Twister is a widely beloved movie that came out in 1996, so 28 years ago, and it still has many fans to this day. This means that there was a large amount of hype going into Twisters, the standalone sequel. To be honest, I was not looking forward to it at all. I had no hopes that it would be good, but I do love a movie that seems like it would be great to see in IMAX, so I dished out the extra 7 dollars on Friday anyway and headed to the IMAX for my partially filled 4 o’clock showing.
There is no prior knowledge needed to go and see this film, because all the characters are new. So it starts out with a group of rag tag collegiate storm chasers in Oklahoma, and it is a great opening scene. They are trying to test a special concoction, that will get sucked up by the tornado, suck up all the moisture, and then make the tornado dissipate. A great idea in theory, but it does not work, and it costs Kate all of her friends’ lives, except one, and it also sucks away her ambition. She moves away to New York City for a desk job, then five years later, the one guy who survived, Javi, comes to New York to recruit her to come back. He is using some technology that he got from the military to better be able to record information about the tornados. Kate is resistant at first, but eventually agrees to go back.
The first tornado that comes through, she freezes and pulls back. This gets most of the new team mad at her, except Javi, because he knows how special she is at identifying tornados, and this is an important skill, because there is a rival storm chaser crew led by Tyler. He is not out there for the science. He is out there for the YouTube views, and initially he seems like a jerk, but as the movie goes on, we find out otherwise, and that Kate’s crew is not all that they seem. This puts Kate in a tough spot, and she also has to face the ghosts of her past to move on and help those who need it.
The one thing I was not expecting from Twisters was a critique on capitalist greed taking advantage of those in crisis. There is a whole small side plotline about how Javi’s company is preying upon the people that are having their homes and businesses destroyed. His main investor is a real estate mogul, and he is offering cash for the land. When Kate finds this out, she gets out from the group, and it turns out that Tyler’s group uses some of the money they get from merch sales to provide food and water for the disaster areas. Thus ingratiating Tyler’s crew with Kate.
I have seen many reviews that complained about the chemistry between Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones, but honestly, I thought they were great together. The romance was not the main part of story, and they did not even like each other at the beginning, so the chemistry did not need to be palpable, but once they did start to work together, it was awesome. The blossoming montage of them starting to fall in love was perfect for this movie. They were just driving around fields checking out tornados and eating meals on the roof of the truck. There was no kissing or actual romance, it was just vibes, and they were great vibes.
My favorite part of the movie was what seemed like genuine excitement about the topic. Daisy Edgar-Jones seemed to love storm chasing, and in the opening scene when she feels a storm coming, she gets so excited, and that made it so much easier for me to buy into the whole movie. Of course, it got a little depressing right after that, but once she came back to Oklahoma, and the excitement started to grow in her again, plus when she teamed up with Tyler’s team, the whole group seemed so in love the whole process of storm chasing. There are few things better than when others are excited about something. They used so much storm jargon and physics that literally meant nothing to me, but they got excited about it, so I stayed into it.
There were some aspects of the movie that did take me out of it. Unsurprisingly people who chase tornados have to make very risky choices, but even with that consideration, it seemed like these people made extra dumb choices. Tyler’s crew had a souped up pick-up truck, and he had augers on the bottom, so he could drill his truck into the dirt, this way he could get as close to the tornado as possible, but not only would he do that, but they would also shoot off fireworks into the tornado as well. One funny part was when they were at the national weather center in New York, and they mentioned how rare it was for tornados to hit New York, and literally the week before this came out, we had two different tornado warnings for the first time since I moved here. The irony.
Overall, this was a very fun movie to watch. It had a fun cast, and the excitement was palpable, even the soundtrack was filled with some country bangers that fit the scenery perfect. I was also surprised at how tense they were able to make the tornado scenes, there were multiple times, when I was gripping the edge of my seat a little tighter and my breathing slowed down. It was like a scary movie tension levels. On top of that, they had a great tagline, “If you feel it, chase it!” I would like to switch it to if you see it, chase it for running purposes. Honestly, I am so surprised by how much I liked this movie. Seeing it in IMAx helped as well. I highly recommend seeing it, especially if you are a fan of the first one, because this one is better! 4 Stars! A true summer blockbuster!
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