks into tornados and film it for YouTube, so the film can also incorporate webcam footage of Tyler speaking to the camera.
Tyler is a charismatic rival, if not outright villain, and the only character with personality beyond their plot function. The film becomes a battle of science vs. reckless sport rather than science vs. nature, yet the film is not interested in exploring either dynamic in depth.
Kate continues Helen Hunt’s character’s motivation to use science to create warning systems for advancing tornadoes, taking it a bit further to possible prevention. That was a thin way to adapt nature into a three act structure in 1996 and Twisters‘ screenwriters felt little compunction to update it.
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Unfortunately, the storms in Twisters have less personality than the landmark sequences in the original. Now it’s just people running from wind, occasionally large objects drop near them and some get sucked away to their off-screen deaths.
There are no flying cows to distinguish the storms in Twisters.
Occasionally, the characters pause their efforts and stop to help victims of tornado disasters. It feels a little disingenuous when the film is disaster porn but purports to sincerely care for victims of catastrophe.
So Twisters is a faithful sequel in that it prioritizes spectacle over character and story just like its predecessor. Only now the spectacle isn’t what it used to be and the opportunity to improve was forsaken.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
