Indie filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung, best known for his award-winning semi-autobiographical feature Minari, initially seemed like a perplexing choice to helm Twisters. The indie-to-blockbuster filmmaking pipeline in Hollywood is notorious for sucking in promising directors and draining them of, well, everything that made them so promising to begin with, in favor of delivering a serviceable final product. This isn’t always the case, though. Some rising filmmakers have made the jump to blockbusters with their creative integrity intact. Chung, against all odds, is the latest to do so, and it doesn’t take long to see why he was the right choice to bring Twisters to life. The legacy sequel of sorts, which is a joint-venture production between Universal, Warner Bros., Amblin Entertainment, and the Kennedy/Marshall Company, was always an inevitability given the industry’s love of reviving old IP. However, Twisters is anything but a cheap and easy money grab.
After surviving a tragic encounter with a massive EF5 category tornado in her college years, brilliant meteorologist Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) puts storm chasing behind her. Five years later, Cooper sits at a desk job predicting storm patterns at the National Weather Service in New York City, where her talents are clearly being underutilized. Kate finds a chance at redemption when her old colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos) re-enters her life with an offer. Javi is on the verge of revealing a groundbreaking new tracking system for tornadoes that can potentially save thousands of lives across the Midwest. He just needs a cunning storm chaser like Kate to help test it in the field. Kate herself was once on the verge of revolutionizing how people can coexist with tornadoes, but this experiment ultimately failed and has lingered over her as a neglected passion project ever since.
Fueled by her dreams of making a difference, Kate returns to the open plains of central Oklahoma with Javi, his hard-headed business partner Scott (David Corenswet), and their team of clean-cut scientists. But they aren’t the only storm chasers in town. Arkansas-born social-media superstar Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), aka the Tornado wrangler, brings in crowds of tourists to Tornado Alley, all looking for an autograph and a front seat to one of his storm-chasing adventures. Through their popular YouTube channel, Tyler and his ragtag crew — made up of videographer Boone (Brandon Perea), drone operator Lilly (Sasha Lane), mechanic Dani (Katy O’Brian), and scientist Dexter (Tunde Adebimpe) — bring the sweet thrills of tornado chasing to millions of viewers at home, with a little Southern twist. Tyler’s team is joined by Ben (Harry Hadden-Paton), a London journalist working on a piece on American storm chasers.
Courtesy of Universal
As the storm season intensifies and the people of Oklahoma face waves of undetectable, deadly tornadoes, Kate finds herself torn between Javi and Tyler’s competing teams. Her skills have finally given Javi the lead in who can track down tornadoes first, but their research could be contributing to the wrong cause, unbeknownst to Javi’s good intentions. This core dilemma makes way for a proven plot structure, hitting all the right beats to make an audience cheer and laugh regardless of how slightly predictable the story might be. The real magic of the screenplay, written by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant, The Boys in the Boat) with a story credit from none other than Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick, the upcoming F1), lies in the character work and performances, though. This is the most remarkable aspect of Twisters; it sometimes feels more like a character-focused drama rather than a disaster film.
Rivals at first, it’s highly entertaining to see hotshot internet personality Tyler feel threatened by Kate, a storm chaser who’s more intuitive than he is without showing it off. Daisy Edgar-Jones (Where the Crawdads Sing, Fresh) and Glen Powell (Hit Man, Anyone But You) have great chemistry, and their alluring enemies-to-allies dynamic keeps Twisters moving at a breezy pace. Things get more exciting when the unsuspecting Javi opposes their growing friendship. Anthony Ramos (In the Heights, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts) gets to flaunt his usual comedic chops as Javi while grounding the role with large amounts of empathy and vulnerability. There are tons of hilarious moments with both Ramos and Powell, and even with supporting players like Brandon Perea (Nope), Sasha Lane (American Honey), and Katy O’Brian (Love Lies Bleeding). However, their characters are each treated with enough nuance to avoid being boxed in comedic relief stereotypes.
Despite the differences between the main trio, they all share the same inexplicable love of chasing tornados and a passion for spreading knowledge. As Glen Powell’s Tyler explains, “It’s part science, part religion” for them. Director Lee Isaac Chung depicts these storm chasers not as simple thrill-seekers but as game-changers who put the often overlooked blue-collar communities of Tornado Alley first. Whether it’s through Kate’s science experiments or Tyler’s social media antics, a rich culture can be found when spotlighting the Midwest. This is where Twisters truly shines, as it makes the audience care about every character and rural location before the next devastating tornado arrives. The script emphasizes that these are real people who have everything on the line, including their lives. It’s impressive how Chung seamlessly reaffirms these tangible stakes right before each disastrous twister sequence, blowing them all away (literally) with gale-force winds as the chaos ensues.
Courtesy of Universal
Shot on location across Oklahoma, Twisters proves that 35mm film can still be effectively used at a blockbuster scale. While the scenes involving catastrophic tornadoes feature heavy CGI and VFX, the richness of 35mm film is seen in the lively moments when Lee Isaac Chung explores the rural towns of Oklahoma and all of its inhabitants. Additionally, real footage of tornadoes captured by actual storm chasers, along with realistic science, is applied in multiple set pieces, making the action feel more life-like. Chung and cinematographer Dan Mindel (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) take things a step further in other instances when utilizing a digital screen POV, either through characters’ phones or the cameras for Tyler’s YouTube channel, bringing the audience up close and personal with the storm chasers in the field. In this way, the blockbuster spectacle of Twisters is both jaw-dropping and surprisingly intimate.
Director Lee Isaac Chung, himself from a rural, small-town background, paints an authentic portrait of the American Midwest in Twisters. Through the cast’s earnest performances, a mighty capable script, and clever visuals, this standalone sequel surpasses all expectations as a more than worthy follow-up to the 1996 original film starring the late Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt. Chung’s sincere directorial touch gives the movie a strong identity of its own. If it wasn’t already clear by its notable country music soundtrack, which features Luke Combs, Miranda Lambert, and more, Twisters serves as an ode to the everyday folk of Tornado Valley, USA. Unfortunately, the one person undermined in Twisters is soon-to-be Superman star David Corenswet. The actor’s one job here is to play an unlikable, immoral jerk. Thankfully, there’s more than enough of Glen Powell’s cowboy charm to compensate for it.
Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters is a disaster movie with a genuine heart and cinematic swagger that cannot be easily replicated. Judging by the film’s ending, there could be more story to tell. In any other scenario, this would be painfully obvious and groan-worthy. But in Twisters, viewers will be convinced that they can follow Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos into the heart of whatever megastorm Chung can conjure up next. As Tyler’s saying goes, “If you feel it, chase it.” And oh, does it feel like something is brewing on the horizon.
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