Twisters review – cloudy with a chance of scat­tered narrative

Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari was a mar­vel – a mov­ing, effort­less­ly grace­ful por­trait of a Kore­an fam­i­ly search­ing for the Amer­i­can dream in rur­al Arkansas based on his own child­hood. The direc­tor was on the verge of giv­ing up on his dreams of film­mak­ing when his soar­ing auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal fourth fea­ture took off, rack­ing up crit­i­cal acclaim, six Oscar nom­i­na­tions and even a Lit­tle White Lies cov­er. In the grand tra­di­tion of Hol­ly­wood, Chung was then hand­ed the keys to a block­buster prop­er­ty – a planned sequel to 1996’s Twister, which starred Helen Hunt and Bill Pax­ton as star­crossed tor­na­do-chas­ing lovers in the heart of the USA’s Tor­na­do Alley.

Such a project might seem a lit­tle left field for Chung – though Arkansas is neigh­bours with Okla­homa, the state with the high­est num­ber of strong tor­na­does per unit area, and pos­sess­es the same expans­es of gold­en wheat­fields and lush grass­lands that gave Minari its fresh (in the lit­er­al sense) iden­ti­ty. One of the most poignant ele­ments of Minari was how the local com­mu­ni­ty wel­comed the Yi fam­i­ly, help­ing them to build a new life amid cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences and famil­ial hard­ship. This trans­fers across to Twisters, where there is some empha­sis placed on how tor­na­dos phys­i­cal­ly dev­as­tate the pop­u­la­tion, with poor­er com­mu­ni­ties bear­ing the brunt of the dam­age. There are glim­mers of this com­mu­ni­ty-mind­ed sto­ry­line with­in the film, but they are ulti­mate­ly over­whelmed by a less inter­est­ing main plot which sees screen­writer Mark L. Smith rehash var­i­ous tropes from Michael Crich­ton and Anne-Marie Martin’s ini­tial script while attempt­ing to add some vague socio-eco­nom­i­cal commentary.

Once again the cen­tral char­ac­ter is a plucky young female mete­o­rol­o­gist, this time Kate Coop­er (Daisy Edgar Jones) who – just like Helen Hunt’s Jo Hard­ing – wit­nessed the death of some­one close to her dur­ing a cat­e­go­ry five tor­na­do. The open­ing of Twisters is a lit­tle under­whelm­ing com­pared to the lit­er­al barn­storm­ing of the orig­i­nal, as Coop­er sees her boyfriends and two of her storm-chas­ing col­leagues swept off while try­ing to deploy her poten­tial­ly game-chang­ing ​“tor­na­do tamer” machine that aims to absorb the mois­ture in a tor­na­do, effect­ing cut­ting its fuel source. Crushed by guilt, Coop­er trades storm chas­ing for a safe, sta­ble job pre­dict­ing the weath­er in New York City – until her old friend Javi (Antho­ny Ramos) rocks up five years lat­er and asks her to come back to Okla­hol­ma to help his com­pa­ny out with a tor­na­do scan­ning gig.

Posi­tioned against Javi and his van­load of polo-clad sci­en­tists are social media sen­sa­tion Tyler Owens and his van­load of storm-chas­ing mani­acs, whose approach to tor­na­dos favours fire­works, flares and drones over radar and scans. Coop­er is pre­dictably dis­mis­sive and po-faced, assum­ing Tyler and his team are a bunch of thrill-seek­ing know-noth­ings putting them­selves and oth­ers in dan­ger for that sweet live-stream­ing ad rev­enue. Owens doesn’t exact­ly deny this, but he’s a qual­i­fied mete­o­rol­o­gist too – and a for­mer bull rid­er, adding to his almost com­i­cal lev­els of machis­mo. Pow­ell, a stu­dent of Tom Cruise so ded­i­cat­ed that big TC turned up to sup­port him at the Twisters pre­mière, already seems to com­plete­ly recog­nise the pow­er of a per­son­al brand. He’s charm­ing as ever with his per­fect smile and care­ful­ly applied cock­i­ness, seem­ing­ly unflap­pable even in the face of cer­tain dan­ger, steal­ing the show with­out even break­ing a sweat.

It doesn’t help that retired rodeo Owens is a more intrigu­ing char­ac­ter than Coop­er, who lacks the wild streak of Jo Hard­ing, more seri­ous and sub­dued. Her moti­va­tion being iden­ti­cal to her pre­de­ces­sor doesn’t help mat­ters, nor does the mys­te­ri­ous posi­tion­ing of her as hav­ing a mys­ti­cal ​“gift” for weath­er almost as sil­ly as Karen’s in Mean Girls. Sim­i­lar­ly, Javi – a Mia­mi native who joined the mil­i­tary before return­ing to storm-chas­ing and now sees his per­son­al mis­sion to help bet­ter under­stand tor­na­dos at odds with the real estate vul­tures who give him his fund­ing – offers more in the way of nar­ra­tive inter­est, and Owens’ wacky crew (played by the pret­ty stel­lar and com­plete­ly under­utilised line-up of Bran­don Perea, Sasha Lane, Katy O’Brian and Tunde Ade­bimpe) bare­ly get a look-in beyond a few snarky one-liners.

Per­haps this seems miser­ly – who comes to a dis­as­ter movie for the char­ac­ter work? But in Twister – still only a fair­ly mid­dling film about a sci­ence exper­i­ment – the chem­istry between Hunt and Pax­ton, along with the his­to­ry between their char­ac­ters, gave the film a sol­id anchor. That emo­tion­al core is miss­ing in Twisters, even with a few stabs at high­light­ing the human cost of America’s inad­e­quate tor­na­do warn­ing and dam­age mit­i­ga­tion systems.

Where that film had a mem­o­rable inci­dent involv­ing a cow, Twisters has…chickens. There is one late-stage set piece which is quite impres­sive, but the much-fet­ed ​“We got twins!” moment high­light­ed in the trail­er is ulti­mate­ly under­whelm­ing, and even with the leaps in CGI since the 90s, the sim­u­lat­ed tor­na­does pale in com­par­i­son to footage read­i­ly avail­able on YouTube.

In Twisters, Powell’s char­ac­ter refers dream­i­ly to the fact that sci­en­tists still don’t ful­ly under­stand tor­na­does. They’re unpre­dictable and untam­able – both Twister and Twisters have been about brave, fool­hardy attempts to lessen their hor­ri­fy­ing impact on human life. In Minari, the rela­tion­ship between nature and human­i­ty was sim­i­lar­ly fraught, as the Yi fam­i­ly attempt­ed to make a liv­ing off the land in the face of cul­ture clash and harsh nature (a fire dev­as­tates their farm in a heart­break­ing moment). But at the end of Minari, when Jacob and David go to har­vest the minari plants that Grand­ma Soon-ja plant­ed months before, it’s a poignant reminder of how land con­nects us to the past. While Twisters ges­tures at this, and the stakes seem unde­ni­ably more dra­mat­ic, the strokes are broad­er and the impact less­ened. It’s a big­ger, loud­er film in every sense, but Lee Isaac Chung nev­er need­ed all that bluster.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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