"TWISTER"/"TWISTERS" - DOUBLE REVIEW
In preparation to see this summer’s not-sequel-not-remake-disaster extravaganza TWISTERS, I did a little homework.
First, I re-watched the 1996 original, which starred Helen Hunt and the late Bill Paxton, and was directed by Jan De Bont, fresh off the similarly fast-moving megahit SPEED. I don’t think I have seen TWISTER since the 90s but I really enjoyed it (first in theaters on opening day, in the worst seat in the house—front row, far right—and then several times in the video store where I worked in high school). In fact, the experience leading up to re-watching it was very reminiscent to how moviewatching was done in the 90s.
Early Sunday morning, we had an epic storm which knocked out our Internet service for almost 2 days. It was the 90s all over again in my house. So what did I do? I went to the grocery store and rented a physical copy of TWISTER (from a Redbox kiosk). If anything, I think the movie has improved with age, perhaps even better than other movies from around the same time. For starters, the computer generated imagery that was still in its infancy held up remarkably, as a compliment to the practical effects. I would say 85% of the CGI still looks amazing, and perhaps even better than a lot of modern movies (I do have friends who work in the VFX industry, and I do not mean to besmirch your hard work, but a few shots aside, TWISTER still looks incredible). The story is no more complicated than it needs to be: a simple delivery device to give us enough empathy in between increasingly dangerous tornadoes across Oklahoma. As an adult, I found myself caring about the people and their concerns far more than I did when I was a teenager. A local reviewer at the time compared the love triangle between Hunt, Paxton, and Paxton‘s fiancé (played by Jami Gertz) to a Archie/Betty/Veronica dynamic, and while I don’t completely disagree, the actors bring so much life to it. The tornadoes themselves are wondrous to behold, and the suspense created by whether or not they touch down, and then the release when they obliterate everything in their paths, is still effectively terrifying. It really is a thrill ride in the spirit of JURASSIC PARK or JAWS. And last but not least, TWISTER has a deep bench of supporting characters that comprise the ragtag team of tornado chasers: actor-turned-director Todd Field, Joey Slotnik, Alan Ruck, Jeremy Davies, Sean Whalen, Wendle Josepher, and of course, the inestimable Philip Seymour Hoffman in what could’ve been a role for Jack Black. He gave us a few of these performances in his career, and because he did it so infrequently, it was always a treat (it’s also hard not to get a little misty seeing Bill Paxton and Philip Seymour Hoffman on screen together, but no longer with us).
One thing since getting into cinema that I noticed this time around was the craft. Of course, they have the largesse of Amblin Entertainment and executive producer Steven Spielberg (also an executive producer on TWISTERS) to bring the ultimate in movie magic, but the movie has such a hauntingly beautiful look. De Bont started his career as a cinematographer in his native Netherlands, shooting such dynamic blockbusters as DIE HARD and THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, as well as many Paul Verhoeven films (his last film as a DP being BASIC INSTINCT). De Bont’s sense of framing and composition as well as pacing is just astonishing, whether it’s a fast-moving storm, or a fast-moving stormchaser convoy. Here, he wisely keeps the frame dirty and unvarnished, so we can really feel the wind pick up, and look around the frame for the danger and discover it just at the moment the characters do. Perhaps part of this is due to the limitations of visual effects at the time (similar to the shark in JAWS only being onscreen for a total of four minutes), but De Bont equally devotes much screen time getting to know the storm chasers, so that when disaster strikes, we are deeply invested in their safety and survival.
Of course, now that visual effects can pretty much do anything (although I think modern VFX are too unnecessarily detailed), the emotional investment is even more critical, which brings me to the director of TWISTERS: Lee Isaac Chung. So the second part of my homework was watching his film MINARI.
Chung, a Korean-American filmmaker, made a splash in 2020 with the heartwarming A24-produced immigrant family drama (for which Chung received two Oscar nominations for Best Director and Original Screenplay). MINARI follows a Korean family as they move to start a new life on a farm in the middle of rural Arkansas in the early 1980s. Much of MINARI is pulled from Chung‘s early life growing up on an Arkansas farm as a very young boy, and being immersed in the natural world at such an early age created this beautiful sense-memory story with a forest or a field on all sides (On a personal level, both TWISTER and MINARI resonated deeply with me, as I grew up in an extreme rural area with nature—and big storms—in every direction).
