Twisters (2024) is the perfectly synthesized summer blockbuster. Director Lee Isaac Chung has woven together all the essential movie-making chemicals — humans conquering Mother Nature, flawless bone structure, and pickup trucks — formulated to bring crowds back to the movie theatre this summer. There’s just something about a big summer movie release, a certain aura or energy. I can best describe it as buzz, a buzz I’ve been chasing since the summer I saw Transformers (2007) as a kid.
Seeing the movie in IMAX takes the viewer directly into the heart of a tornado, a white-knuckling experience I can’t recommend enough. While not filmed with an IMAX camera, the movie’s large scale still benefits greatly from the format; besides, who’s going to complain about being able to see Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell’s pores? The locations are gorgeous, and everything down to the red dirt roads pop on screen.
Jones and Powell are a scintillating duo. I pay a lot of attention to a character’s introduction, and Kate, played by Jones, is the focal point of the opening scene in the movie. The audience sees right away that the movie revolves around Kate, and her love of storm-chasing. The question becomes: will she pursue her passion or be afraid of it?
As for Powell, there might not be a more charismatic actor in Hollywood right now. Powell has perfected the “guy you love to hate” moniker to a tee…but his character, Tyler, has depth beyond that. His catchphrase of — “if you feel it, chase it” — gives him the passion-based persona that Kate is drawn to, perhaps because she’s repressing in her own life. By the end of the movie I was convinced this wasn’t just an average “hot guy” stereotypical role, and one that takes real chops to sell to an audience.
My movie preferences tend to lean away from superheroes and toward films with an emotional core. I thoroughly enjoyed Chung’s previous A24 Films LLC release, Minari (2020); a personal and intimate telling of the director’s childhood family move to Arkansas. Minari is striking because of its rich visuals — you can smell the farm, feel the dirt under your fingernails — Arkansas is more than a setting, it’s a character.
Oklahoma has the same feel in Twisters. Located about five hours West of Arkansas makes the setting just like Minari, very close to Chung’s heart. Country music is obviously integral to the location, and makes up the majority of the movie’s soundtrack. I personally find an original score more compelling in film and more likely to create tension. I can’t argue with the authentic approach of Luke Combs blasting with the windows down though — Texas forever.
Despite the storyline revolving around tornado season and the destruction of entire towns, Oklahoma comes off charming and resilient. After each storm on screen, communities are seen giving food to one another, and recovering artifacts from damaged homes; each tornado is like an appearance from Godzilla or Jaws: devastating. Tornados are effectively the movie’s “monster.”
Summer blockbusters need action; it’s part of the formula. I respect Twisters’ integrity to create action sequences but not for the sake of “adding action.” I don’t personally care for meaningless things going boom, but building the essence of the tornados on-screen to be genuinely terrifying is accomplished in the movie. While the visual impact of an on-screen tornado is frightening on its own, when accompanied by a shaky cam, each storm has a signature sound. Chung revealed to Vanity Fair that the sounds were actually audio of horses.
Quirky dialogue is to be expected, such as Tyler’s line “you don’t face your fears… you ride ‘em.” Part of your suspended disbelief has to involve not getting too hung up over dialogue. Some movies are just about being fun. I found it comical how on two or three different occasions, Kate would be by herself, gazing at the horizon, only to be interrupted by Tyler and his masculine bravado, waddling side-to-side into frame like he just hit two months straight of lat pulldowns. His true talent might be turning cringeworthy conversation into something authentic, that only he could get away with.
I disliked the notion painted by the movie that Kate was seemingly an object of desire to every male character and friend she had in the movie. It’s reductive of her intelligence and natural knack for tracking weather, can’t she just have friends? It seemed as though the movie was loading up on sexual tension between Kate and Tyler, and that there would be some sort of pay off for the audience in the form of a kiss, although the kiss was controversially cut from the final product. I don’t disagree with the decision to cut the kiss, but why tailor the rest of the movie to build up to a moment that ended up being cut?
Twisters has a little bit of something for everybody. It’s not on the same level of summer blockbuster as The Dark Knight, (2008) or Inception, (2010) but it’s much more enjoyable to me than Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) for those looking for an original-ish storyline. Twisters gets four out of five stars from me on Letterboxd.
