Twisters fits in the same category as Sony’s recent Jumanji movies in that it’s not a remake or reboot of the original, but is clearly inspired by it.  Aside from the title, it has few things in common with the first movie.  Like Bill Paxton’s character in Twister, Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones is a “human barometer”, able to read the weather without the help of instrumentation.  Then there is Dorthy, a suped-up trash can filled with little scientific devices intended to be sucked up into a tornado.  And it goes without saying that the movie has a number of tornadoes and related hijinks.  Otherwise, this entry in the “Twister Universe” is very much its own thing.  So why did the filmmakers decide to call it Twisters?  Studios have had a tough time lately convincing audiences to see original movies, so a touch of nostalgia goes a long way towards increasing awareness.  But another way, if the movie had been named Tornado Alley or The Tornado Wranglers I doubt it would have generated the same level of interest that it has.

As with the OG, Twisters kicks things off with a spectacular tragedy.  In the original, a young girl watches her father get pulled into a tornado and is forever mesmerized by their power.  This time around, Kate Carter watches helplessly as her team and boyfriend are all sucked into a tornado.  While watching a disheveled and bleeding Kate wander through the wreckage, I wondered if she realized that the same thing happened to Ethan Hunt in another blockbuster from 1996, Mission: Impossible.

Kate holds herself responsible for the death of her friends, so she does what any other Oaklahoman would do for punishment:  relocate to New York City.  Five years after the tragic incident she’s become a desk analyst for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (or NOAA) and has no interest in chasing tornadoes.  Now a blonde, Kate is still haunted by the death of her boyfriend and focuses exclusively on her job, until a former member of her team who survived shows up.

Javi (Anthony Ramos) asks Kate to join him in Tornado Alley.  The company he works for has developed devices that can record a 3-D image of a twister, provided they are placed at the right spots.  Javi appeals to Kate’s altruism by saying that the technology can help save lives.  Kate at first refuses but changes her mind when she sees a news item forecasting another devastating tornado season in the heartland.  She somehow gets a week off on very short notice and agrees to drive back home with Javi.

If Twisters had been about Kate seeking redemption, the movie would have worked fine as a straight drama with a side of disaster.  That approach, however, would have made for a somber movie-watching experience.  To balance out the serious elements of the story, Kate meets Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), a self-professed “tornado wrangler” whose YouTube channel has beacoup subscribers.  (I thought one of his crew said a million.)  Tyler also happens to be a major hunk.  He and his crew of yelping yahoos ride around in trucks searching for tornadoes to shoot fireworks into.  Other characters insist that Tyler was once an actual meteorologist, but I doubt anyone in that field would ever become this guy.

Kate and Tyler are the handsomest people in the movie by a mile and are quickly paired up.  Tyler acknowledges Kate’s gift for reading the weather through using dandelions, but Kate doesn’t trust his friendly overtures.  Before long, tornadoes appear.  “Twins!  We’ve got twins!” a member of the crew shouts.  Faced with choosing between two tornadoes, Tyler directs his truck caravan to the one on the left.  Kate, who can also interpret wind blowing across a wheat field, has her team bear right.  (I’m not making this up.)  When it comes time to set up the equipment, Kate drives Javi too far from the tornado for the device to work.  Kate is  understandably gun-shy about risking another friend’s life for scientific glory, but she’ll eventually get over it.

From here on out, Twisters switches awkwardly between serious reflections on tornadoes ravaging the heartland and a Hallmark Channel movie.  For example, after a tornado lands, Kate insists that she and Javi go to the town nearby to help out.  We see the devastation up close:  houses leveled, trees downed, debris everywhere, gobsmacked people wandering about.  Later, when one of Tyler’s people approaches Kate with food, Kate makes a dig about how Tyler is profiting off of disasters.  The lady sets her straight by saying that Tyler uses the money from tee shirts and coffee mug sales to provide food for the ravaged towns they encounter.  Kate makes a mental “huh, maybe this Tyler guy is more than he appears to be,” and we know that their courtship is definitely in play.

Tyler then tries to make nice by bringing Kate a pizza and taking her to the rodeo.  He confides that he used to ride bulls but gave it up to become a meteorologist.  (This is as far as we ever get into his backstory.)  Just when you think sparks will begin to fly, Kate notices a huge tornado out in the darkness.  The scene is an indirect callback to the original, when a twister ripped through a drive-in playing The Shining.  Where the original was scary fun, Twisters is scary sad in how it regularly shows us people being sucked off to their doom.  (This happened so many times I lost count.)  In the end, everything comes down to whether Kate’s science experiment can actually tame tornadoes.  I don’t want to give everything away but the movie does have a happy ending.

My problem with Twisters is that the movie is of two minds.  On the one hand, it’s a sympathetic disaster movie that wants to acknowledge the destruction of tornadoes and their impact on human lives respectfully.  On the other hand, the movie is also a timid rom-com about a pretty girl with a broken heart who learns to trust again with the help of a gregarious, handsome country boy.  Every time I aligned with one approach, the move would switch gears.  It’s a surf-and-turf experience where either dish is fine by itself but they never complement each  other.

As the leads, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell are undeniably attractive and spend the movie trying to out-handsome the other.  Powell makes for the perfect post-tobacco Marlboro Man, with his cowboy hat, razor stubble, dark jeans and conspicuous belt buckle.  Although his star-wattage is clearly on display in this movie, his character doesn’t have much depth.  Edgar-Jones, with her dark, troubled eyes, is perfectly cast as another damaged-yet-hopeful romantic (see: Where the Crawdads Sing).  The movie plays up her sex appeal through a series of shrinking tank tops.  The Duluth Trading Company would be wise to sign her up as the spokesperson for a new line of clothes named the “Twisters Collection for Everyday Wear”.  (Only she could get women interested in wearing cargo pants.)

