Despite Glen Powell, ‘Twisters’ is no fun

In terms of legacy sequels that simply had to get made, “Twisters,” a followup to 1996’s “Twister,” seems like it should’ve been pretty far down Hollywood’s priority list. If you remove your nostalgia-tinted glasses, the original film, directed by Jan de Bont, is only somewhat rewatchable thanks to the unconventional romcom chemistry between Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton.

The only spark (romantic or otherwise) that ignites in “Twisters,” meanwhile, is a factory blaze that creates a fire tornado, one of several cyclones that turns the film’s storm-chasing scientists into scientists chased by a storm. With a heavier focus on personal tragedy and a plot that largely spins its wheels, “Twisters” only has one thing going for it: Glen Powell, Grade-A movie star.

Watch: “Twisters” trailer (2024)

Unfortunately, Lee Isaac Chung’s film waits quite a while to bring the “Top Gun: Maverick” star into the fold, instead focusing on Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones, “Where the Crawdads Sing”), a meteorologist with a preternatural ability to track tornadoes. Kate has traded the storm-chasing life for an office job, but bears the emotional scars of the dangerous profession. In an impactful early scene, we see flashbacks of how Kate’s youthful recklessness in the field resulted in significant personal loss.

When Javi (Anthony Ramos), the lone storm chaser who survived the aforementioned tragedy, shows up to recruit her back to Tornado Alley in Oklahoma, Kate is hesitant. But Javi gives her the hard sell, insisting she’s “the only one” who can help him develop a nascent 3-D cyclone visualization technology that could help save lives.

For someone who has allegedly had a crush on Kate for years, Javi doesn’t seem to have her best interests at heart. When she shows up, he gruffly says he “thought [she] wouldn’t come.” When she is predictably frightened by a tornado six inches from her face, Javi berates her for ruining his experiment — which seems especially unwarranted given that there’s a tornado every five minutes in the “Twisters” version of Oklahoma.

Sound fun? It’s not. But that all changes when Kate and Javi’s team encounters YouTube sensation Tyler Owens (Powell), a larger-than-life, Stetson-wearing storm chaser whose team live-streams gaudy stunts like shooting fireworks off inside a tornado and hawks T-shirts on the side. 

Powell’s antics are Reasons 1, 2, and 3 that “Twisters” is worth watching at all. In his breakthrough role in 2016’s “Everybody Wants Some!!,” Powell played a UT-Austin baseball player who laid it on thick for every woman he met on campus, but whose winking grin let them know that he knew his schtick was a little much — and also that it was working. Powell brings the same energy to “Twisters,” delivering T-shirt slogans like “You don’t face your fears, you ride them” and “If you feel it, chase it” with a swing in his step and a twinkle in his eye.

Much like the original “Twister,” Tyler’s rag-tag group of chasers has some notable “see them before they’re famous” faces in bit parts. Whereas “Twister” had two to four lines of dialogue each for Jeremy Davies (“Lost”), Philip Seymour Hoffman (“Capote”) and Alan Ruck (“Succession”), “Twisters” has Brandon Perea (“Nope”), Saha Lane (“American Honey”), and Tunde Adebimpe (“Marriage Story”) as intriguing but ultimately underdeveloped characters.

Chung, who grew up on the Arkansas-Oklahoma border and brilliantly captured its environs in the semi-autobiographical “Minari,” clearly has a soft spot for the region. His wide, sweeping shots of the Oklahoma landscape, tornado or no tornado, are impressive, as are the small details from scenes shot at a rodeo and a small-town movie theater. And while the on-screen cyclones don’t move the needle for much of the film, Chung save his biggest tricks for the film’s conclusion, a behemoth of a storm that briefly puts you on the edge of your seat. 

Near the end of “Twisters,” Tyler tells a British journalist who has been embedded with his team to focus his camera on Kate, who is scanning the horizon for storm signatures. “That’s your story,” he says. While Chung would like us to believe that’s true, Jones isn’t up to the task in a largely thankless role. Kate is the cyclone savant, the broken woman, and the object of everyone’s affection, and plays none of them convincingly. 

“Twisters” ends up splitting the difference between a stoic treatise on the destructive power of climate change and a harmless popcorn flick about tornadoes and the rodeo clown that tries to ride them. Regardless of which of those movies you’d rather watch, “Twisters” would’ve been better served choosing a path and sticking to it — preferably a path that features Glen Powell.

Rating: ** (out of 4)

“Twisters” opens in theaters July 19.