When Hollywood studios reveal ticket sales for their movies, the primary dollar amount is reported as having been made from the domestic market. What you may not be aware of is that “domestic” means the gross box office revenue for the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Everything else is considered “international.”
The new film “Twisters” had a production budget of $155-million. To break even, it needed to earn back that amount plus an additional 40% to cover promotional and marketing costs; essentially $217-million. After three weeks in release, “Twisters” has taken in more than $220-million worldwide. In theory, it’s profitable. However, Hollywood-style accounting is always a hit and miss proposition. Ticket sales are good, but it’s certainly not a mega-earning wonder.
The studio behind “Twisters” doesn’t consider it a sequel or a prequel to 1996’s “Twister.” It’s also not being called a remake. It’s allegedly a stand-alone motion picture. However, let’s be honest here. The basic thrust of both films involves storm chasers, who are obsessed with tracking tornados. There are gizmos and gadgets and fancy radar, but c’mon, these are the same movies with some minimal changes. Of course, there are more computers this time around, but too much computer activity isn’t always a good thing.
What I saw at a theater the other day wasn’t anything particularly original. The 1996 film had a scene at a drive-in. The new version has a scene inside a movie theater, which is showing a horror movie festival. In spite of a tornado hitting town, the electricity stays on and a fright film keeps playing. The reference to the horror of Mother Nature clashing with make-believe horror is, quite frankly, an embarrassingly amateurish theoretical comparison not worthy of a high school term paper. And yes, characters in 2024 also hide under a highway overpass as in the 1996 feature.
“Twisters” has some crowd-pleasing elements that generally succeed, but the youthful players lack the hyper-talented pizzazz of the cast from “Twister.” The latter stars Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Cary Elwes, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jamie Gertz, and Alan Ruck. In similar roles in “Twisters,” comparing Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, David Corenswet, Brandon Perea, Sasha Lane, and Anthony Ramos to them isn’t even a fair fight.
Here’s the story for “Twisters.” Edgar-Jones plays the intelligent and attractive Kate Carter, a former storm chaser, who, because of a tragedy involving the deaths of members of her team (shown in the film’s prologue), has quit her in-the-field adventures following tornadoes and now works for a television meteorological service in Manhattan. That’s New York, not Kansas.
Her former partner, Javi (Ramos) arrives in the east with a proposition. His storm tracking company has state-of-the-art technology to study tornadoes, and he wants her to help him. He’s convinced his technology will help save lives, and he wants her to assist him with the testing of the components.
Even years later, Kate’s trauma is still raw; however, there’s no question that she’s going along, but “just for a week” during peak tornado season. Kate and Javi are serious about their mission, but they have to deal with a handsome weather cowboy named Tyler Owens (Powell), who calls himself a Tornado Wrangler. He’s a fast-talking YouTube star, and the closer he can get to a dangerous tornado, the better it is for his fame and fortune.
You can see where this is going. Clashing weather-obsessed egos. A potential romance between Kate the beauty and Tyler the good-looking “beast.” Small towns destroyed. Mark L. Smith’s screenplay is as safe as its PG-13 rating can be. Director Lee Isaac Chung delivers a paint-by-the-numbers movie that is very good in terms of special effects, but lacks anything remotely resembling a surprise.
One of the main problems with the story is the early set-up. We see Kate’s original team in Tornado Alley being decimated, and she is grieving, but because those victims have no character development whatsoever – we literally don’t know anything about them – we have to be told to be sad. That’s bad writing from the get-go.
A second problem is that “Twisters” has no actual villain. In the original “Twister,” Elwes’ character Jonas Miller is a mean-spirited inventor who wants credit for the design of “Dorothy,” a weather-sensing device. Elwes adds a sharply divergent and disruptive dimension to the hunt for tornadoes. “Twisters” needed a good villain, and not somebody like the real estate investor who suddenly shows up. That woefully underwritten part is meaningless.
A third problem is that Chung is not a good director of actors. Performances are standard issue and no one stands out, especially not Powell, who people in Hollywood insist is going to a star. Yes, Powell is excellent in “Hit Man,” but in this standard issue summer popcorn movie, his characterization of a glib and glorified Tyler is too obvious, too rote. He offers no nuance or shading.
Additionally, the fragmented ending seems to promise a sequel, but you have to wonder about that. Also, why is the audience prevented from seeing the bodies of tornado victims? Who are Chung, Smith, producers Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley, and executive producer Steven Spielberg protecting? A few people get sucked into the vortex, but there is absolutely no sense of the human tragedy we’re watching.
One performance is worth noting, and that’s from Maura Tierney as Cathy Carter, Kate’s mother. She brings a nice dose of reality to the goings-on. She cares about Kate and welcomes Tyler to her home. In fact, the scenes involving Mrs. Carter are the best in the film because her compassion gives the movie’s middle section some believable humanity after nothing but repetitive tornado chasing.
“Twisters” is a mildly entertaining diversion, nothing more. Every character but one is a cliche and every performance but one feeds into that cliche. The film never recovers from its lack of originality. It’s possible it may have some success with moviegoers who haven’t seen the much better “Twister.”