Twisters (Chung, 2024)

Written by Tom Augustine.

What is the special sauce that makes one reboot more viable at the box office than another? In the early 2010s, reboots were all the fashion – we got a Total Recall reboot, and a Fright Night reboot. Remember The Day the Earth Stood Still, or Footloose, or The Karate Kid, or Red Dawn? At least a few of the original versions of these are surely remembered more fondly than Twister, the enjoyable Jan De Bont film with Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt at the helm, whose most lasting image is one of a janky CGI cow caught in the middle of a tornado. Hardly a film gasping for another round in cinemas – and yet, much like Top Gun Maverick, when trailers for the film started landing in cinemas, complete with that same, very nineties font type, the excitement was palpable. It doesn’t feel like it’s just timing – though that is certainly a factor – some dormant franchises just seem more primed for a modern-day take, as though the original, beloved as it was, didn’t quite scratch the itch entirely in the cultural consciousness. Maybe it’s just that the appearance and likely success of Twisters feels like a promising indicator of a shift in audience tastes, back to (somewhat) original storytelling unburdened by franchise expectations.

That optimism is tempered slightly by the presence of its director Lee Isaac Chung, the vision behind the quietly accomplished, Oscar-nominated Minari, which reminds us that all is not perfect in the Hollywood system as yet. Much like Greta Gerwig at the helm of Barbie, or Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins directing the next live action Lion King movie (god help us), these mature, emerging auteurs are shackled to big blockbuster fare that doesn’t always benefit from their more artistically refined presence. The original director of Twister, Jan de Bont, was a remarkable action helmsman, the man who brought us Speed, and knew the formula that was needed for high-calorie, high-corn multiplex thrills. Jan de Bont likely wouldn’t be the man you’d want making a Moonlight or Minari, but the same in opposite could probably be said of Twister, which makes Chung’s presence here symbolic of a strange symptom of modern moviemaking, and why Twisters, for all that there is to enjoy here, often feels a little lacking in voltage when the time comes for its moments of bombastic destruction. Where Chung excels, as shown in Minari, is in character and the detail of Americana, which bleeds through here wonderfully. Whether it’s worth the trade-off is up for debate.

Replacing the original’s Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt are Glen Powell (Hit Man, Top Gun Maverick) and Daisy Edgar Jones (TV’s Normal People, Where the Crawdads Sing), whose Austen-adjacent hate-em-til-you-love-em romance serves as the highlight of Twisters. Edgar-Jones is Kate, a meteorologist whose storm-chasing days end in college after a tragedy takes the lives of several of her scientist friends. She’s lured back into the game by a former colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos) with the promise of being able to use a groundbreaking new tracking system that may be able to predict the path of tornadoes in the midwest. When she arrives in Oklahoma in the middle of tornado season, she crosses paths with Tyler Owens (Powell) a Youtube celebrity storm chaser known for his high-risk antics. The two opposing forces – one a group of buttoned-up scientists, the other a decidedly ragtag group of working class hobbyists – find themselves bound together as the storm of the century looms over the midwest, sowing destruction wherever it goes. 

A refreshing reboot of the nineties summer hit, Twisters carries over enough of what made the original film such an enjoyable, low-investment thrill ride. Though lacking comparatively in pure adrenaline, by utilising a strong cast of promising up-and-comers as well as Minari director Lee Isaac Chung, it’s the rare retread that feels fully fueled for blockbuster success.

Credit where it’s due – Twisters isn’t afraid to get a bit ridiculous, an essential element to any summer blockbuster. There’s talk of ‘disrupting’ or ‘killing’ a tornado; Owens’ truck comes equipped with giant screws that dig into the earth so that the vehicle can sit in the middle of a tornado; many of the titular twisters seem to genuinely be stalking our heroes across the countryside – all good things. Nothing quite meets the pure galaxy-brained genius of the original’s flying cows, but then, what could? There’s also something to be said about watching a giant blockbuster filled with what amounts to a motley crew of everyday folks. Like the original Twister, whose supporting cast burst at the seams with the character actors of tomorrow (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cary Elwes, Alan Ruck, Jeremy Davies, Patrick Fischler, even future Tár director Todd Field), so too does Chung’s team have an eye for filling the background with exceptionally promising young talent. Not only Edgar-Jones, Powell and Ramos (of In the Heights), but Brandon Perea (a standout in Jordan Peele’s Nope), Sasha Lane (American Honey), Daryl McCormack (Good Luck to You, Leo Grande), Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men, Longlegs), Katy O’Brien (Love Lies Bleeding) and even the new Superman, David Corenswet. All are great performers on the cusp, all get at least one excellent moment in Twisters. It’s a delightful assembly that reminds us of the wealth of talent Hollywood has waiting in the wings. 

All the while, Chung’s direction, which is perhaps understandably slower and more methodical than de Bont’s, retools the structure of the original Twister to create something a little larger in scale, jettisoning much of the seat-of-your-pants intensity of the original for a deeper dive into the headspace of his two leads. Powell, on a fast-track to superstardom, is reliably strong here, all swagger and charm. He doesn’t necessarily stray out of his comfort zone, but then, he doesn’t really need to either. Edgar-Jones, a likeable enough but somewhat vanilla actress, works hard to imbue her Kate with a nerdy charm. It comes to life when she’s bouncing off Powell’s laconic confidence, but like her last star-vehicle, Where the Crawdads Sing, we’re left wanting a little more danger, a little less calculated emotion. She’s an It Girl still in search of her ‘It’. The best way to experience Twisters, naturally, is in a big multiplex theatre, where the booming sound-design can immerse you almost completely. It’s a film that’s reliable entertainment for a couple of hours, and maybe that’s all it needs to be. It does feel odd, though, that a film so concerned with wild unpredictable weather coasts by so easily, as though there ain’t a cloud in the sky.

Twisters is in cinemas now.

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