My Thoughts on "Twisters 🌪️"
Well, I finally did it. I finally watched Twisters 🌪️. I know kept saying that I was going to do it for 99th post, but things didn't work out that way. We didn't have the money 💵 to actually watch this movie in theaters when it came out, and we still don't have enough money 💵. We've been waiting until we had extra money 💵 to actually see it because this is the kind of movie that does warrant a theatrical viewing. It was a movie that was clearly made to seen in a theater.
But, Universal had to go and release it on digital a week or so ago. The movie hadn't even been out for a full month, and yet, the powers that be at Universal decided to release it on digital. Why can't movies stay in theaters for longer than a month? I remember a time when movies used to stay in theaters for half the year before they'd be released on home media. Even when streaming first came, movie still stayed in theaters for much longer than a month or so. But, some movies nowadays don't even stay in theaters for that long either. Sometimes, they only stay in theaters for a week or two, and then they're out.
It's a disheartening because I like seeing movies in the theater. I do think there is a place for movie theaters in the movie viewing experience, just as there is for physical media. And movies like Twisters 🌪️, even if they aren't the best, are examples of that. I don't know, maybe Universal was worried that the movie would face too much competition from Deadpool & Wolverine and Alien: Romulus. So, they're putting it on digital, and getting ready to pull it from theaters, so that the movie can still make money 💵 even with that stiff competition.
If that's the case, then they should've released earlier in the month of July, or better yet, released in May or June. Yeah, sure, it'd probably face competition from Inside Out 2, but not everyone who has the time and money 💵 to go the theater was going to want to watch Inside Out 2. I know I sure didn't. I haven't seen Inside Out 2, and I'm proud of that. Yeah, I said it! Deal with it.
Before I actually delve into Twisters 🌪️, I should probably talk about my history with the original Twister 🌪️, and then clarify some of the confusion over this new movie's relation to that original film. I really like the original Twister 🌪️, it's a childhood favorite of mine. I know I say that about a lot of the stuff I write about in my blog, but I like writing about things from my childhood that I liked, and this movie was one of them. It's a genuine classic that has only gotten better with age. It's also arguably more popular and more well-liked now than when it originally came out in 1996.
Which is funny because people like Doug Walker tried to make it seem like Twister 🌪️ was actually a bad movie, who's only worth ridicule. But, no body cares about Doug Walker has to say about movies anymore, and since he and his brother, Rob ruined their own reputations and the reputation of their website, Channel Awesome. The Nostalgia Critic doesn't have any where near as much influence in pop culture as he once did, and I for one am I glad because the Nostalgia Critic, or Doug I should say, really doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to movies, and has some pretty wacked out opinions. Even though, he's made some pretty bad movies himself that are only worth ridiculing. Doug Walker owes us all an apology for To Boldly Flee, among other things.
You can't beat Bill Paxton †, Helen Hunt, and Philip Seymour Hoffman †, nor can you beat Jan de Bont, the crazy and intense Dutch director 🇳🇱 who gave us Speed…and also Speed 2: Cruise Control 🛳️. Yeah, I know, Speed 2 isn't considered a great movie, in fact, it's considered a pretty bad movie, but at least it tried to do something different than the first movie, by having it be set on a cruise ship 🛳️ instead of on a bus 🚌 again, which they could've easily have done. And it gave us a legendary performance from Willem Dafoe, playing the cartoonish over-the-top villain of that movie, and giving us one of the scariest faces that Dafoe has ever made in a movie. And since it originally came out, Speed 2 has developed something of a "so bad, it's good" type of reputation. That's gotta count for something right?
He also directed the second Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider movie, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life, which many people also consider to be pretty bad, and ended up being the last Hollywood film that Jan de Bont would ever direct as of the time that I'm writing this. But, even though his career took a nose dive after Speed 2, at least he got in one more classic, with Twister 🌪️. Knowing that it was the movie that he made instead of Godzilla (1998) makes it even better. It's a good enough substitute to making a Godzilla movie I would say.
For the longest time, I was of the opinion that Twister 🌪️ didn't need a sequel, and it would be kind of stupid to do one, especially now, three decades later. People have kind of turned against the idea of the legacy sequel. They liked the first few legacy sequels that came out, Jurassic World and Star Wars: The Force Awakens were both huge hits, and were well liked by both critics and audiences. It's only in retrospect that people say Jurassic World and The Force Awakens are bad, but they liked them when they initially came out. Don't lie.
