Twister (1996) has gotten a sequel and its title is Twisters (2024). When Twister came out it was the must-see movie at my school. You weren’t cool unless you had seen Twister. Then, on home video, Twister became as much a mainstay as Jurassic Park (1993). Twister was a movie, like Goldeneye (1995) that was watched over and over again at slumber parties.
This new sequel is for people like me who grew up with Twister. Twisters is what executives over at Universal and Warner Bros. think that we want in a movie. Without any of the original cast it is more of a spiritual sequel than a direct continuation of the narrative of the first film. But do we actually want another Twister movie?
We’ve gotten Ghostbusters movies and Star Wars movies when there’s been no demand and they’ve been hits. Maybe these executives and their focus groups know something that I don’t. Maybe American cinema is just that bankrupt of original ideas that they have to revive intellectual properties that are thirty years old. Perhaps these films help affirm the arrested development of the millennial generation.
That isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy Twisters. It’s a silly diversion with some cool special effects. However, I must admit that most of the time I kept thinking about how Glen Powell and his buddies are probably all political conservatives and are steeped in fringe conspiracy theories. The film very carefully avoided citing climate change and that only reiterated this reading of Powell and his buddies.
To be honest this made it hard to root for the romance or even Powell’s survival. He’s a charming actor who I liked in Everybody Wants Some!! (2016), but I just couldn’t see him as anything other than a rightwing radical. Daisy Edgar-Jones, on the other hand, was far less interesting to watch. She possessed none of the rough and tumble charisma of Helen Hunt.
In the end what I liked most about Twisters is that it is packing my local indie movie theater regularly. The theater management even hung inflatable cows in the lobby as if they were caught in the winds of a tornado. Any movie, good, bad, or otherwise is fine by me if it helps keep the little theaters afloat so they can pursue more inspired programming.
