Susan and I went to the Alamo Drafthouse to see Twisters this afternoon. We shared some fried pickles and a Royale burger with cheese. The movie was presented in one of their larger theaters with Dolby Atmos sound. This technology works perfectly with a movie like Twister(s) because, your ears tell you that you are in the maw of a tornado in those scenes that depict that.
This movie isn’t a remake of the original 1996 Twister, but it is very derivative and has many echoes of the original. There are two teams of tornado chasers – one very disciplined and the other very brash. The first team, Storm Par, is focused and grounded in science whereas the other, the Tornado Wranglers, is brash and undisciplined driven by adrenaline rather than a thirst for knowledge. Of course, things are almost never as clear as they appear. It matters what is under the veneer of appearances, one might say.
The Dorothy tornado analysis device of Twister 1996 makes a cameo appearance in Twisters 2024, but that isn’t the end of the Wizard of Oz references. This movie also pays homage to Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, and Wizard. It’s well done. Alas, there is no mention of Toto.
The movie is set in the rural plains of Oklahoma. There are widefield, aerial shots reminiscent of those in the 1996 movie. In the early parts of the movie, the score is a soaring orchestral music very fitting for the adventure to come – again, it is evocative of the original movie. In fact, there are many scenes in this movie that recapitulate the original, but they are done in a tasteful way that suits the new movie’s screenplay and doesn’t come across as cheesy or cheap.
If the underlying theme of the original movie was, “How do tornadoes work,” the theme in this movie is, “What can we do once we understand how tornadoes work?” Interestingly, the original movie focused on developing better early warning systems; this new movie shows us that the additional understanding didn’t help much to prevent loss of life and property. Sigh.
Rotten Tomatoes gives the new movie a freshness score of 77 whereas the original Twister scored only 66%. Daisy Edgar-Jones is a very believable meteorologist as Kate Cooper, and Glen Powell (Hangman from Top Gun: Maverick) plays Tyler Owens who, I think, has the same swagger as Hangman even if he is an entirely different character.
This was a fun albeit noisy movie. The food was yummy. What can I say? We left the theater just a bit windblown.