Twisters

I have so many wonderful memories of my cinema visits in the 90´s. Back in those days i would go and watch almost all the summer blockbusters on the big screen. To afford that many cinema visits at a young age i used to work as a construction worker even if i was too young to do certain things at the construction site. With several bought tickets, snacks for each film of course i could easily spend my money quickly . So after a hard works week i would go with my friends on the weekend to the cinema and we would make sure to watch the films we wanted to see. There are some summers that i especially remember in the 90´s and i have to mention certain years such as 1994, that was the summer i watched films such as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Speed, The Client, Naked Gun 33 1/ - The Final Insult, Lightning Jack, The Flintstones and many more. Same things goes to the summer of 1995 when i watched cinema films such as The Quick And The Dead ( i especially enjoyed this one on the big screen ), Die Hard With A Vengeance, Bad Boys, Batman Forever, First Knight ( yes the one with Richard Gere and Sean Connery ), Johnny Mnemonic, French Kiss ( unfortunately i did see this one in cinema ) and many more. When you look at a list of films such as these that i mentioned you realise how special the cinema releases of the 90´s were at that time. Let us move forward to the year of 1996 and talk about one specific cinema release in the summer of 1996 and that is the disaster action movie known as Twister from director Jan de Bont ( director of both Speed films, i still don´t understand why he made Speed 2 ). Twister turned out to be a spectacular cinema experience being a disaster action movie about two storm chasers Bill Harding ( Bill Paxton ) and Dr. Jo Harding ( Helen Hunt ) who are on the brink of divorce but are forced to create an advanced weather alert system while getting closer to upcoming tonadoes. Twister is one of the 90´s classic disaster films and for that time period had some amazing special effects. I never thought we would get an official sequel but here we are in 2024 with a film called Twisters. Since i saw the original film in cinema i might as well check this sequel out as well not keeping too high expectations. Is it possible that this sequel is better than the 1996 classic or is this a film no one asked for and never should have been made at all?

Kate Carter ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ) works in Oklahoma with her storm chaser friends Javi Anthony Ramos ), Addy ( Kiernan Shipka ), Praveen ( Nik Dodani ), and her boyfriend, Jeb ( Daryl McCormack ). Alongside a Dorthy D Voppler, the team launches barrels of sodium polyacrylate beads into a tornado in hope of reducing its intensity and securing funding for further research. However, the attempt is unsuccessful due to the tornado suddenly intensifying into an EF5, killing Jeb, Addy, and Praveen while Javi and Kate manage to survive as Kate blames herself for not understanding the tornado better. Five years go by and Kate is now working in New York at an NOAA office. One day her friend Javi suddenly visit her unexpected where he wants her to go back chasing tornados again and help him test a new tornadoscanning system using phased-array radar. At first Kate doesn´t want to go back to Oklahoma but after seeing new information regarding storm activities that Javi sends her she have a change of mind. She decides to give it a chance even though she doesn´t feel completely ready going out there again.

One of the problems sometimes when you make a sequel to a 90´s classic is that you may not respect the original film. I have to say that i am surprised over this latest sequel because it actually feels like they wanted to capture some of the same tornadoes atmosphere as the original film does with a team of experts trying to do some similar work as the main characters of the original film did. The fact that they actually wanted to be respectful knowing that Bill Paxton is a beloved actor in Hollywood and his legacy can live on, this gives me a bit of respect for this sequel. Ok so let´s get into what i enjoyed about Twisters. I do feel that the CGI effects for the weather scenes looks pretty good and you get to see tornadoes from some different angles compared to the original film. I would even say some scenes surprised me how well they captured the look of the bigger tornadoes. Since CGI effects have improved a lot since 1996 this actually helps the disaster scenes become quite effective in certain scenes. I do feel that the chemistry among the young cast is good and even if i have no knowledge on how to work with weather programs i do like the approach this team have, keeping a good spirit and actually seem to enjoy spending time together. There is even a social media influencer thrown into this film but i actually think that part of the film works for the most part with the character Tyler Owens. Regarding the characters i especially think it works well between actors Daisy Edgar-Jones and Anthony Ramos. Their chemistry on screen matches something similar to Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as they did back in 1996. Anything i feel could have been improved? Considering that this film turned out to be better than i expected i have nothing really to complain about. There are some smaller issues i could mention but i don´t see the point in doing that since i had a good time with Twisters. If you love natural disaster films then i think this could be a film you want to see. Director Lee Isaac Chung deliver a good looking natural disaster film that´s definetely respectful to the original film while adding some more modern details and still make it work. Twisters does what it´s meant to do, entertain the audience who likes this genre while this film also captures the emotional importance how you have to stay together as friends no matter how hard it gets. Worth spending 2 hours on to some cold beers and some good snacks.

Rating: DDD