Twisters sets out to make anticyclones great again

Going into Twisters, a film taking the Alien -> Aliens naming convention, there was only one question on my mind: is it a sequel or a remake? The answer, it turns out, is both, maybe? Or neither. In the end, it hardly matters as the clouds roll in and the debris flies just the same.

Having abandoned storm chasing after a powerful tornado resulted in the deaths of three of her friends five years previously, gifted storm savant Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is lured away from the New York NOAA office to return to Oklahoma at the request of the only other survivor of the accident, Javi (Anthony Ramos). Javi is pioneering the use of military grade radar to map tornadoes to an unprecedented degree and needs Kate’s intuitive understanding of the weather to track down the unpredictable storms. They arrive on the ground amidst a “once in a generation storm season” but among the many amateur storm chasers, there’s also Tyler Owens (Tyler Owens), an internet-famous YouTube “Storm Wrangler”.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Twisters is that they’ve made a movie which is explicitly about the increasing frequency, severity and destructiveness of storms that doesn’t mention climate change once. I’m guessing they don’t to alienate the folk who populate tornado alley in the US who like their red baseball caps lined with a side order of tin foil. In fact, given how conspicuously it shows wind turbines getting demolished and nearly killing a bunch of people, it comes perilously close to being anti-climate change propaganda.

But aren’t the stuff-shirt scientists the good guys this time round, you might ask? Well initially yes it seems like it as Javi’s professional outfit seems like its an altruistic tech startup. But in a twist so obvious you won’t need a doppler radar to see it coming, the good guy scientists are being bankrolled by bad guy real estate developers. It’s a Scooby-Doo plot and this time it’s the shit-kicking YouTuber who actively derides “experts” and “qualifications” and describes tornadoes as “part science, part religion” who’s meant to be our hero. I’m no meteorologist myself, but I’m still pretty sure the amount of a tornado that’s religion is zero.

Glenn Powell’s easy to dislike (at this point, it’s basically his stock in trade as an actor) and he’s perfect as the obnoxious Arkansas storm wrangler Tyler although there’s something almost Hallmark Holiday Movie-esque to Twisters as we’re treated to the good old down-home cowboy teaching big city girl Kate (although she is an Oklahoma native) to feel love again. That he does this by taking her a rodeo (not, it has to be said, her first) is just one of a series of tropey stateside cliches that gives the whole film a kind of overpoweringly pungent musk of unironic americana. Twisters is a film which recommends you don’t face your fears, you ride ‘em. *eye roll*

As we barrel towards the finale, Tyler, having firmly established his anti-science bona fides, ironically turns into an arch-scientist himself. Not content with teaching Kate to love again, he also takes her PhD thesis—a method to dissipate or “tame” a tornado and turn stormy skies blue—in his strong manly arms and wrangles it across the finish line. This breakthrough happens just in time to tackle a monster tornado barrelling down on the town of El Reno, a city that, despite being smack bang in the middle of tornado alley, has shelters and basements as disproportionately scarce and inadequate as lifeboats on the RMS Titanic.

Ultimately, of course, Twisters is a disaster movie and while its characters and sub-plots might not register particularly high on the Beaufort scale, the effects work certainly does. The cast are decent enough and, although they aren’t quite up to matching the easy charisma of Bill Paxton (whose son has a cameo), they do a good job carry the movie in between effects sequences. It might have been a more fun movie all round if the story had fully been told from the perspective of Harry Hadden-Paton’s Ben, a London journalist profiling Tyler who stumbles onto a bigger story in amongst the storms, as he’s one of the few likable – and relatable – character’s we’re offered. As for those action sequences, even though they become a little repetitive, they’re undeniably thrilling and intense, eclipsing even the original Twister thanks to the advances in visual effects over the decades since Jan de Bont’s blockbuster.

For a movie so rooted in the scientific reality, it’s dispiritingly dumb and frequently goes out of its way to dismiss and downplay the real-world implications of the fictional events its portraying. In fact, that might the most American thing about this hokey slice of Apple Pie as Twisters monetizes the raw power of nature while resolutely refusing to engage with the root causes of the spectacles it wants us to shovel popcorn into our mouths while watching slack-jawed in the cinema.