But, as the years went by, people started getting sick of the idea of the legacy sequel, and always dreaded whenever one was announced. It was kind of the same for Twister 🌪️. I thought, "Why are they even doing this? It makes no sense. The original was perfectly fine as a stand-alone movie. It doesn't need a sequel." But then, Top Gun: Maverick came out, and it kind of restored my hope in legacy sequels. It made me think that legacy sequel can actually be good if they're done right.
So, when the first teaser Twisters 🌪️ dropped at the Super Bowl earlier this year, and after I saw the initial trailer, and learned more about who was involved, and what they're going to do it, I was a little bit more on board with it. I was more willing to give it a chance. In fact, I was of the opinion that it could very well be the Top Gun: Maverick of 2024, especially since Glen Powell was in it and he was in Top Gun: Maverick. He seems like an actor with good taste, he hasn't picked a bad project as far as I know, besides maybe that weird Netflix show where he was a spy or something. I really don't know the name of that show, nor do I know anything about it other than it has Glen Powell playing a weird character with a really terrible wig.
So, was this movie the Top Gun: Maverick of 2024? Eh, not quite. But first, before I really explain what I thought of this movie and how it compares to the 1996 movie, I should clarify something that far too many people have confusion over. Is this movie a sequel or a remake? It's a sequel guys, it's very clearly a sequel. I mean, the movie's called Twisters 🌪️ and not Twister 🌪️, just like the sequel to Alien was called Aliens, or like how the third Predator film was called Predators, or how the second Anaconda movie was called Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. You make the title plural, then it's automatically a sequel.
No one involved in the making of this movie has referred to it as a "reimagining" or a "reinvention," or any of the other euphemisms filmmakers use to refer to remakes since they know moviegoers and film nerds don't like remakes. Remake is kind of dirty word in Hollywood, and filmmakers and studio execs try to avoid using it whenever possible. Instead they try to use euphemisms like "reimagining" or "reinvention" like I said earlier. If a movie is labeled as a remake by the entertainment press, it automatically has that stigma attached to it, it has that baggage from the thousands of bad remakes out there.
But, no one who worked on Twisters 🌪️ has referred to it by any of the terms that filmmakers use to refer to remakes. They all referred to as a continuation in some form or another. Meaning that it's a sequel, a legacy sequel. It's just that's sometimes hard to tell that it's a sequel because none of the characters from the first movie return in this movie nor are they even mentioned. There aren't even that many callbacks to the first movie, the only real callback we get is Dorothy, that machine, the storm chasers in the first movie to map the inside of a tornado 🌪️, and one character at one point saying, "the suck zone." For the most part, it's just another movie about tornadoes 🌪️.
In some ways, that's probably this movie's greatest strength. The fact that it isn't reliant on nostalgia or callbacks and references, and doesn't feel the need to shove in characters from the first one to get audiences excited or invested. It isn't reliant on all the old tricks that every other legacy sequel relies on, and will continue to rely on after this movie. I mean, we're getting a second Beetlejuice movie called Beetlejuice Beetlejuice that's going to be directed by the same director, Tim Burton, and is going to have a lot of the same characters from the original, and is probably going to be full of nostalgia bait.
So, the fact that this movie doesn't do that, and mostly just does its own thing makes it stand among the wave of legacy sequels that's flooding our movie screens and flooding our devices. I feel like if they ever to make a Jaws legacy sequel, this is probably the approach they should take with it, especially we're so much further removed from the last Jaws movie, which was Jaws: The Revenge, than we were from Twister 🌪️.
And a lot of my generation has no real nostalgia for the original 1975 Jaws movie that the studio could exploit. And my generation will be the one that studios will have to try to appeal to going forward since we'll be dominating the movie theaters and dominating the streaming services. Not to mention, a lot of the actors from the previous Jaws films are either dead or are really old and have retired, probably not being in any condition to act again, even just for a cameo.
