Being from Kerala, tornados are not something I can relate to, and hence, the idea of a movie about the science behind tornados sounded compelling to me. Twisters, the latest Hollywood disaster film, is a stand-alone sequel to the 1996 movie Twister, which was also about tornados. While the insightful information about tornados and the way it gets applied in the film is interesting, the drama in the writing is quite predictable, and the inability of the writing to take the movie away from the generic beats makes it a passable film with fewer takeaways.
Kate Cooper is a meteorologist, and five years ago, she used to be a storm chaser. A tragic incident happened during one of her storm-chasing expeditions, and it changed her drastically. In the present day, her friend Javi meets her and asks her to help him and his company collect data about these storms. Initially reluctant, the benefits of the study to fellow human beings made Kate make a comeback to that space, which gave her a lot of scars. The events that unfolded during her second outing as a chaser are what we witness in the film.
In terms of the structuring of the screenplay, the placement of characters and the ethical twists in the tale, etc., are very guessable. What keeps you hooked is how the movie explores the various aspects of a tornado through a series of events. In order to feel that as a compelling enough idea, you need to be a bit alien about the whole concept. The corporate versus rebel conflict inside a tragedy was actually a dramatic track that had potential. Ultimately, the movie’s focus is on being visually spectacular, and I guess Lee Isaac Chung is not trying too much to make the emotional layer of the story nuanced.
The screenplay by Mark L. Smith, based on a story by Joseph Kosinski, has no sluggish patches. That is perhaps the reason why you are never bored, even when you are aware of what the movie will do in the next turn. From the flashback to the present, the movie is eventful, and through each event, it is subconsciously educating the viewer about various things one should be aware of in tornados. I am no science geek, but the presentation of the “scientific” solution we see in the film had a conviction in presentation. One of the things that I liked about the scale of the film was the fact that the visuals rarely used extremely wide CGI-rich frames to show the scale of the catastrophe. The cinematography opted for more of a panicky technique, and Lee Isaac Chung mostly gives us an onlooker perspective whenever there is a calamity.
Daisy Edgar-Jones plays the part of Kate Cooper in the film. There are two versions of the character in the film, and she shifts between those two phases convincingly. Glenn Powell, as this YouTuber storm-chaser, is mostly in that “trying to impress” phase. I think it was like that, even on a script level, and it rarely felt like a challenge. Anthony Ramos, as Javi, gets this character whose emotions are pretty soft, and we can see his intentions and the way he eventually turns around from a distance. The next Superman, David Corenswet, is there as this pompous assistant to Javi.
On the whole, there is that big screen experience factor to the film that makes it an engaging watch. When it comes to the drama in the story, the film has taken a proven and tested safe path to create a screenplay. It was kind of ironic that while watching the film, I received a message from home saying the power was out because a tree had fallen due to heavy wind. And then, in the movie’s climax, Lee Isaac Chung has put all the people inside a movie theater that was falling apart.
When it comes to the drama in the story, the film has taken a proven and tested safe path to create a screenplay.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
