Huge new movie in cinemas now delivers old-school thrills

Stephen Porzio

We’d advise seeing this on the largest screen possible.

The 1996 movie Twister has aged like a fine wine.

A special effects extravaganza about storm chasers researching tornados, it was seemingly developed as a way to try to replicate the success of Jurassic Park. It was co-written by Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton and executively produced by Steven Spielberg, who was initially going to direct the project before Speed director Jan de Bont signed on.

The strategy worked, with the film grossing over five times its budget at the box-office. That being said, critical and audience reception seemed mixed, perhaps due to high expectations given the extreme level of talent involved.

As often happens though with moderately received Hollywood movies from the ’90s, Twister benefitted from DVD sales and re-runs on TV – becoming a bit of a cult classic in the process, to the extent that we now have a sequel nearly 30 years later.

Titled Twisters, the follow-up has no connections character-wise to the original but instead tells another tale about storm chasers trying to better understand tornados by seeking them out in the US State of Oklahoma.

The main three characters are Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones, Normal People), a meteorologist who retired from storm chasing after several of her friends died in the field; Javi (Anthony Ramos, In the Heights), an old friend of Kate’s who has new military technology that may help monitor and disrupt twisters; and Tyler Owens (Glen Powell, Hit Man), a daredevil storm chaser who has attracted a large following online.

While Kate and Javi clash at first with Tyler as their crews find themselves competing to track the tornados, over the course of the story, they realise they may be able to work together for the greater good.

It should be noted that Twisters is a fair bit of a step-down from the original. The main strength of the 1996 film is the way it is essentially a non-stop chase movie but instead of vehicles pursuing other vehicles, they are speeding into the sublime awe-inspiring terror of twisters – one character equates their power to the “finger of God” and with good reason.

Even more impressive was that amidst this almost non-stop momentum, the filmmakers were able to sneak in a pretty compelling love triangle, between a former storm chaser (Bill Paxton), his storm-chasing ex-wife (Helen Hunt) and his new more conventional fiancée (Jami Gertz).

On top of this, the original had a great bench of supporting actors playing the members of the central storm chasing team like all-time great Philip Seymour Hoffman, future Tár director Todd Field and future Succession star Alan Ruck. These performers were hilarious, had great chemistry, were believable as these particular type of adrenaline seekers and made the work seem so fun.

Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell in Twisters

Somewhere in the screenplay – written by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) from a story by Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) – the sequel feels off-balance in these aspects. It seems to set-up a love triangle between the Kate, Javi and Tyler characters and then completely drops it.

There are too many scenes of characters in Twisters explaining rather wonky science to each other in between action set-pieces that slows the momentum down.

Director Lee Isaac Chung (best known for the intimate family drama Oscar-winner Minari) has actually assembled a very cool cast to play the members of Tyler’s storm chasing team – Brandon Perea (Nope), Katy O’Brian (Love Lies Bleeding), Sasha Lane (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and TV on the Radio singer Tunde Adebimpe – but only gives them snippets of screentime.

Despite all these complaints, however, we would still totally advise going to see Twisters for two main reasons – Glen Powell once again proving himself to be one of Hollywood’s brightest, charismatic and likeable leading men and the tornado scenes which are genuinely breathtaking.

From the taut opening sequence in which Kate’s tragic backstory is revealed to the gripping finale in which an F5 twister’s full power is unleashed, this sequel makes an argument that there is nothing more cinematic than people speeding towards high-power storms. It may be right in that respect.