An early draft of this review was originally published on August 16, 2024,
at Give Me Some Light on Substack, months before it appeared here.
Subscribe, and you’ll read many of these reviews while the films are still breaking news!
Come on — you already know whether or not you’re going to go see Twisters. You’ve probably already seen it. This isn’t the kind of moviegoing option that people lose sleep over, arguing with themselves about its chances of being worthwhile. The trailer makes it clear: This is Dairy Queen Blizzard — a whole bunch of sugar-high hooey whipped up a blender with the primary purpose of entertaining your taste buds. If you like ice cream, you’re going to get your fix of this eventually, either on the big screen or on streaming.
And you certainly don’t need my detailed synopsis. Several hundred such summaries are waiting for you at Rotten Tomatoes or other review aggregate sites. I doubt anybody heard that a sequel to 1995’s Twister was coming and responded, “Oh, I don’t know… I need to read a detailed plot summary before I can make up my mind.” It’s a Blizzard. It’s full of ice cream and bits of candy. It’s a formula. What do you expect?
If Blizzards aren’t your thing, you probably aren’t even reading this review — unless you’ve come hoping to read a stream of entertaining insults. That’s not going to happen. I like ice cream. I do. I’m just picky about it: I like the good stuff. And that can be hard to find.
And, as whipped ice cream beverages go, Twisters… is pretty good stuff.
Full disclosure: I’ve had the unexpected delight of befriending Lee Isaac Chung through a sequence of interviews, including this one that you can listen to at Image.
And I even had the joy of participating in an early script reading of Minari. (I played the Alan Kim part before he did! I played young Isaac!) So I’m rooting for Isaac as he rides this rocket to Hollywood success, even if I’m a much bigger fan of his earlier work—Munyruangabo, Lucky Life, Abigail Harm, and his deeply moving but little-known documentary I Have Seen My Last Born—than I am of big, broad-stroke crowd-pleasers like Twisters.
(I’m posting links to my full series of posts on the films of Lee Isaac Chung at the end of this review.)
So, I’ll do my duty and provide some kind of synopsis. What kind of review doesn’t offer information about the ingredients? Here, in short, is what you’ll find in this summertime sugar-high:
It opens with a typical Trauma Flashback: Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a weather nerd hell-bent on “taming” tornadoes with new technology. But alas! She and her crack team of storm chasers suffer a tragic, deadly encounter with a wild windstorm. Scarred for life!
Boom! Fast forward: Now Kate works for a weather service, safely indoors, nicely dressed, watching the storms on screens instead of up-close and person. (I’m a little surprised she hasn’t changed course to pursue a quieter line of work—library science, or something.) She’ll have to be dragged kicking and screaming back into the chase.
So, of course, when one of her former teammates—Javi (Anthony Ramos of In the Heights)—promises her a chance to try out some new-and-improved tornado tech, her resolve collapses like an old barn in a gale-force wind, and Kate’s back, baby! She’ll do it… for science!
Or, maybe she’ll do it for a muscular cowboy with pecs bulging through his white t-shirt?
Tyler (played by Hollywood’s New Cruise: Glen Powell) is a storm-chaser who’s in it for the thrills and for the subscribers blowing up his storm-chaser YouTube Channel. He might seem like an asshole the way he brags about ignoring science, thumbs his nose at PhDs, and charges headlong into tornados so he can see what happens when he launches firecrackers up their… up their cones, let’s say. I mean, what scientist wouldn’t swoon for a guy who says things like “You don’t face your fears. You ride ‘em!” (Oooh, wow, says Kate. Maybe I’m afraid of Tyler after all!)
Ah, but that’s just one of many ways that this movie is out to surprise us.
Much to the outrage of cliche-fans everywhere, and quite unlike Jan De Bont’s early-90s original, this story is not about a couple of one-dimensional action figures figuring out that they need to be together. It doesn’t abuse audiences, as Twister did, with a barrage of excruciating, sophomoric euphemisms and double-entendres. That film seemed like the most elaborate allegory about erectile dysfunction ever made. When I first saw it in the early ‘90s, I was too naive to realize that all of the “How do you get this phallic device inside the tornado to release all of these little mechanical sperm with their cute little tails?” exposition was really carefully engineered to make this movie both a hot date and and a sex-ed video. At the 30-minute point, Hunt and Paxton are given lines about Billy’s “inability to finish things.” You could tell that Cary Elwes was right on the screenwriters’ euphemistic wavelength. As his character bragged about his “device,” he looked like he was going to break and bust out laughing.
In Twisters, screenwriter Joseph Kosinski shows some restraint when it comes to serving up audience wish-fulfillment, especially regarding the romance. And he’s so gutsy that some viewers have been ranting as if they want their money back just because they didn’t get pandered to. His sequence of storms raise more interesting ideas. And it deals with those ideas lightly, thank goodness, without ever become heavy-handed or preachy about anything—love, trauma, or even climate change.
