A deadly new generation of tornadoes threatens the Midwest, forcing storm chasers and scientists to face the unprecedented destruction in a race against time in Twisters, the movie of the summer. This thriller directed by Lee Issac Chung, was the movie of the summer for all actions fans, and everyone else who loved the prequel.
The movie starts out when two of the main characters Javi and Kate are in college, whom are both studying meteorology, are in Oklahoma with their three closest friends, Jeb, Praveen, and Addy. Kate, who is portrayed by Daisy Edgar-Jones, has always had a knack for weather, she would always tell you when a storm was coming and could even tell you when a tornado was coming before the sirens went off. They all have the same belief, if you put enough sodium polyacrylate into a tornado it will weaken it. The group goes into a tornado thinking it was maybe an EF1 or EF2 tornado at the most, so they only prepared enough of the solution for an EF2, little did they know they were going into an EF5 tornado. With this miscalculation, the tornado got out of hand so quickly and caused Javi and Kate to lose their three closest friends to one of the deadliest tornadoes in the history of Oklahoma.
Fast forward 5 years, Kate is now in New York working at the NOAA as a meteorological operations officer. Javi then meets her and asks if she will take a one-week position at Storm Par, the company he works for, with his team to test a new system of tornado scanning technology using phased-array radars. Kate takes on this job, in her home state of Oklahoma, she contemplated this decision because she doesn’t want to fail again and possibly lose her best friend. Kate and Javi get to the area where they are going to be storm chasing, then he pulls up. If you are wondering who “he” is, I’m talking about Mr. Tornado Wrangler, Tyler Owens, who is portrayed by Glen Powell. Tyler is a famous YouTube star who records his journeys as a storm chaser along with the rest of his team. The Tornado Wranglers give off this vibe that they are only storm chasing for the views, which completely makes Storm Par think very low of him. Kate dismisses these so-called morons and goes to storm chase with Storm Par, and also leads the Wranglers the wrong direction while tornado chasing. Despite this, the team successfully deploys the scanning system during the next tornado, providing them with the data they were looking for. However, the tornado changes its direction, destroying the scanner and causing Kate and Javi to barely escape.
After the ordeal, they drive to assist a nearby town’s recovery after an unknown tornado obliterates it. Kate runs into one of Tyler’s team members, still giving them the cold shoulder, especially Tyler who tells her that the investor, Marshall Riggs, is exploiting these disasters for profit. She dismisses this, but before she can drive off, Lilly
from Tyler’s crew, offers her some food for the road, to which she learns that Tyler’s team uses the money made from the merchandise sales to aid tornado victims and they understand the severity of storm chasing.
Back at the motel where Storm Par and the Tornado Wranglers are staying, Kate secretly begins to research Marshall Riggs and Storm Par until Tyler knocks on her door and invites her to a nearby rodeo, so the two can have a “fresh start”. Kate starts to bond with Tyler who reveals his first encounter with a tornado, past experience as a rodeo cowboy, and going to college to become a meteorologist. Kate shares that she grew up in a small town on a farm in Sapulpa, Oklahoma.
During the rodeo, a tornado forms literally out of nowhere, causing everyone to panic and people to seek shelter. Kate, Tyler and a small family hide in an empty hotel pool until the tornado passes. Afterward, Kate confronts Javi about Riggs’ unethical behavior, leading to an argument in which Javi (in the heat of the moment) blames Kate for the deaths of Addy, Praveen, and Jeb, this causes Kate to take Javi’s truck and drive home to her childhood home.
Kate surprises her mom at home, where her mom then worries about her mental and emotional state. While reminiscing through her projects and notes throughout school in her barn, Tyler shows up out of nowhere, and suddenly knows everything about her emotional and traumatic past. He encourages her to retry her experiment but refuses after she has an emotional breakdown and has flashbacks of the day her friends were killed. The next morning, Tyler leaves, Kate asks him to stay and help with this new experiment. They deduced the initial failure and made the necessary adjustments with data received from the apologetic yet stubborn Javi.
As a massive tornado forms near El Reno, Kate, Tyler and their team (Kate is now a Tornado Wrangler, but Storm Par goes to retrieve data) rush to help the people in El Reno. Javi starts to question Storm Par, disillusioned with Scott and Marshall, and goes to help the people in El Reno with Kate and Tyler. Kate, Tyler and their teams help evacuate residents. Tyler gets trapped in debris but is saved by Kate and Javi. They shelter in a movie theater, but soon realize the theater wouldn’t hold against the tornado.
Determined to stop the destruction, Kate drives Tyler’s truck directly into the storm and deploys the solution of silver iodine and the sodium polyacrylate, dissipating the tornado but getting caught in the overturned truck. The team rescues Kate as the storm calms and rejoices because her experiment worked.
At the end of the movie, Javi drops Kate off at the airport, promising to continue researching. Tyler hopes Kate stays, but she has her sights set on going back to New York. Right as Kate gets inside the airport, flights start getting canceled and delayed due to strong winds and a possible tornado, Tyler gets Kate and she decides to stay in Oklahoma a little longer with Tyler, she goes back to the field and enjoys Tyler’s company, while Ben, the British journalist, wants to focus on her story.
This movie is the spin-off from the initial 1996 thriller Twister, which is also an incredible film in it of itself but somehow this modernized version is just so much better. This movie is also somehow more stressful than the original which I didn’t think was possible at all, the actors they had in this movie were incredible, but it was funny because one of the main actors in the movie, Glen Powell, is from another movie that I really like called Anyone But You, and it’s really hard to seen this kind and nice version of Glen Powell, when I only see him as the complete opposite version as Ben from Anyone But You. Outside of that, this movie is a must-see.
Overall I give this movie a 9.5 out of 10, there was something very small that made it not a perfect 10, and it was some of the “movie magic”. In a couple of the scenes, the debris that is hitting people and taking them out along with some of the people getting sucked up by the tornado does look a little fake, outside of that, this movie is almost perfect.
I recommend this movie to anyone who saw the original, and really liked it, but is also looking for a new modern version. This movie was the movie of the summer and maybe even the year in my opinion. This will definitely be a movie to remember for a long time.
