“Twisters” is 2024’s Summer Blockbuster

So see it. But also know you’ve been warned. PTSD is real and “Tide Pod” MacGyver type taming measures for fixing mother nature are not. Read on for more.

❗Spoilers up ahead.

What am I watching when I’m not throwing up from Twisters?

• Obituary, an Irish black dramedy on Hulu with Siobhan Cullen (Bodkin) about a journalist who writes obits and has a rather unhealthy obsession with murder. Think of a female “Dexter.”

  

  Verdict: Wasn’t amazing, but if you’re jonesing for a somewhat smarter, funnier crime show, in the arena of OMITB or Bodkin then you might enjoy this one.

• Rewatching Veep on Max with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, one of the best comedic actors. It ages like fine wine and it’s cathartic. It’s now the #1 show on the streamer. Go figure.

• Still watching The Lady in the Lake [Preview it here]

• Thanks to this week’s recommendation from

  Good Humor by CK Steefel
  and
  Ingrid Haring-Mendes
  , one-half of the Lisogorsky husband and wife team (hint: XY) is now a fan of The Last Kingdom on Netflix. Think Danes fighting Saxons in the 9th-10th Century. Lots of blood, sweat, tears and drama. Warrior vibes.

  Verdict: One of us stopped watching around episode 2 (after reading the series’s spoilers) and the other (who refrained from such activity) is on episode 8.

  True or False: Overlaps with Game of Thrones audience just a little?

  I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours (oh wait, already did!)

  What are you currently watching?

On the set of the film Twister (1996) to which the updated tornado horror film Twisters (2024) is tangentially connected, actor Bill Paxton prophesied that Twister would do for tornados what the film Jaws did for sharks [see low-def Entertainment Tonight interview with youngish, adorable Bill]. In short, the idea is to scare the bejesus out of filmgoers and leave us with an undercurrent of fear when faced with either stimulus (sharks or tornados) forevermore. Thankfully sharks don’t reside in tornado-ridden states. Oh yeah, they do:

Before we dive into Twisters, revisit the original film in this article [🔗 Twister: What Works/What Doesn’t Work] It’s the better of the two films.

Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore

Twisters, the film by Director Lee Issac Chung, contorts Paxton’s vision, a low-key humble brag spoken from the POV of a young, excited actor doing his riffing thing on set into a boastful “man vs nature” event for the ages. 

Source: Universal Pictures

This film brings the action, thrill, and excitement of non-stop summer entertainment, and mark my words, for 122 minutes you will be enthralled. If you have a smartwatch that tracks your heart rate, you may notice that your heart rate zone gets up to 3. I jest slightly but the stress is real here. Not one for amusement park thrill rides as I’m riddled with inner ear imbalances, a few times I had motion sickness, thinking I’d black out from the intensity of the tornado scenes. I looked over at my friend,

Rebecca Cyr

who coined the term “tide pod solution” which I’ll get to later, and she was covering her face. I share this with you to say this film is not for the faint of heart or anyone with a pulse. These climactic cinematic scenes were a ripe combination of piercing howling destructive wind force sound coupled with visuals of debris hitting everything in its path and swooping up innocent people at breakneck speeds. And you could pretty much hit, “repeat” on that ride every 5 minutes. There’s a reason the film title is appended with an “s.”

Here are the top ticket items I take issue with in this film:

#1 -  The science/engineering is phony (Think “Voodoo Economics”)

Glen Powell’s “Cowboy Twister Wrangler” Logan Tyler Owens can withstand the twisters because he’s devised an innovative solution to resist the vortices (I had to look that one up) by employing screws connected to an exterior roll cage of his pick-up truck that can bolt into the ground and allow the vehicle to remain steady and intact when faced with winds of over 200 mph. Say what?

