It’s tough for a movie to equal or top the success of a blockbuster hit. Twisters is a great example.
I was as excited to see this as anyone else after having seen the dazzling movie trailers. Many bad movies have great movie trailers. We’ve all taken the bait from time to time. In the case of a sequel to a movie that we really liked we hope against hope that lightning can somehow strike twice. In rare cases like Godfather: Part II (1974) it actually happens. But it’s the exception and not the rule.
The original Twister was a towering summer movie blockbuster back in 1996. It was a movie that actually lived up to all the hype and flashy trailers. Audiences loved it. I was among its legion of fans. Sure, it was over the top, but it had a pretty solid story and a great cast.
What Twisters (plural) is lacking is an equally powerful story brimming with drama and suspense. It also lacks the performances of those of Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Add to that the vision and strong direction of Jan De Bont, who had proven his action directing chops in Speed (1994). De Bont was also an acclaimed cinematographer who had worked on movies like Die Hard (1988), Black Rain (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990) and Basic Instinct (1992). He was a heavy hitter. Contrast that with the credits of relative newcomer Lee Isaac Chung and you begin to see why Twisters was a movie most certainly pitched on the basis of the mega success of the original.
The cast this time around includes Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kate, the young protagonist, Glen Powell as Tyler, her redneck adversary (initially) and Anthony Ramos as Javi, her storm-chasing partner.
The story centers around Kate, a college genius trying desperately to acquire funding for a breakthrough approach in studying and understanding tornados. Her initial attempt proves disastrous, resulting in the violent death of several of her friends. Five years later, we find her working a desk job for a national weather service before quickly being lured back into the dangerous world of tornado chasing.
She soon finds that tornado chasing has become a popular pastime flooded with amateur tornado freaks and a handsome, young, storm chasing, redneck, internet celebrity who shamelessly hawks t-shirts bearing his face and name.
The dynamic here is not just girls versus guys, but university trained Ph.Ds versus good ol’ boys in cowboy hats who like to shoot skyrockets into the funnels of terrifying twisters.
As expected, the special effects in Twisters are pretty slick. But they were also impressively slick in the original movie made almost three decades ago. That movie still plays well despite the over-the-top sequences that are pure “Hollywood.” Hey, it was a summer blockbuster movie, and movies like that always bend the hell out of reality and truth. It’s what we pay to see.
It doesn’t take long to realize that Twisters is just trying to cash in on the success of Twister. It has its moments, but lacks the story and character development that the original had.
It is a movie for the CMT crowd. Twisters is all country, beginning with its soundtrack. CMT here could stand for Country Music Tornados. It was shot in Oklahoma, taking full advantage of the local culture by featuring a rodeo event at night that substitutes for the famous drive-in movie sequence in the original.
Not to worry, there is still a movie theater sequence, this time in an indoor theater, showing classic horror movies. Somehow, the power never goes off and the movie manages to play right up to the moment that the theater screen is ripped right out of the side of the building.
If Twisters succeeds in accomplishing anything, it’s the fact that audiences will probably want to turn around and watch the original again. It was a lot more fun.
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