In the past we have occasionally discussed the issue of the Optimum Interval before Sequel. It's hard to set hard and fast principles on this, especially considering that the biggest film of 2022 was a sequel following its original only 36 years later. I think we can safely suggest this was a unique occurrence, due to the aftermath of the pandemic amongst other things. It takes a film which has really taken root in the popular imagination to sustain a sequel after 36 years – let alone 55 or so, in the case of that Disney film about supernatural child-care provision.

So what then are we to make of the appearance of Lee Isaac Chung's Twisters, a follow-up to Jan De Bont's 1996 Twister? Let's get this in perspective – it's as if the first sequel to the 1968 Planet of the Apes didn't come out until the same year as Independence Day or the first Mission: Impossible. De Bont himself retired over a decade ago; star Helen Hunt hasn't appeared in a major film since the turn of the century; co-star Bill Paxton has died, poor fellow. Why do a sequel at all? Wouldn't it just be better to do a remake?

Well, arguably that's what has happened – even the publicity for Twisters describes it as a 'standalone sequel', oxymoronic as that sounds, although Michael Crichton (also RIP) still gets a credit for co-creating the characters (even though there are no returning characters in the film). It's very much the same sort of thing: there is bad weather and generally likeable characters running in the wrong direction, i.e. towards it.

The new main character is Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), who at the start of the film is leading a team of tornado-chasers with a view to testing a theory – that tornadoes can somehow be switched off, apparently by launching a load of what looks like soap powder into them. However, as it is only the start of the film, things do not go entirely to plan and she is left traumatised, left to try to process her memories of seeing most of her team sucked to their deaths.

We jump forward and find that Kate has moved on getting a top job at the weather centre in New York City (her progress in her career has indeed been meteorologic). But then fellow prologue-survivor Javi (Anthony Ramos, who's filled out a bit since the last time I saw him) pops up and explains to her a scheme to revolutionise tornado research by pointing high-powered military radar units at them from not very far away. All he needs is someone with an infallible nose for a tornado – can she get the week off work to come and help them out?

Well, naturally, she refuses, because she needs to have hang-ups and problems she can overcome before the end of the film, but this is not that long a film and so after about three minutes she changes her mind and goes off to Oklahoma with Javi anyway. We all know that she's going to go to Oklahoma eventually, but for some reason it remains absolutely essential we have this brief moment of hesitation near the start of the story. Rather odd, but no doubt Joseph Campbell would have been able to explain it.

Anyway, off they go to the tornado heartlands where it turns out they are not the only tooled-up storm-chasers on the scene – also there is YouTube sensation Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and his gang of followers, who come across like a bunch of self-serving publicity-seekers, quite unlike Javi and his colleagues, who are motivated by humanitarian scientific concerns.

Or are they? Buffeted about in mid-air throughout Twisters is the spirit of Jane Austen, for film has essentially the same structure as Pride and Prejudice or one of its various derivatives – young woman meets a couple of guys, one seems nice, one doesn't, but then. . . ! On this occasion, with monumental property damage (but no flying cows this time). Even the monumental property damage is not wholly bad as it gives Kate the opportunity to work through some of her personal issues. It's not as if anybody dies or gets hurt on screen. Well, not anybody who we've got to know or actually seems important.

The two Twister films are a particularly post-1990 elaboration of the old disaster movie genre, something which has been with us in one form or another since the 1930s. I say that because while floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and so on were within the grasp of directors and special effects technicians of earlier generations, doing a movie which is wholly about depicting whirlwinds doing their thing would have been effectively impossibly prior to the arrival of digital special effects.

But we can do that now, and the result is. . . well, I remember going to see the first Twister in the summer of 1996 with quite low expectations and being rather pleasantly surprised by it, because it was a bit different from most blockbusters at the time – more grounded, less cartoonish. Most of these things still apply to some extent to Twisters as well, though I must confess that I did miss Bill Paxton. If you are going to make a film the sine qua non of which is things being blown over, then they'd better be blown over in an interesting and memorable way, and the film certainly delivers on that – there are some very impressive set pieces. But the characters are also engaging with some unexpected faces down in the supporting cast – David Corenswet from Pearl for one, and Katy O'Brian from Love Lies Bleeding for another. (Linking the characters with the property damage is a lot of dialogue, often delivered by shouting, about 'storm cells collapsing' and 'uplifts veering' – there's a lot of meteorology for a summer movie.)

There is always the complaint that could be made, basically that Twisters goes on quite a bit about how the midwest is being plagued by more and bigger twisters than ever before, but maintains a stony silence about just what could be responsible for this (words like 'change' and 'climate' never appear close to each other in the script, in either order). Well, clearly it is still unreasonable to expect too high a degree of social responsibility from big film companies, especially with regard to controversial propositions like that. I don't think this film could easily be repurposed as some sort of metaphorical tract about saving the planet, anyway – but as a somewhat different, essentially amiable, sometimes visually interesting big movie it does the job. But I have to say that at the current rate I'll be pushing 80 by the time Twisterses comes out, and the prospect of such a long wait doesn't feel particularly troubling. This one is watchable without being particularly memorable, possibly not quite as much fun as Alien Tornado (2012, dir. Jeff Burr), but with better effects.

Awix

22.07.24 Front Page

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