The original Twister in 1996 was dumb fun that benefited from producer Steven Spielberg’s pedigree — first-rate special effects, plus individual intrepid storm-chaser characterizations that brought a human touch similar to what boosted the dumb fun of Poltergeist.
The new release Twisters, however, is not a reboot but a pluralized update made in the Millennial spirit of a desperate, thoughtless hard sell. A multiplied diversity-inclusion-equity (DIE) cast — feminist Weather Channel expert Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), toxic white male tornado-chaser Tyler (Glen Powell), and Latino scientist and government wonk Javi (Anthony Ramos) — makes a competitive careerist rom-com triangle in the midst of challenging untamed nature.
Today’s DIE movies come with an implicit checklist/scorecard. It spoils the dumb fun because Hollywood is caught up in a mania for equity and environmental, social, governance (ESG) ratings — dumbness that’s not fun. This problem was revealed in a recent Hollywood Reporter article complaining that Twisters wasn’t politically correct enough. Writer James Hibbard concluded that this misstep was “a reflection of studio caution during polarized times.”
Fact is, Hollywood’s political crisis matches its artistic crisis. Twisters was directed by Lee Isaac Chung, the indie humanist best known for the Korean immigrant film Minari, who was recruited into the action genre for DIE’s sake, although he’s far from a visual wiz. Hibbard complained that Chung never includes the phrase “global warming,” suggesting that Twisters therefore lacks “semi-scientific heft”
It’s alarming to see the trade press pushing political propaganda. Hibbard advises, “The possible impact of climate change on tornadoes is complicated and still being figured out,” then contradicts his own assertion: “Scientists seem to agree tornado patterns are changing . . . even if the number of tornadoes overall is unchanged.”
What hasn’t changed in Hollywood is the mediocrity of unoriginal content. Spielberg is listed as one of the film’s executive producers, yet no one involved in Twisters demonstrates the wit to personalize it — perhaps by evoking that bizarre moment in The Fabelmans when Spielberg recalls his mother’s wacky fascination with tornadoes, recklessly driving her children to witness a twister up close. It was a metaphor for the domestic turmoil that awakened young Spielberg to secret family troubles. In Twisters, the Kate-Tyler-Javi love triangle is never so fascinating. Powell’s tornado wrangler, star of a YouTube rodeo-style podcast, brings a needed impudent squint to the film, reminiscent of Matthew McConnaughey’s redneck cockiness, with Burt Reynolds’s charm, but Powell’s sexy yokel smile doesn’t match Bill Paxton’s companionable guyness in the original movie, and Edgar-Jones’s conflicts lack the cautious irony that Jami Gertz brought to that gang of daredevil thrill-seekers.
The best thing about Twisters is the nearly astonishing tornado FX of the story’s meteorological phenomenon. Set in Oklahoma’s Tornado Alley, territory of once-in-a-generation tornado outbreaks, the rainstorms, a pillar of fire, and flying, twisted machinery are almost Michael Bay–worthy. The wide shots of an exploding power plant are spectacular, especially Tyler shooting fireworks into the dynamic core of a tornado.
When these scenes work, they are distractions from the story, which, as with the original (directed by Jan de Bont with the same single-mindedness he showed in Speed), is merely a pretext for the big-screen action. But Chung’s explanation of his intentions, though unimaginative, is a good defense: “I think what we are doing is showing the reality of what’s happening on the ground,” he told CNN. “We don’t shy away from saying that things are changing. I wanted to make sure that we are never creating a feeling that we’re preaching a message, because that’s certainly not what I think cinema should be about.”
The Hollywood Reporter should drop its partisanship and realize that Chung’s sequence of broken wind turbines becoming weapons against us, nearly killing the cast, makes a sufficiently effective statement against the Green New Deal.