‘Twisters’ Is This Year’s ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (And Not Just Because Glen Powell Looks Hot in Both)
The “summer blockbuster” is a coveted title that movie studios strive for, but rarely attain. For every Jaws or Jurassic Park, there are dozens of films like The Flash, Haunted Mansion, Blue Beetle, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, or Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (all of which underperformed last summer, by the way). It’s a challenging feat to create a genuinely captivating film that resonates with diverse audiences, and even more difficult to achieve without relying on established franchise appeal. Just look at the biggest summer movies from the past. The last original piece of content to conquer the summer box office was Finding Nemo in 2003. However, we’re currently experiencing a delightful resurgence of the summer blockbuster. Last year, Barbie and Oppenheimer, both featuring largely original concepts, surpassed the $1 billion mark and garnered Oscar nominations. The previous year, Top Gun: Maverick achieved the same feat. Now, in the summer of 2024, Twisters deserves to carry on that mantle. This standalone sequel to 1996’s Twister is one of the best movies of the year and deserves the financial success and Best Picture nomination that its quality warrants.
Of course, the original Twister was the Helen Hunt/Bill Paxton disaster thriller penned by Michael Crichton, which followed a pair of exes/storm chasers across Oklahoma as they hunted for tornadoes. The sequel, set in modern times with an entirely new cast, has almost nothing in common with the original except its abundance of tornadoes devastating small towns in Oklahoma. While Top Gun: Maverick retained Tom Cruise, Twisters, written by Mark L. Smith, completely steers clear of the past, opting to avoid even cameos from the original stars. Instead, the casting director seemingly copied and pasted a “Rising Stars” list from The Hollywood Reporter onto the call sheet and relaunched the franchise with a cast of soon-to-be A-list talent.
A New Generation of Storm Chasers
Rising Star #1, Daisy Edgar-Jones (who you might remember as Irish in Normal People or sporting salon-chic swamp girl hair in Where the Crawdads Sing), stars as Kate, a meteorology super nerd obsessed with tornadoes who possesses an almost supernatural, Delphic Oracle-like connection with nature. The film opens with Kate demonstrating her weather prophetess abilities, leading a group of fellow storm chasers towards a tornado. Their goal: deploy a chemical compound into the heart of the tornado to kill it (I can’t even begin to explain the science here, so don’t ask). Following a long tradition of disaster movies, the opening sequence swiftly wipes out her crew, including her boyfriend (Rising Star #2, Daryl McCormack of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande fame) and two sidekicks (Rising Star #3, Mad Men‘s Kiernan Shipka and Rising Star #4, Atypical‘s Nik Dodani). Only Kate and Javi (Rising Star #5, In the Heights actor and, most importantly, the ex of the illustrious Jazzy Jones, Anthony Ramos) survive.
Cut to five years later, and Kate has followed the long-held tradition of trauma-stricken midwesterners: she’s moved to New York. After about 30 seconds of persuasion, however, Javi convinces Kate to return to Oklahoma to work alongside his corporate, capitalist storm chasing entity Storm Par to conduct tornado scans (sure, science). After all, Storm Par needs a weather-predicting witch to help them pinpoint where tornadoes are going to strike.
Upon arriving in Oklahoma, Kate meets Javi’s robotic (and obviously evil) business partner Scott (Rising Star #6, Ryan Murphy groupie and future Superman, David Corenswet) and instantly finds herself in a rivalry with Arkansas YouTuber/storm chaser Tyler Owens (Rising Star #7, Glen Powell of Top Gun: Maverick, Anyone But You, and the criminally underrated Scream Queens). Tyler and his crew (including Rising Stars #8-10, Brandon Perea, Sasha Lane, and Katy O’Brian) want to set off fireworks into the tornado, which naturally infuriates Kate. As these enemies-to-lovers stories tend to go, though, Kate realizes at some point during her “Tornadoes in Six Acts” journey that she’s working for a ruthless real estate overlord trying to buy land from tornado victims on the cheap, while Tyler is actually trying to do some good in the world (despite being annoying about it). Along the way, of course, we encounter twin tornadoes, a fire tornado, the aforementioned fireworks tornado, and, naturally, a ferocious EF5 headed straight towards an unsuspecting town mid-farmer’s market.
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The Genius is in the Execution
The genius of Twisters, however, isn’t that it’s doing anything particularly groundbreaking. It’s not. It’s essentially giving us an action-adventure/disaster romance that we’ve seen countless times before. The genius lies in how meticulously perfect the execution is. And for that, I give credit to the Oscar-nominated writer/director of Minari, Lee Isaac Chung. Like The Woman King, Top Gun: Maverick, or Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Twisters is the best the genre has to offer.
The film is sleekly plotted, with plenty of entertaining set pieces that flow seamlessly into each other but remain distinct. All six tornado sequences are somehow uniquely thrilling, and there are just enough deaths to pack a punch without getting too gruesome. The characters are deftly written so that we know EXACTLY who they are within seconds, without feeling like stereotypes. That’s a feat nearly impossible without sharp writing and superb, empathetic performances. Harry Hadden-Paton’s British journalist, Maura Tierney’s farm mom, and the approximately 700 storm chasers are all somehow specific. Kate and Tyler’s romance unfolds in a believable way with a perfectly calibrated amount of cheesiness. (“Let’s go to the rodeo, and I’ll tell you about my first tornado.”) My only complaint there is that we don’t get a kiss, but I’ll forgive Chung if we get a sequel (for which I have an idea).
The Technical Prowess of Twisters
The visual effects are well executed and augmented by strong practical effects and storm-ravaged sets. The props department makes everything feel lived in (looking at you, Little House on the Prairie box set in Kate’s bedroom), while the costume department makes everyone realistically grungy hot. The stacked original country music soundtrack makes every scene pop. (Think The Black Panther soundtrack if it was made by white people in Tennessee.) Twisters deserves at least a half dozen Oscar nominations, including ones for Best Picture and Best Original Song.
Twisters is better than Twister and better than most other movies that have hit theaters this summer. If I could predict the trajectory of films like Kate can storms, I’d blow a dandelion into the air, slowly turn, start sprinting to my car, and shout, “We’ve got an EF5 hit coming our way!”
Grade: A
Next, Everything You Need to Know About the New ‘Twisters’ Movie
What is ‘Twisters’ and why is it being compared to ‘Top Gun: Maverick’?
‘Twisters’ is a standalone sequel to the 1996 film ‘Twister’ and is being compared to ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ due to its potential to become a successful summer blockbuster with original content.
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How does ‘Twisters’ differ from its predecessor?
‘Twisters’ is set in modern times with an entirely new cast and has almost nothing in common with the original ‘Twister’ except for the theme of tornadoes devastating small towns in Oklahoma.
Who are some of the rising stars featured in ‘Twisters’?
One of the rising stars in ‘Twisters’ is Daisy Edgar-Jones, known for her roles in ‘Normal People’ and ‘Where the Crawdads Sing,’ who plays Kate, a meteorology super nerd obsessed with tornadoes.
What sets ‘Twisters’ apart from other recent summer blockbusters?
‘Twisters’ stands out from recent summer blockbusters by being largely original in concept, not relying on established franchise appeal, and featuring a cast of soon-to-be A-list talent, aiming to achieve financial success and possibly a Best Picture nomination.