When the trailer for TWISTERS was released earlier this year, I shared this on my social media (and if it wasn’t already obvious from my reviews of ANYONE BUT YOU and HIT MAN, I am a Glen Powell superfan):
… and then, of course, I learned that it was directed by Lee Isaac Chung. I always get a little worried after an up-and-coming filmmaker releases something personal that resonates with many people universally, that they will be thrown to the wolves once they get their opportunity to direct a big studio IP. Sometimes, historically speaking, they are forced to compromise too much too soon, or in some cases, their careers are left in ruins by a studio who bullied them into churning out a product.
In this case, I’m happy to say I had no reason to be worried. Chung is the ideal director for TWISTERS, which highlights his strengths on a human story level and on a natural world level, and then builds upon it in an exciting way (in fact, there is a tornado watch scene early on in MINARI, and a scene later in the film that I won’t spoil here, that clearly whetted his appetite for something bigger).
The new film is related to the earlier film in title, archetypes and themes only. There are no characters from the original that appear here (in fact, there is only one nod to the original in one line of dialogue: “I’m not back”). You would not even have to see the first movie to enjoy this one (but you should see the first movie because it’s fun).
The new film centers around Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones, NORMAL PEOPLE, WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING), a talented former storm chaser-turned-meteorologist still reeling from a tragedy; someone for whom storm chasing isn’t what she did/does, but who she is. She gets pulled back into action by former colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos, IN THE HEIGHTS, HAMILTON), who has a new technology to gather more data on tornadoes to help increase the time between watch and warning, and he needs Kate’s intuition for a one-week job. Kate returns to Oklahoma to work with this well-funded high-tech outfit (a clever flip from the original, in which the well-funded rival team was led by Cary Elwes). She answers to Javi and an all-business insurance company-catering wonk named Scott (our next big screen Superman, David Corenswet). It isn’t long before Kate and Co. cross paths with every amateur tornado chaser gathered for the storm of the century, including a grandstanding good ol’ boy YouTuber, “Tornado Wrangler” Tyler Owens (Glen Powell, bringing intelligence and heart along with his movie star bravado), and his team who, much like the first movie, is made up of some really fun characters (and not just mostly white dudes this time around) including Brandon Perea (the scene-stealing Angel in 2022’s NOPE), Katy O’Brian (LOVE LIES BLEEDING), Sasha Lane (AMERICAN HONEY), Tunde Adebimpe (RACHEL GETTING MARRIED), and Harry Hadden-Paton, the audience surrogate (much like Jami Gertz was in ‘96) and British journalist, who is given a surprising and realistic arc, starting out extremely cautious and evolving into someone who runs toward the danger to lend a hand. We are also blessed with the always-welcome Maura Tierney as Kate’s mother, and her interplay with Powell in the middle of the film is fun and charming.
Overall, TWISTERS is more intelligent (necessarily building upon the science from almost 30 years ago) and empathetic, and Chung does a remarkable job balancing science, character, story, and spectacle, without being too on-the-nose around issues of climate change (wisely more felt than spoken), or stopping to explain things the characters would already know. Chung also has a deep understanding of and respect for underserved audiences in middle America from a cultural perspective. For instance, there’s a lot of country music on the soundtrack, and even though at first the Owens crew are portrayed as rednecks, we get to witness hardworking, salt-of-the-earth people who love what they do, and use the proceeds from their obnoxious merch to provide meals to tornado victims. And of course, there are some dazzling set pieces, including disaster striking a motel pool (and then later an old movie theater) and, like in the ’96 version, because the movie spent so much time letting us get to know the characters, we deeply care what happens to them. The movie never forgets that these disasters can happen at any time. Depending on where you live, these disasters may not be avoidable, which makes the chase and its gathered data all the more important to those who could become victims at a moment’s notice.
Do these additions and twists (see what I did there?) on the familiar make the overall experience a little less fun? Maybe.
Do we feel the terror of the storms as much as we did the first time around? Not quite.
But more importantly, is this the four-quadrant summer thrill ride that we (audiences, movie studios, and theaters) need right now? Yes. TWISTERS is fun, funny, thrilling entertainment, and certainly worth a trip to the theater and getting pulled into its vortex.
Both TWISTER and MINARI are, as of this writing, streaming on Max. TWISTERS opens in theaters Friday, July 19.
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Zach is a proud member of the Minnesota Film Critics Alliance (MNFCA). For more info about Zach, the organization, or to read other great reviews from other great Minnesota-based film critics, click here: https://mnfilmcriticalliance.wordpress.com/