(Some are complaining that the movie never mentions global warming, and that’s true. But showing is more effective than telling, and I think director Lee Isaac Chung knows that. It’s obvious that the weather is going all wrong in this movie world, and maybe that’s enough to slow a few folks down long enough to ask why. Climate change deniers aren’t going to have their minds changed by somebody in Twisters shouting, “Gee! Do you think global warming might be a real threat after all?!”)
Before I get to the film’s themes, let’s address what we’re here for: Big, loud, IMAX spectacle. Where Twister could have been called Gyrat-ic Park, with its snarling sneak-attack storms acting like wily predators, Twisters feels more like Jaws. It’s more inclined to attend to the challenge of getting people “off the beaches”—or, in this case, clear of a packed rodeo arena, or away from a vulnerable small town. And it likes the visual of a truck pursuing the monster with a bunch of yellow barrels set to explode.
Where Twister leaned into the monstrousness of the storms, Twisters’ cinematographers, production designers, and animators are more interested in inspiring our awe at the beauty of weather gone wild in these panoramic Oklahoma landscapes. And yet, Chung strikes an admirable balance: he respects the glory of those towering infernos in a way that will please Terrence Malick fans in the audience even as he gives generous, large-hearted attention to the people whose homes are devastated by those very wonders. (When actor David Corenswet stares wide-eyed through a truck windsheld and shouts, “Look at the size of that thing!”, I bark back, “Cut the chatter, Red Two!” My Star Wars reflexes are still sharp.)
What’s more, the cast of characters is much more interesting. It’s easy to imagine that some of them could step to the forefront of a third film, if this one is popular enough.
And, thankfully, Chung and Kosinski aren’t eager to set any of them up as easy targets for contempt. Twister presumed that we were all game to laugh at both therapists and vegetarians. Billy’s therapist fiancée was the butt of many jokes, culminating in her preposterous dislike of [checks notes] steak. My, what an abominable human being! And even worse, she wasn’t excited about the idea of throwing her life into the path of deadly windborne debris! What a pathetic excuse for a human being! By contrast, the characters in Twisters — mad as they are for their storm-chasing obsession — aren’t ridiculing other people for their interests or their common sense.
Tyler’s tough and reckless team is made up of actors I’m happy to recognize: from the band TV on the Radio, Tunde Adebimpe! straight from her breakout/Hulk-out role in Love Lies Bleeding, Katy O’Brian! Brandon Perea from Nope! And there’s Sasha Lane doing Sasha Lane things. I’m starting to imagine that her character from American Honey became her character in How to Blow Up a Pipeline… and later she became this character. It kinda works.
Most pleasantly surprising is who they’ve cast to play Kate’s mother: I’m enjoying Maura Tierney’s All-American Mom era. It’s good to see her here after watching her play such a tortured, tragic figure in The Iron Claw.
Most disappointing is how little the movie does with Anthony Ramos. When you see how multi-talented he is in In the Heights, it’s hard to see him stuck in a movie that doesn’t really ask much of him. His job is basically to draw Kate back into the game, seem vaguely tragic in his unrequited attraction to Kate (but he’s just no match for Tyler), and then sell himself out to a corporate interest.
All in all, Twisters is an engaging, amusing allegory for how we need to “tame” America’s storms. Its heroes are seeking ways to quell surges of “wrath,” and they are prioritizing care for those in danger’s path—whether the storm be a pandemic, prejudice, climate change, the pending economic disruptions of A.I., political violence, “Christian” nationalism, or whatever.
Personally, I found it strangely cathartic as I am headed into an academic year that looks likely to unleash some harrowing hardships upon me and my collagues. These are hard times in higher education, harder times in Christian education, and extremely hard times for Christian educators who care about history, science, the environment, social justice, and loving their neighbors without prejudice. The storms of racism, nationalism, and anti-intellectualism, along with the systemic abuses of patriarchal hierarchies—these are the tornadoes laying waste to institutions that have the potential to provide meaningful service and inspire lasting change. I wish I could protect strong academic programs with those anchor-rods like the ones Tyler uses to secure his truck to the earth as the storm advances. But ignorance and fear are powerful storms, and if you care about truth and love, you’re going to suffer a lot of loss in this world.
Maybe that’s why I found myself surprisingly susceptible to Twisters’ charms. It was genuinely encouraging to see people with very different philosophies and mindsets working together for the good of the vulnerable and the poor, embracing the gift of science, and facing — maybe even riding — their fears. That’s the kind of vision that Lee Isaac Chung brings to his meditative arthouse films, his Oscar-winning personal storytelling, and now, his first summertime blockbuster.
Here’s hoping the success of Twisters gives him all the resources he needs to make whatever movie he wants to make next.
Okay, I’m gonna say it: Next time I see Lee Isaac Chung, I want to give him a high five for showing heroic restraint and not fulfilling the kissing fantasy so many people need here. That would’ve made the movie about something it wasn’t. Love is about listening to the person in front of you so much more than lip-locking. And I felt that here. I respect both Kate and Tyler more for staying focused on the most important matters at hand. Leave the shallow fantasies to fan fiction.
Here are links to my five-post series on the films of Lee Isaac Chung at Looking Closer: Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four, Part Five.