#2 - …Its science is really phony (#TIDEPODsolution)

The film would lead one to conclude that myriads of mega-vats carrying tons of sodium-polyacrylate solution can tame the mad twisters when released into the twister vortex, but the whole physics angle is suspect. Sure, I’m not a physicist PhD candidate like Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Kate or a solver of complex quantum computing modeling like Powell’s Tyler, but I think it seems like a silly and all-too-simple answer to a problem that has persisted for the ages. I’m a Gen Xer, so sue me cynical, but so is director Lee Issac Chung. This kind of moxie translates to “braggart.”

#3 - None of the characters are well fleshed-out

The depth of the characters isn’t there. Not a one is super memorable. The first film follows two competing tornado chaser teams and that storyline holds here too. Only, Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is on the “bad corporate” side for a while and looks down on Tyler’s motley crew of misfit YouTubers. Back to the theme of this film not being humble, pretty much everyone in Tyler’s crew is an idiot savant, and no one appears to have a college degree given their ages, apart from Tyler and Dexter, and yet all of them possess sharp scientific acumen. There’s no Philip Seymour-Hoffman ensemble character whose personality you grow to know here. Even the primary cast of Ramos, Edgar-Jones, and Powell are flimsily fleshed out. Kate (Edgar-Jones) being the character with a little more depth, in some ways is more of an enigma than the dudes. Case in point: Why is Tyler a tornado wrangler? Because he confronts his fears head-on! He will never let fear get the better of him.

#4 - Kate’s PTSD is Ignored by all the men who supposedly love her, including the filmmaker

It’s pretty unreal in this day and age that a female character is traumatized to the extent of Kate Carter in this film, with no real sensitivity or appreciation for how that trauma might affect her. Javi (Ramos), her good friend, whisks her back from NYC to Oklahoma to chase tornados (“She’s the best there is! She’s got a gift.”) five years after she lost her whole crew, save Javi, to a twister. He continually places her in precarious spots risking her life and his to gather data for the corporation funding him. Even Logan, her love interest, invites her into his pick-up truck with its faulty screws and drives into a twister vortex thinking this is a good idea, completely tone-deaf to her pain. “Yeah it’s a wild ride, man!” The lack of empathy and prioritization of bravado over care is very off-putting. Plus, Kate is a PhD candidate. Can we stop referring to her skills and education as “powers” and “gifts”?

#5 - Logan lurks behind Kate ALL THE TIME like the ghost girl from Paranormal Activity

Sure, it’s Glen Powell and not a scary horror girl, but still, it got old when he went all darknet, found Kate at her childhood home, and showed up, standing behind her in the barn. I got chills.

#6 - The film largely ignores its TWISTER roots

There is a nod to the science of Twister’s “Dorothy” establishing the prototype that Kate’s team is building upon, but apart from this, the diner locale, and the replica of Aunt Meg’s house as Kate’s childhood home, it felt absent. Couldn’t Kate have been related to Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton’s characters? Throw us a bone, please. And I’m not talking about the cameo of Bill Paxton’s son playing the “lasted for a minute before the twister swallowed him whole” motel worker.

Here are the TWO main reasons to see the film

No doubt that the real draw of the film are the lead actors. I’ve been a fan of Daisy Edgar-Jones since Normal People [trailer] based on the novel by Sally Rooney, which is similarly excellent, and then the remake of War of The Worlds [trailer]series whose first season is highly recommended. You can skip the others.

#GLENERGY (Glen Powell) has been lighting up screens over the past year. Last Summer, his romance hit with Sydney Sweeney, Anyone But You grossed $220 million and Spring brought us his collab with Linklater in Hit Man. Yes, he was also in Top Gun: Maverick, but who cares? It was his role in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie, one of the top period romances to emerge in the last 10 years, that had me notice him first.

For more #GLENERGY-Related Content:

A Unified Theory of Glen Powell

Let’s Discuss

• Have you seen Twisters? Did you like it?

• If you’ve seen both the original Twister and Twisters, which did you prefer and why?

• Do we need a threequel? Or can we safely put this franchise to bed?