Like the original movie, the special effects in Twisters are top notch.  There were some nice touches, like how trucks are outfitted with drills that anchor them to the ground when a tornado passes.  The movie also makes good use of a drone plane that should have had a bigger role in the action.  Overall, the movie has its moments but wasn’t as fun as it could have been.  It takes its subject matter way too seriously to be enjoyed in the same way that the original was a cinematic roller coaster ride.  Twisters works because Edgar-Jones and Powell have chemistry and are easy on the eyes, the special effects are solid and the movie’s heart is in the right place.  If anything, it makes me want to revisit the original again.  Mildly Recommended.

Analysis

I’m not sure why I remember the experience so well, but I saw Twister in 1996 by myself.  I’d seen other movies solo before (and since), but that moviegoing experience sticks out for whatever reason.  It was a Saturday evening showing, probably 8:00 PM or later.  Back then I usually went to the movies every weekend with my father.  I don’t remember why we didn’t see Twister together, but when I found myself bored and alone at my apartment on a Saturday night and decided to head out and see it.

The theater was packed and everyone enjoyed the movie from beginning to end.  Several parts  got huge laughs, like when the cows were flying through the air.  Also when Bill (Bill Paxton) and Jo (Helen Hunt) ran into a barn to escape a tornado and found it was filled with every sharp object imaginable.  Every one of Bill Paxton’s line readings killed.  This was his first leading role, which he’d earned after his run of Tombstone, True Lies and Apollo 13 made him a household name.  I knew Helen Hunt was in Mad About You, but I never watched the show so I had no idea how good of an actor she was.  Like Paxton, this was Hunt’s first leading role and she did well.

The supporting cast was so much fun in the movie.  Cary Elwes played the mustache-twirling corporate baddie.  Paxton’s crew included a murderer’s-row of excellent character actors, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck (Succession, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), Todd Field (future director), Joey Slotnick, Allan Sanders and Jeremy Davies.  Hoffman, a relative unknown at this point, looked like he was having a blast the entire time.  (Boogie Nights would come out the following year and would raise his profile significantly.)  As Bill’s fiance, I thought Jami Gertz was fine as the fish out of water character and never knew people hated her character until years later.

Getting back to the leads, a disaster movie like Twister works best with quirky actors heading the cast.  As the nearly-divorced couple at the center of the story, Paxton and Hunt had an easygoing chemistry and excellent comedic timing.  Twister may have been a disaster movie, but it also doubles as a comedy because of the interplay between Paxton and Hunt.  As two actors who never fit the mold of leading actors, they were a perfect fit for a movie that never took itself seriously.

What does all this have to do with Twisters?

When Universal Studios decided to use the name and concept of a highly successful blockbuster for a new movie, comparisons became inevitable.

As I mentioned above, Twisters was only inspired by Twister.  While the new one does share some DNA with the original, it’s very much its own movie–with one notable exception: it’s not as much fun.

This isn’t to say that director Lee Isaac Chung and screenwriter Joseph Kosinski have made a movie devoid of any fun, because there are moments of levity and romance throughout.  However, those moments were often at odds with the movie’s serious tone.  Given how the movie begins, it always felt odd whenever the movie dialed up the romantic angle.  Can a movie be embarrassed about what it’s about?  This one seems like it is.  Every time sparks begin to fly between Edgar-Jones and Powell, a tornado keeps their feelings at bay.  Much has been said that their characters don’t share a single kiss in the movie, even though a closing scene was shot that featured them doing precisely that.

According to the internet, executive producer Steven Spielberg gave director Chung a note to not include that closing kiss.  (You can read the cast interview that discusses it here.)  While I understand the reasoning behind the decision not to end on a romantic note, it comes off as a very conservative decision in hindsight.  Kate has presumably been single for five years and has been elbow to elbow with Powell throughout the movie.  Given how they look at each other, it seemed only natural that the two would finally kiss at the end.  Yes, a closing moment of passion would have been a cliche, but cliches are perfectly fine when used correctly.  Even Pullman and Hunt kissed at the end of the original.  Oh well, maybe the sequel will let us see Edgar Jones and Powell exchange more than a platonic handshake.

Considering how preoccupied the leads are with twisters and each other, the supporting cast should have been a source of comic relief.  For whatever reason, Twisters never allows the supporting cast to upstage the stars.  Other than Brandon Perea’s Boone shouting “Twins!”, none of the rest make an impact.  Sasha Lane’s Lily flies a drone, but I was more interested in the drone than her character.  The original had at least eight supporting characters revolving around Hunt’s Jo, and each one was memorable in their own way.  Tyler’s crew has a similar number but they all look the same and have nothing to do beyond shouting wahoo every once in a while.

Finally, Twisters is less fun than the original because it frequently dwells on the aftermath of the tornadoes.  At times it seems like Chung wants his movie to be as sobering as The Impossible, a movie I admired but would never describe as a fun thrill ride.  There’s an unwritten rule when it comes to disaster movies: revel in the spectacle, not the aftermath.  Movies like San Andreas and 2012 were enjoyable because they didn’t focus on the tragic side of the disasters.  Even in Twister, Jo’s mother magically survives when her house is leveled by a tornado.  I understand that Chung wanted to depict the victims of tornadoes respectfully, but this approach makes the movie more depressing than I was expecting.

One from the Heart(land)

Twisters is the most unabashedly country-flavored movie I’ve seen in a long time.  It’s filled with country songs, characters driving huge trucks, a scene set at a rodeo and characters wearing cowboy hats.  When Maura Tierney shows up as Kate’s mom, she’s a farmer with a herd of cows she manages all by herself.  Let this serve as a warning to all the city slickers from The North:  Twisters is Country.