Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Twisters: A Review

 

TWISTERS

I am not so enamored with nostalgia that I look on Twister as a good film. It is serviceable, entertaining, and mild escapist fare. We now, almost thirty years later, have something of a Twister sequel. Twisters is not original, not well-acted, at times laughable. In other words, it is serviceable, entertaining and mild escapist fare.

Plucky Kate Carter is part of the Tornado Tamer Project, a do-it-yourself group of tornado hunters who want to save lives and get funding. They come close to success when they find themselves caught in an EF5 tornado, the most destructive. Three of her colleagues are swept up into the storm and killed, including her boyfriend. Only she and her other male friend Javi survive.

Five years later, Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in New York and still dealing with the post-traumatic stress from her experience. Into her world returns Javi (Anthony Ramos) with a job offer. He works for Storm Par, a company that is attempting to get better data on tornadoes. Kate decides to come out of retirement to go back into the field.

The field has changed dramatically since her high school sojourns. Now Storm Par and their ilk have to deal with brash figures such as Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), who dubs himself the Tornado Wrangler. Cocky and self-assured, Owens has built up his fame with a passionate fanbase that buys his T-shirts and mugs, quoting his phrase, "If you feel it, CHASE IT!". Javi's coworker Scott (David Corenswet) and the other Storm Par employees have nothing but contempt for these "hillbillies with a YouTube channel" as one of the Storm Par employees calls them. Kate, however, does not dismiss Tyler completely.

It becomes a battle between the Tornado Wrangler and the Tornado Whisperer for supremacy over the whirlwinds. Who is the mysterious figure Javi is working for, who swoops into devastated towns with apparently generous offers for the land? Is there more to Tyler Owens apart from his overall lusciousness? Who will live and who will die, who will fall in love and who will fall from the sky?


 I don't know if it is relevant or not, but I was surprised that Twisters stars Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones would have little to no memory of Twister or its impact on the public at the time.  Powell was a mere eight years old when Twister was released. Edgar-Jones was not even born yet (she was born two years after Twister premiered). Again, it might not be important, and it probably isn't. It just surprised me that for a film that in part rides on a Twister nostalgia, those involved with Twisters have little to no connection to the source material.

In a sense that is good. Twisters is not riding on the Twister coattails save for name recognition. We were spared any connection to the past. Twisters works separate from Twister, which again I think is good.

However, we do not have a flying cow, which for reasons I never understood was one of the things people were anticipating when watching Twister. Mark L. Smith's screenplay is a textbook example of how lazy and unoriginal a film can be. When Kate goes back into the field, Javi runs down the various Storm Par storm chasers. We learn what schools and government administrations they came from. We just never learned their names save for Scott, whom Javi introduces by name. Instantly, I knew that the other Storm Par people were unimportant, irrelevant and would soon be forgotten. 

I was right: by the time we get to the final storm, we see only Javi and Scott. Where the other Storm Par people are, who knows and who cares.


Compare that with the Tornado Wrangler crew. We learn all their names, even if they were forgotten for long sections of Twisters. They were just there to contrast to the Storm Par crew: the former were wild, wacky and fun, the latter stern and serious. Whom were we supposed to like: the always excited and shouty Boone (Brandon Perea) or the mean, arrogant and snobbish Scott? The contrast is given by how both groups respond to a devastated community. Storm Par starts looking for people to make low bids on their property to. Tornado Wrangler and Company, we learn, sells those tacky t-shirts to provide funds for storm relief. One of the Tornado Wrangler crew, Lily (Sasha Lane) even offers free food and water to Kate, informing her of the Tornado Wrangler's charitable work.

The Tornado Wrangler does not launch fireworks into tornadoes for clicks or subscribers or fame. He does it because he cares. Given the devastation those who survived tornadoes would have endured, would it not make more sense for the Tornado Wrangler to just ask his followers to donate to established relief organizations rather than use proceeds from those t-shirts with his name and face on them to help out? That bit of information was thrown in just to make Owens and his team sympathetic. 

That effort to compare and contrast Tornado Wrangler to Storm Par is not necessarily insulting, but apart from Powell's pretty face and good physique, I don't think I could muster any interest in the Tornado Wrangler's hijinks. Why not have Storm Par and Tornado Wrangler join forces: the former's scientific know-how with the latter's derring-do? 

It is curious that despite the advances in technology, I found the visual effects in Twisters rather rote and almost boring. Part of it might be due to director Lee Isaac Chung, who kept things at a distance. Part of it, though, came from how uninvolved everyone was. I put aside how those at the rodeo and farmers market apparently never experienced a tornado despite living in Tornado Alley. None of them, for example, seemed to know what to do when a twister came their way. Apparently, they would have rodeos and farmers markets despite the high probability of tornadoes coming their way. Yet I digress.


The VFX left me cold. What I figure was meant to be tense and exciting was anything but. As Tyler and Katie race across an exploding oil refinery, I felt nothing. As Tyler holds on to Lily to stop her from being swept away, all I kept wondering is exactly how strong physically is Tyler to withstand wind speeds greater than 322 MPH. Early on, I don't know if the goal was to have me laugh when Katie's early crew gets swept away. Her boyfriend telling her he's got her then instantly flying off had me suppress my laughter. One of her compatriots whose name I didn't bother remembering (which Twisters wasn't going to give much time to anyone), I referred to as "Harriet Potter" due to the physical resemblance. 

The VFX in short were not impressive. The vehicle crashing into the pool was not flying cow.

Twisters is also poorly acted. Perea came across as annoying as Boone, forever screaming enthusiastic. British reporter Ben (Harry Hayden-Paton) was a stock character veering on stereotype: the uptight Brit unaware of things. Edgar-Jones did fine as the plucky scientist slowly coming out of her trauma. It was not something great, especially when attempting to show her grief late in the film. It was okay, a word I hate using but struggling to find another that works. Powell was all hunky and took a stab at being vulnerable. He was better when he was cocky than when he was not. Ramos looked blank and at times was too restrained. It is curious that when he reprimands Katie for making a major mistake due to her PSTD, he was actually mild versus genuinely angry.

Twisters used good music, but to punctuate the scenes with "appropriate" songs is lazy. Why did we have to have (Ghost) Riders in the Sky play when the Tornado Wrangler is chasing the storm? Playing a song called Out of Oklahoma play when Katie finally sees her mother Cathy (Maura Tierney) is too on the nose. 

Twisters is passable entertainment, but I found the original to be better on almost every level. It's fine, and I guess that is fine. 

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