Twisters is an intriguing experience. As is the case with most legacy sequels/soft reboots, the film hits most of the same beats as its 1996 predecessor. Once again, there’s a female lead with a tragic past tied to tornadoes, a love interest she clashes with, a colorful collection of background characters, a maternal figure who cooks for our heroes, at least one farm animal, and an antagonist who’s in it for the money, not the science. All that’s missing is a fiancé who realizes her betrothed is still in love with his ex. Despite rehashing many of these archetypes, Twisters is strangely stronger on a character level.
The first film benefitted from the presence of Helen Hunt and the late Bill Paxton. With neither present in Twisters, it would’ve been easy to create two carbon copies. Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Kate may share parallels to Hunt’s Jo. Yet, Twisters dedicates more time to fleshing out Kate’s grief following a storm chase gone wrong. Years later, Anthony Ramos’ Javi encourages Kate to come out of retirement for one last job. Kate and Javi are refreshingly just friends, but it wouldn’t be a Twister movie without will they or won’t they tension. Enter Glen Powell as Tyler.
Rather than Bill Paxton, Tyler shares more in common with Cary Elwes’ character from the first movie. A tornado wrangler/YouTube personality, Tyler is seemingly only in it for the views and merchandise. As he grows closer to Kate, though, a softer soul emerges. Naturally, our lovers butt heads at first, prompting the audience to take a shot every time Tyler calls Kate a “city girl.” By the halfway point, the film thankfully downplays the bickering, allowing Kate and Tyler to form a relationship we surprisingly get invested in. Twisters might not take its characters to new frontiers like Top Gun: Maverick. However, the film succeeds where its predecessor struggled.
That doesn’t mean every element is improved upon. While Twister wasn’t the deepest character study, that’s not what brought people to the theater. Audiences were there for the spectacle, which Twister delivered with the most intimidating tornadoes we had seen at the time. Even 28 years later, the Oscar-nominated effects hold up better than expected. The effects in Twisters are arguably more polished, but they lack the wow factor. In an era of wall-to-wall CGI, Twisters needed to think outside the box to blow people away with its action. Although director Lee Isaac Chung’s set pieces are competently executed, there’s nothing as memorable as a cow flying by. Outside of the intense opening, you never sense the characters are in genuine peril either.
If you combined Twisters’ characters with the original film’s spectacle, you’d have a great summer blockbuster. As separate entities, neither is perfect, but both essentially get the job done in their own ways. Perhaps the filmmakers will strike the ideal balance by the time we inevitably get to Twister 3. Or will that film be called Twisterses? In any case, Twisters functions well enough as a fun throwback that’s familiar, but doesn’t over-rely on nostalgia.