‘Twisters’ Blows Its Shot by Neglecting the Climate Crisis

In Twister (Jan de Bont, 1996), when doomed love interest Melissa gets a taste of her fiancé Bill’s past life, it’s a little more than she expected. ‘When you used to tell me that you chased tornadoes’, she says to him, having been caught in a storm both meteorological and personal, ‘deep down I always thought it was a metaphor.’

Of course, it was a metaphor; Bill, a TV weatherman called back to his former work as a tornado researcher, finds himself chasing his estranged wife Jo, an adrenaline junkie like him with a vested interest in stemming the damage caused by extreme weather. This kind of genre blending between romance and disaster flourished in the late 1990s, with major blockbusters like Titanic (1997) and Armageddon (1998) following shortly after Twister. They had license to be at once very serious and very silly; a tornado could be a metaphor for romance and little more. And while this may have once been enough, today’s mainstream hits have a little more to answer for, especially those based on existing works. If our contemporary film industry is to be stuffed with re-makes and nostalgia-driven sequels, these additions should, at the very least, be fertile ground for something different.

Lee Isaac Chung’s revamped sequel Twisters would suggest otherwise. In its most evident re-working, the film centres the disaster more prominently than romance, foregoing its predecessor’s central allegory. Yet, it is set apart from De Bont’s film in few other ways: a combined stand-in for Bill and Jo from the original film, Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) was once a tornado researcher, with Bill’s uncanny knack for predicting the weather and Jo’s pent-up grief following a tornado tragedy. She’s called back to the field by a former colleague, Javi (Anthony Ramos), to help with a new data-collecting project. Javi’s investor-funded operation comes up against the rowdy, internet famous escapades of Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and his ragtag crew of ‘tornado wranglers’, whose collective arrogance inevitably softens the more Kate gets to know them. Chemistry ensues, tornadoes rage on; in a near exact play-by-play of Twister, characters navigate competition between warring teams, repetitive attempts at landing their experiments and again witness a movie screen being torn apart by a storm, mid-projection.

If this is intended as a sequel then why not do more to re-imagine, or build upon, the original? Is there such a lack of ideas and ingenuity in film studios today that a summer blockbuster, regardless of how entertaining it may ultimately be, can’t be further set apart from an earlier iteration of the film? Perhaps the most obvious means to bring this film in line with contemporary ideas or themes would have been to address the climate crisis, given that the true fear captured by the Twister franchise is the proximity to a very real experience for many people worldwide. While secondary characters make thinly veiled allusions to the increasing frequency and scale of the tornadoes in the area, the words ‘climate change’ are never uttered. As such, the film hovers in a toothless, awkward space, avoiding the obvious.

Should it have interrogated this more closely, or made more of a direct effort to address it, Chung’s film could have avoided being yet another uninspired remake. Instead of taking a more progressive, forward-thinking stance, Twisters feels driven by a particularly American sense of nostalgia. US flags are evident throughout, stitched on the back of a jacket or blustering in the ever-growing breeze, while country songs about finding your way back home soundtrack Kate’s adventures in Oklahoma, and the most extensive damage done by the tornadoes is to a rodeo and a small-town movie theatre. There is a sense of loss throughout this film, though little to suggest a wider cause nor a coherent response.

This vague exploration of other themes tips the film into a more interesting space, albeit a limited one, and as Javi’s crew’s nefarious motives become more apparent, the film begins to feel more cynical. Its critique of a vulture-like businessman, swooping in to capitalize on communities destroyed by tornadoes, feels less effective when the film itself foregoes a more explicit, or meaningful, environmental message. What we’re really here to see is the burgeoning star power of its cast and the magnitude of the film’s (undoubtedly very fun) visual effects, both of which were on offer in the previous film.

This is not necessarily an indictment of Chung as a filmmaker, whose ease of direction and execution keep things tensely thrilling throughout, but of a risk-averse film producing landscape that would rather look backwards than forwards, would rather precisely mimic than lightly reference. Going to the cinema now feels like heading into a time warp; at some point, there won’t be any more viable options to rehash. And while Twisters is ultimately a more accomplished offering than some other franchise repeats, it can’t help but feel like an unnecessary addition to an increasing problem; the film industry, like tornadoes, caught in a cycle of destruction.

Twisters is currently on view in cinemas worldwide.

^{Main image: Twisters (detail), 2024, film still. Courtesy: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures; Warner Bros. Pictures & Amblin Entertainment}