Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Special Effects: B

It was a somewhat surprising experience watching Twisters in the theater last night, a 6:15 p.m. showing with perhaps ten other people in the theater—from what I could tell, all of them young. And I did not survey them, but it seemed likely that many, if not all, of them had never seen the original 1996 film, Twister—which, I really have to say up top: was much better. After re-watching that film only a couple of weeks ago and being genuinely impressed by how well it stands up, particularly in terms of its special effects, I could not help but be just slightly disappointed by this new one. I found myself envying those kids: they were clearly having a great time, while I was over here, nitpicking.

And in so doing, I am going against what I have long stated I stood for: which was that films should be judged on their own merits. The problem is that, in creating a “legasequel” such as this, the filmmakers are openly inviting comparison. And when you do the comparison: Twisters falls short. Not by a wide margin, but it falls short nonetheless.

And there’s a bit of a double-edged sword to this comparison. The 1996 Twister knows exactly what it is: a blockbuster disaster movie showcasing special effects (many of them shockingly practical) that does not pretend to be anything else. The premise being preposterous is incidental; the stock characters elevated by broadly charismatic performers. It had two teams of scientists chasing tornadoes in Oklahoma in pursuit of new data they can get from a new device they called “Dorothy,” which they hope will help extend advanced warning times by launching sensors up a tornado funnel from its base. One of the groups is the clearly villainouse one because their leader is ”in it for the money, not the science.”

The 1996 Twister was also a product of its time, its shamelessly knowing execution, of a dumb plot in the name of thrilling sequences, being something that would just never play the same way today. The unfortunate result is that the 2024 Twisters infuses an element of self-seriousness not present in the previous film, which really doesn’t work either. Which begs the question: Why make this movie at all? Box office would have to be the only answer. I’m sure the relative disinclination of young moviegoers to rewatch “old movies” (Twister came out 28 years ago) has not changed and never will.

So why not just make a new movie about tornado chasers? What purpose does it serve to ride the coattails of a movie from three decades back whose coattails petered out long ago? Especially when this movie’s connection to Twister is tenuous at best? I actually found this point lacking in clarity, the only “character” in this film that was actually seen in the first being “Dorothy” herself, the contraption that releases sensors . The young scientists in pursuit of grant money even make derisive references to how old she is. This is never stated explicitly, but Dorothy must have just been handed down by their scientific forebears and that’s it; there is no other narrative reference to the first film at all.

There is a meta connection, however, when James Paxton, the late Bill Paxton’s son, appears briefly as an aggressive customer trying to check into a hotel while he and his girlfriend willfully ignore a gigantic tornado approaching. There are also other subtle references, such as when the film’s primary protagonist, Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), visiting to assist an old friend for a week to get new data, responds to someone saying “Welcome back!” with “I’m not back!”—the latter being an exact line Bill Paxton delivers in the first film. Also, this movie’s story beats are nearly identical: opening flashback of a traumatic event in the midst of a tornado; survivor later pursues an understanding of this enigmatic force of nature; two teams of people compete with each other to catch up to multiple tornadoes in a single day of several tornado outbreaks.

All of this is to say: the script here did very little for me, it’s such a rehash of the first film, which itself took no pains to be any work of staggering genius. This time around, director Lee Isaac Chung (pivoting rather hard after the quietly wonderful 2021 film Minari) and co-writers Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) and Joseph Kosinski (who directed Top Gun: Maverick) introduce a character named Tyler (Glen Powell, by far the most charismatic presence in this movie—the man is a star) who we are clearly meant to read as an analog to Carey Elwes’s pompous character from the first film. Kate’s old friend Javi (Anthony Ramos, whose ample talents are criminally wasted here) has been employed by a guy with real estate connections, and between Tyler and Javi, Twisters ultimately “flips the script” from the first film that is clearly meant as a “twist” from initial expectations. But, it never amounts to much.

So what does that leave? Tornadoes, of course! This would be the whole reason I’m not sorry I saw Twisters, because it still features countless tornado sequences that are genuinely thrilling, and what else is anybody going to this movie for? Plus, in spite of this movie’s characters on average not being half as compelling as those from the first film, even with the down-time, “character” scenes, the run time is a perfectly decent 122 minutes, keeping it from overstaying its welcome or feeling bloated.

Still, this does feel worth mentioning: the effects in the 1996 Twister hold up surprisingly well after 28 years. The effects in Twisters hold up about as well as you would expect: they aren’t bad but they don’t push anything forward; they aren’t any more impressive than they were in the first film, although there are several shots with more comprehensive composition. This movie isn’t going to continue impressing thirty years from now in the same way, though. Not that it appears to have any intention to; it only exists to entertain us all in the present moment, and on that point it succeeds.

And that brings us back to the cast, and specifically Glen Powell, without whom Twisters would not be nearly as good as the just-fine movie it is. Here he plays a storm chaser with a whole crew who post videos to a YouTube channel with a following of 1 million, who at first seems like an arrogant ass but of course (spoiler alert!) turns out to have a heart of gold. I would argue that, on a character level, Powell is the single person who makes Twisters worth seeing. He actually manages to elevate his contrived material with a performance that is as nuanced as it is undeniably charming. (Admittedly, some viewers don’t find his character so charming; this is not a universal response. But, the critical and box office success of his most recent four films in only the past two years speaks for itself.)

There is plenty of talent elsewhere in the cast, mind you; they just aren’t given enough to do. Besides Ramos in a fairly thankless role, Tyler’s crew also includes critical darling Sasha Lane (American Honey, How to Blow Up a Pipeline), whose career trajectory never quite went where it should have. Here the most interesting thing she’s given to do is remote pilot a drone for aerial shots of the tornadoes.

As always, though, here is the bottom line: is Twisters entertaining? Yes. Does it give you what you come to see? Absolutely yes. No one’s coming to these movies for dimensional character portraits, they’re coming for the thrills, of which Twisters has countless. I’m just nitpicking because it’s what I’m here to do. Granted, the 1996 Twisters has thrills that are just as good, with a better cast, and more successful wit in its dialogue. But even then it was only the thrills that mattered, and it’s really all that matters here. I didn’t quite get everything I wanted out of this movie but I certainly got what I came for.

*The two leads in this picture are ready for their close-up.*

Overall: B