Twisters’ Spins a New Storm with Glen Powell at the Eye
Dustin Chase
If you’re not chasing, you are not living, is the message “Twisters” spins off. It is not a sequel, prequel, or spinoff of the 1996 hit film starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. Just standalone summer fare, playing off and hoping for the box office results of “Twister.” Lee Isaac Chung, who directed the Oscar-winning “Minari,” is a unique choice to helm the film, widening his scope from a midwestern family drama to a midwestern disaster movie. “Twisters” benefits from new age technology, in the world of storm chasers in the script and how the film is made. It also works against the summer blockbuster hopeful as audiences are more intelligent. The script offers scientific and situational eye-rolls aplenty.
Chasing dreams and chasing storms, Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her friends were no match for an F5 tornado that hit near her hometown in Oklahoma. After the death and destruction, she left chasing to practice meteorology safely behind a desk in New York. Years later, with new funding and better ideas, one of those friends, Javi (Anthony Ramos), coaxes Kate back to Oklahoma. People still die due to a lack of understanding of tornadoes, and a once-in-a-generation tornado outbreak in the sooner state is the opportunity Javi needs to test new technology. While Javi’s team looks the professional part with tucked polos and oil money funding, the Tornado Wranglers, led by smarter-than-he-looks Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), are the hillbilly YouTube clickbait the world wants to see.
Glen Powell’s rising star power and cheesy charisma are more memorable than the tornados.
Glen Powell is the film’s not-so-secret weapon. He is so eager to be a movie star, and his energy drives much of the thrills and excitement. While Tom Cruise might be Powell’s inspiration after their work together on “Top Gun: Maverick,” the Texas native is all McConaughey in “Twisters.” If you saw Glen Powell’s versatility in Netflix’s “Hit Man,” you won’t be surprised that he wears a few different hats like Tyler Owens. He’s introduced as the villain, turns love interest and ultimate hero as we progress from one life-threatening situation to another. Each of “Twisters'” characters is modeled after those we saw in the mid-nineties film: the renegade, the nerd, the daredevil, and the one who has no business being there.
Chung packs the film with some admirable pulse-pounding scenes, twin twisters, and fire tornados, as shown in the trailer. Ticket buyers mostly get their money’s worth of edge-of-your-seat content but don’t produce the “you gotta see this” reaction Hunt and Paxton’s film got. It never feels as dangerous as “Twister.” Kate’s backstory, while devastating, isn’t as heart-tugging as Helen Hunt’s Dr. Jo Harding. It doesn’t help matters that Edgar-Jones (“Where the Crawdads Sing“) is highly miscast; whether it’s her performance or poor writing, Kate Carter reacts to every situation like a cliche instead of a real person. While “Twister” raised the bar on disaster films over twenty years ago, that bar evolved beyond what “Twisters” is using as a standard. A movie like “The Impossible” proved you could have both heart attack-inducing disaster sequences, Oscar-worthy performances, and artistic integrity all in one.