The disaster tentpole “Twister” was the second-highest grossing movie of 1996, earning nearly a quarter-billion dollars at the U.S. box office in a year that was, at the time, among the 10 hottest on record globally. Every year since then has been hotter. The current record-holder as the hottest year on record is 2023, by quite a lot. Just at the end of sequel “Twisters”’ cha-ching of an opening weekend, you might have seen we achieved the hottest single-day average surface temperature of modern times on July 21. Then, on the very next day, we broke the record again.
The connection between tornadoes and climate change is still a bit mysterious, as are tornadoes themselves. But we do know a warming planet has coincided with more outbreaks of multi-tornado days, and that the U.S. remains by far the most prone to these storms. Director Lee Isaac Chung — who grew up in Lincoln, Arkansas, 10 minutes from the Oklahoma border — and the script by Mark L. Smith and Joseph Kosinski don’t single out climate change as the villain of “Twisters.” That role is reserved, mostly, for the storms themselves, which careen through the film with a mixture of menace and grandeur reminiscent of the dinosaurs from “Jurassic Park” and its brood. Rather, the rapidly shifting climate hangs over the movie like a thunderhead. What you get is a whiz-bang summer popcorn movie in which nature could turn on you, no pun intended, at any time. And, more so than alien invasions or time-traveling terminators, maybe this all feels more than a little close to home.
“Twisters” isn’t quite a sequel to “Twister,” but it does take place in the same cinematic universe, a place called Oklahoma. It begins as a group of young scientists, following the tornado-whispering instincts of their frontwoman Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones, blessedly going easy on the Okie accent), gets into position to test a school-science-fair-ass tornado erasing kit: essentially a load of absorbent chemicals that should, Kate calculates, wick up the warm moisture fueling the funnel cloud. Alas, the tornado they tamper with turns out to be a real godzilla of a storm, and it ruthlessly kills all her friends, the last as they hunker in the top shelf of a highway overpass, roaring at nosebleed volume like a steam engine and making you feel like a genius for seeing this spectacle in the theater instead of streaming it on your phone at some later date.
The event scars Kate so deeply that she has to move somewhere more calm and predictable — naturally we next see her forecasting weather from New York City. There, her old friend Javi (Anthony Ramos) arrives to say, hey, you’re good at tornadoes, help me do tornado stuff again. At first she isn’t sure! Then: killer tornadoes strike. She knows she has to go back. (Kate: “I am not back.”) Now we can start the real movie.
We return to Oklahoma, where she and Javi lead a team of nerds who want to gather data from tornadoes (for perhaps not the purest of motives, we learn). Alongside them: a phalanx of looky-loos. This being 2024, we can mourn the swath of destruction tornadoes cut across the state, but it’s also content. Into the picture roars a swaggering crew of Arkansans in a sort of primeval pickup truck, streaming a storm vlog to a million subscribers, led by alpha nerd Tyler (Glen Powell, still having a better summer than anyone you know). Tyler arrives as the human equivalent of a 30-pack of Natty Light, with enough game to make a play for the mysterious new city gal. Kate tries to shake Tyler (but cannot!), and even as they’re both playing chicken with their respective truck gangs, tornado after tornado after tornado stabbing the Oklahoma landscape like a tattoo needle, they’re maybe flirting, maybe just trying not to get vacuumed up to the stratosphere.
This is where “Twisters” positively floors it, and where Chung really shines. His last feature film, “Minari,” an autobiographical portrait of his immigrant family putting down roots on their Arkansas farm, cost $2 million to make, roughly what any single minute of “Twisters” cost. But he makes the leap to this gargantuan spectacle without sacrificing sensitivity to people affected by the storms, nor the intimacy of characters we actually root for.
And yet we see where all of that phat budget went. The twisters look so convincing the fact-checking portion of your frontal lobe will tap out altogether. The arena-country soundtrack (Luke Combs, Chris Stapleton, Miranda Lambert, Leon Bridges) is destined to be darling of SEC football tailgate playlists. The frenetic race from location to location (each pulverized in turn) barely lets up for more than a quiet moment to talk high-level environmental chemistry. At times you may find yourself checking in with your own brain to ask “is ‘Twisters’ going over my head?” and realize the answer is, no, it’s hitting you squarely between the eyes. Duck and cover if you like, but this is the future we’ve signed up for. So hot.