‘This ain’t my first rodeo...’
There is a strong argument that instead of continuously plundering beloved IP, the shrewder option would be to revive something that has a little less lustre to it. If you make a new Alien movie, you’re wrestling with the legacy of an iconic franchise and all the baggage that comes with that. If you make a sequel to Twister, you just need to make sure that you can create something more interesting than a cow flying through the air…
Unlike Twister, this film has an actual plot. Essentially, competing storm chasers race around Oklahoma trying to catch the next big tornado. Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a former storm chaser who comes out of retirement for one last job (following a previous trauma – classic action movie stuff), her former accomplice Javi (Anthony Ramos) has more nefarious financial reasons to catch the twister and hurricane influencer Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) only wants to sell t-shirts and listen to terrible country music – or so it seems.
A simple plot then but a rewarding one. Edgar-Jones and particularly Powell make it easy for us to care about their characters with the latter confirming his status as a bona fide movie star (unsurprising as he is being mentored by Tom Cruise – the ultimate movie star) and the former shaking off the shackles of Normal People with a completely different kind of performance here. The supporting cast makes less of an impression but this is all about the two leads and as Powell is one of the most attractive people to ever walk the earth, unsurprisingly he shares an authentic chemistry with Edgar-Jones. Director Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) filmed in Oklahoma City and he captures every inch of that sweeping landscape in stark blues and greys, creating a scene that is both breathtakingly beautiful and also strangely ominous. Chung also does a good job on the action set pieces – one sequence that takes place at a rodeo is particularly awe-inspiring – it’s a shame we don’t get more of this large-scale destruction, however. As with Twister, for a disaster movie, we don’t see enough disaster.
Twisters is a big, dumb action movie when it wants to be, but there is more to it than kitsch and nostalgia. The assured direction of Chung combined with a strong performance from the two leads elevates this unlikely sequel to a film that is far superior to the source material from which it derived.
