Twisters Is A Red-State Disaster Movie

Twisters lacks the novelty factor. Hurricane reels and documentaries are common on the web these days. So the prospect of watching characters drive into the eye of the storm isn’t all shock and awe.

A still from Twisters

TWISTERS is essentially a creature feature where the creature is a thing called Mother Nature. It has all the corny motifs of one. The movie opens with a young meteorologist, Kate, so smiley and happy that a violent tragedy is imminent. Almost on cue, the wind swallows her soulmate and friends, leaving her haunted. Her grief is very American: Cut to 5 years later, she’s a sullen city girl in New York – no more smileys. A colleague from her past pops in, luring her back to the tornado-drilled plains. That’s where she meets a hunky cowboy, Tyler, whose USP is that he’s smarter (and hotter) than he looks – he makes Kate fall back in love with ghost-busting. The attacks are relentless but normal, so it’s implied that man and monster co-exist. However, man is not responsible for the mutation of the monster. Climate change is real, but not in the Red state of Oklahoma. Tyler even refers to the magic of storms as: “half-science, half-religion”.

The right-leaning Top Gun: Maverick vibe is no coincidence. Its director, Joseph Kosinski, is credited for the story of Twisters. The original Twister (1996), starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, pitted capitalism (corporate black cars with fancy gadgets) against humanity (a motley crew of chasers driven by science and grief). Hidden in the spectacular blockbuster folds of its very spiritual sequel is an almost biblical idea: the sky can be tamed. The anti-modernity slant of Maverick is extended into the realms of the divine. Kate’s talent is beyond science. She is old-school intuitive, nearly godly, in her reading of the conditions. Her goal, too, is beyond science: It’s not about tracking these wind demons but dismantling them. She is driven by a kind of church-going version of humanity: Forget research and evolution, a stone-cold miracle shall be conjured to save the world.

Tyler and his rag-tag gang are hinterland empaths masquerading as social media stars. They’re reckless and nutty, but it’s revealed that they commercialise their internet fame to help tornado victims. It’s also telling that Kate abandoned her PhD studies, and ultimately subscribes to Tyler’s freestyle storm-riding instead. The design of their rivals is more telling. Kate’s former colleague, Javi, leads a team of highly educated meteorologists funded by real-estate sharks who profit off residents’ tragedies. They’re the qualified ones, but Twisters equates their science with cold capitalism and the ‘hillbilly’ heroes’ humanitarian science with religion. Just what we needed in 2024: A bunch of viral influencers trumping specialists with their cheery psychobabble. The job market is bad enough.

Needless to mention, Twisters conceals this well. There is no mention of religion, just as there is no identity of the enemy in the militarism of Maverick. For starters, it appeals to our cinephilia by staging Javi and his Storm Par trackers as 3D enthusiasts. They hire Kate to realize their cutting-edge idea of getting a three-dimensional view of a tornado. Their impending failure says one thing: Too much technology ruins the romance of (natural) storytelling. Christopher Nolan and Tom Cruise would be proud. To its credit, Twisters remains committed to this metaphor. Its defining set piece is a neat optical illusion. It features terrified people in a cinema hall clutching onto their seats for dear life – the projector screen is sucked out, making for a ‘live’ theatrical experience of a once-in-a-lifetime storm. In other words, this is Twisters informing us that, despite a visual narrative that begs for an “immersive 3D experience,” the spectacle sticks to its parameters of IMAX purism. How’s that for religion?

In a way, it’s almost worrying how persuasive this template is. There’s Glen Powell and his superstar-elect charisma, Daisy Edgar-Jones are her Ab-Normal People departures, and a series of surprisingly sharp action sequences (not including the flying cow from Twister). Unlike the 1996 hit, Twisters doesn’t have the advantage of showing its audience a phenomenon they haven’t seen before. Hurricane reels and documentaries are common on the web these days (blame my algorithm). So the prospect of watching characters drive into the eye of the storm isn’t all shock and awe. Perhaps this is why director Lee Isaac Chung (a bewildering transition from Minari) infuses it with overtones of spirituality. It’s the license to push the envelope and admit that science, and reality, isn’t enough anymore. It has to be something unexpected and fantastical, which is where Kate’s extraordinary methods – and the actors’ extraordinarily good looks (as opposed to Hunt and Baxton’s unconventional charms) – enter the picture. The special effects are convincing, too, because they’re always laced with the question: What if there’s more to everything you’ve seen? What if cure is better than prevention? The audacity of this scale extends to the manner Chung reduces gifted performers like Sasha Lane (American Honey), Katy O’Brian (Love Lies Bleeding) and David Corenswet (the next Superman) to insignificant team players.

It also says something that the audience surrogate here is a British reporter doing a profile on Tyler. In Twister the surrogate was Bill’s fiancèe, who reluctantly tagged along with the chasers and served as inadvertent comic relief. The journalist, though, goes from nerdy outsider to reformed insider – he slowly recognizes that Kate is a more worthy subject to write about. When a town is flattened, he is so taken by the compassion of Kate’s mission that he abandons his camera and starts steering people to safety instead. It forces the man capturing the truth of life to ‘get involved’ – a version of the Pulitzer-winning photographer ditching his shot, shooing the vulture away, feeding the famine-riddled child and not being racked with guilt later. It’s a typically devout rap on the knuckles of journalism, a profession built on the objectivity of reportage and (behavioural) science. It’s in line with the film’s handsome derision towards fact. After all, if it’s a goddess wrestling with Mother Nature herself, how dare we doubt the sanctity of their hymn?

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