Twisters
The hard thing about a “legacy sequel” or reboot to a film like Jan De Bont’s “Twister” is that, as with any legacy sequel or reboot, you’re going to be immediately judged in comparison to the original. If you try too hard to replicate the elements of the original, and it doesn’t work, you’re putting your film at a disadvantage; if you deviate too much, audiences who loved the original won’t feel the hit of nostalgia you’re banking on. There are so many variations of weather-based disaster films as it is that a movie like “Twisters” might have been best served divesting itself from the original film, and just doing its own thing; measured aside the earlier film, it falls short.
One of the exceptional things about “Twister” is that the right people both in front of, and behind the camera, were in place to make every cliched moment work. De Bont was following up an all-time action film in “Speed,” Steven Spielberg and Michael Crichton had just made a high-concept disasterpiece with “Jurassic Park,” CGI effects had come a long way in a few years, and the dynamic between Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt as exes whose rush for storm chasing brings them back together was perfection, regardless of how silly everything around them was. Though he’s done other work in the past few years, “Twisters” is director Lee Isaac Chung’s first feature since his Oscar-winning “Minari,” and given that film’s quiet, painful center, this feels like a weird left turn for him. That said, I still enjoyed what he and screenwriter Mark L. Smith came up with.
As with “Twister,” we get a glimpse of our main character, Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), in an earlier experience with a violent tornado. She is working on research in hopes of neutralizing tornados, but despite her best intentions, the experiment backfires, and three friends and colleagues- including her boyfriend- die. Cut to five years later, and she is working in New York tracking the weather from the safe confines of an office. The only other person from that experiment to survive, Javi (Anthony Ramos), comes to try and get Kate back in the game; he has new equipment that might allow them to get the best possible model of a tornado to date. She gives him a week, which also includes plenty of other storm chasers- including cocky YouTuber Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and his crew. Let the chase begin.
Rather than being about the reconnection of former lovers, the main tension in “Twisters” is in how different people pursue tornados, why they do it, and what interests they serve. It’s an interesting dynamic, but unfortunately, it also takes away a lot of the personal tensions that made the original film so easily watchable. Even when we see the backstory between Kate and Javi, we do not feel any tensions between them except for when his investors come into play, and she questions his motives. Tyler is a new person in their lives, who seems to be a thrill junkie, but actually has a strong mind for the science. That’s interesting, and as he and Kate get closer, the sparks start to ignite. Unfortunately, there are not strong stakes in the race between the teams that really help anchor the film at the start, and it’s a series of set pieces that captures the same structure of the original film, but none of the tension. That is not helped by the fact that Chung is not as adept with giving this film a visceral feel in its action. When it does center in on character, I think it had a lot of strong moments, but the overall film feels out of balance with the spectacle and story not really meshing successfully.
There are moments in “Twisters” that give us that emotional hook De Bont’s film did, however. The dynamic that takes hold between Kate and Tyler, and how it shifts. The opening scene helps us understand Kate a lot, and how she is on to something with her ideas, even if her naivete puts her in over her head. Seeing changes in some of the key characters as circumstances change is valuable to how the story plays out. And ultimately, I think Chung does right by the character arcs, even if his action is less than compelling. “Twisters” was enjoyable, but it didn’t have the right overall alchemy to become a new classic in a well-worn genre.
