Twisters

“Twisters delivers on the age-old Hollywood promise: Impressive CGI and American flag-wearing heroes, but slips into some unforced errors on diversity.”

Title: Twisters (2024)
Director: Lee Isaac Chung 👨🏻🇺🇸
Writer: Mark L. Smith 👨🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

—MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 4.25/5

Call me easy, but this big, bombastic crowd-pleaser from a surprising indie director, Lee Isaac Chung, absolutely works. Twisters might induce audience groans with every slow-motion, piano-scored scene where climate-reading genius Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) majestically releases dandelion fluffs into the wind. But half the fun of a disaster movie is laughing at it, plus pointing out the inconsistencies that make no damn sense (why are streetcars getting sucked into the sky while much lighter people scurry around screaming on the ground?). And if you’ve decided to put on Twisters, you aren’t exactly here for depth and character development.

Yet this is exactly why Twisters succeeds: It easily vaults the low hurdle of being mere spectacle and introduces a human heartbeat. Chung takes similar themes of family, humility, and hard work from his previous film, Minari (2020)—and perhaps draws from his own upbringing on a farm in Arkansas—to deliver a healthy dollop of effective Americana. This isn’t the fervent jingoism of so many patriotic action films; rather, Chung lampoons the giddy caricatures of the Don’t Tread on Me mavericks that make up one of the film’s main group of storm chasers, helmed by cowboy hat-wearing, yee-hawing Tyler (Glen Powell). But within the same movie, he humanizes these individuals and gets the audience to root for them. Meanwhile, Tyler’s opposing storm-chasing team, led by Kate’s old friend Javi (Anthony Ramos), transforms from preeminent professionals into something darker.

It isn’t often that emotional storylines keep pace with freewheeling special effects in a climate disaster movie. And while those storylines do stay on the simpler side, comfortably existing within Hollywood’s expectations of a feel-good summer outing, it only adds to Twisters’ strength that Chung is able to balance both.

Gender: 4/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

Edgar-Jones plays the film’s clear lead as a climatologist whose superpower-like expertise is seen and respected among her colleagues. But I was hoping for more gender balance throughout the rest of the cast. Instead, we mainly see women in minor roles; Javi’s team is entirely made up of men. And on Tyler’s side, his motley crew includes two women in a group of six. As a result, Kate feels largely tokenized.

It does help that she isn’t surrounded entirely by male relationships. She focuses primarily on Tyler and Javi, but a welcome respite from their tornado-tracking scenes takes place at Kate’s family home where she reconnects with her mom Cathy (Maura Tierney). After a traumatic storm-chasing debacle, Kate had left Oklahoma and ran away to live in New York City, avoiding her mom’s calls for years. But when Kate finally shows up unannounced back home, there’s nary a whiff of attention paid to how Cathy might have been hurt by that estrangement. Instead, she gets right back to the business of being a great (and two-dimensional) mom. Still, a supportive mother-daughter relationship is better than having our main hero’s emotional arc be entirely dominated by male love interests, as Twisters otherwise teeters on the precipice of doing.

—SPOILERS IN THE NEXT CATEGORY—

Race: 3.5/5

More disappointing was the film’s handling of its non-white characters, especially given Korean American Chung’s mastery of immigrant storytelling in Minari. The difference here, I suppose, is that he didn’t write the script; that credit goes to Mark L. Smith (The Boys in the Boat, The Revenant), who’s white.

Right away, Twisters slips into some unforced errors. A brown guy is the first to die (Praveen, played by Indian American actor Nik Dodani), and another early casualty includes Kate’s ex, played by Daryl McCormack (biracial Black and white). Their deaths are balanced by Tyler’s diverse storm-chasing team, which includes Boone (Brandon Perea, Filipino-Puerto Rican), Dexter (Tunde Adebimpe, Nigerian American), Lily (Sasha Lane, Black-Māori), and Dani (Katy O’Brian, biracial Black and white). But even though the list of actors looks wonderfully diverse, on screen, they sublimate into background noise, puttering around helping people and Tyler. There’s no mistaking the film’s clear leads: Kate and Tyler, both of whom are white. And another key character, Kate’s mom, is also white.

The main character of color (and the only character of color with any backstory) is Javi. He’s portrayed as just as clever and entrepreneurial as the film’s white leads, but he’s shunted aside as a “lovelorn friend.” He expresses a yearslong crush on Kate, but she never appears to remotely entertain the idea of him as a viable love interest. Instead, it’s the blonde-haired, green-eyed, former-bull-riding meteorologist who gets the girl. Snooze.

—END SPOILERS—

Bonus for LGBTQ: +0.00
Bonus for Disability: +0.00

The film casts openly queer and disabled actors, such as Dodani, who’s gay, and O’Brian, who’s lesbian living with a chronic illness (Crohn’s disease). While O’Brian’s Dani doesn’t present as stereotypically feminine, any explicit mentions of sexuality or disability are avoided in the film itself.

Mediaversity Grade: B 3.92/5

A fantastically fun summer blockbuster, Twisters delivers on the age-old Hollywood promise: Impressive CGI, American flag-wearing heroes, and a feel-good vibe that leaves its viewers smiling (if sometimes facepalming at its cheesier moments). It’s not especially great for diversity, but neither is it offensive. I’ll take that with a bucket of popcorn.

Like Twisters? Try these other movies portraying climate change.

Grade: BLiJuly 19, 2024