| The marketing for Twisters has been primarily Glen Powell, which is fair since he might be the hottest movie star around right now. Absent from the marketing, but perhaps the most significant element is director Lee Isaac Chung. Not yet a household name, Chung is only known for the indie awards darling Minari – a family drama about Korean Americans living in Arkansas. The connection between that and Twisters is not obvious; however, he knows how to ground it into real human drama and he’s from tornado alley. | | 2024
Directed by: Lee Isaac Chung
Screenplay by: Mark L. Smith, Joseph Kosinski
Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell
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The original Twister has been one of my favourite blockbusters from the last few decades, but Twisters is better. To someone who avoids most big budget action disaster flicks, this one is right up my alley and absolutely finds that common element between visual spectacle and something that’s real. Probably one of the main reasons the original Twister worked so well is that they had hired a meteorologist/science expert consultant, somebody who frequently told the director and visual effects artists what they could and couldn’t do. That type of role is the first person cut in today’s Hollywood where budgets have ballooned out of control and are no longer making money since the money is no longer on the screen. While a lot more nonsense has leaked into this upgraded sequel, the characters are a lot more dynamic.
Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a young genius, a girl who spent her whole life in rural Oklahoma trying to find ways to ‘tame’ a tornado, up until a field experiment to win a student grant went horribly and fatally wrong. Now it’s five years later and she’s a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in New York, tracking tornadoes from a very far and safe distance. Until her friend Javy (Anthony Ramos), now working for a corporation putting big bucks into Tornado tracking, convinces her to come back home.
It's tornado hunting season back in Oklahoma, attracting a large but mostly specific group of adventure-seekers, including Tyler (Glen Powell) a youtube star and influencer who calls himself the Tornado Wrangler. Glen Powell has already had a really good year especially playing around a dozen different characters in Hit Man, but this one is something new. Since the reveal is pretty great, all I’m going to say is there is more than meets the eye.
Powell may play the more interesting character, but Anthony Ramos has the harder role to play. A man who has faced so much tragedy in his young life and when he’s finally making a name for himself professionally, he partially unwittingly finds himself on the wrong side of progress despite being a good person at heart.
There’s a lot of real human drama at the heart of Twisters including a significant plot about how corporations try to take advantage of people when they are at their weakest immediately after a tragedy. It’s a real problem actually happening and it’s only going to get worse. It’s a smart move for this movie to shed some light on it and keep the story grounded in reality.
It’s also an extremely fun movie anchored by some really enjoyable character dynamics between Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones – not least of which is the perfect needle drop when Kate tricks Tyler for the second time and “Too Easy (Boys Are Too Easy)” by Tanner Adell starts playing.
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