So, if they ever make another Jaws movie in the future, just make its own thing. Just make it another film about sharks 🦈 that has completely new characters that have no familial ties to the ones from the previous ones. No more Brodys. Maybe you can still have it take place in and around Amity Island, but don't make the main character a member of the Brody family. Jaws 3-D would've been so much better if Michael Brody wasn't the main character, and the main character was instead a completely new character with no connection to the Brody family.
Oh, and if you're a Jurassic fan that believes the fan theory that the Twister 🌪️ movies are in the same universe as the Jurassic movies, and were hoping to see a reference, then sorry to disappoint. There are no Jurassic references in Twisters 🌪️. The only reason people think these two franchises are connected is that this YouTuber called TD3K made a video where he tried to convince everyone that these films exist in the same universe simply because they're both owned by Universal (partially owned in the case of Twister 🌪️) and Michael Crichton was involved in both.
Crichton of course wrote the original novel 📖 that the first Jurassic Park movie was based on and went worked on the script before David Koepp came in and wrote his own script for the movie, he wrote the novel 📖 that The Lost World: Jurassic Park was based on (loosely based on), and he wrote the script for Twister 🌪️, along with his wife, Anne-Marie Martin. People just liked the idea that these two Crichton properties were connected somehow, and this TD3K guy tried everything he could to link the two franchises together.
He worked on the websites for the first two Jurassic World movies, and left in little references to Twister 🌪️ to try to make that connection, albeit very subtly for legal reasons, copyright and all. He even suggested that there be references to the Jurassic films in Twisters 🌪️, such as the acknowledgment of the existence of dinosaurs in the modern day, the presence of dinosaurs scattered throughout the world, and of courses references to some of the events of the films. Like, if these storm chasers were driving around Oklahoma, chasing after tornadoes 🌪️, and then all of sudden ran into a dinosaur.
Well, sorry to say, nothing like that happens in this film. No body mentions there being dinosaurs roaming around, we never see or hear news reports talking about the events of the films, and we never see a dinosaur on screen. This movie pretty much killed the theory that the Jurassic and Twister 🌪️ films are part of the same universe and were part of some secret cinematic universe this whole time. Crichton was not Stephen King. He wasn't one to link his books 📖 together in this way, and create these elaborate shared universes the way someone like King does.
All of Crichton's books 📖, all of his projects (including film and TV), are self-contained works and have no real connection to each other, other than they were written and/or directed by the same guy ♂︎. So, forcefully trying to link the Jurassic franchise to the Twister 🌪️ franchise would not have been one of Crichton's wishes, nor would it be in line with sensibilities as a writer or a creator.
When it comes to the whole Dorothy thing, yes, they do bring back Dorothy in the opening prologue, and they do mention it a few times afterwards, but that's about the extent of the references to the first movie. They don't mention who created Dorothy, they don't mention when it was first tested, none of that. It's just a device that they use to study tornadoes 🌪️, another tool in the arsenal of our main group of storm chasers, at least in the prologue. They even expand on the Dorothy thing by having those radar devices that Anthony Ramos's character and his team set up to create a three dimensional model of tornadoes 🌪️ are named after the other characters from The Wizard of Oz, like the Cowardly Lion 🦁 (though here it's just called "Lion 🦁"), the Tinman, and the Scarecrow.
In the end though, this movie kind of just fails to live up to the first one, and is ultimately an inferior product, sad to say 🙁. The tornado sequences 🌪️ are a lot of fun, the CGI on the tornadoes 🌪️ genuinely looks great, and the tornadoes 🌪️ in some scenes look absolutely real. The movie's well shot, it genuinely looks visually stunning in some scenes. They made a huge deal in the promotional material leading up to this movie that they shot it on film 🎞️, specifically, Kodiak film 🎞️, and yet, I'm not really sure if it made that much of a difference.
Even if the movie's shot on film 🎞️ and not on digital, the film is still going to be digitized, all of those imperfections and other qualities that film 🎞️ has will be lost. Most people will not watch these movies in theaters with film projectors 📽️, they'll mostly be seeing them in theaters with digital projectors or on streaming. Which is why I don't think filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino should be such sticklers for film 🎞️ since it's all going to be digital anyway.
Filming movies on film 🎞️ really don't mean anything anymore. It's just a gimmick, a marketing gimmick to get film bros interested in watching your movie because they're all convinced that they'll seeing a "real film" is shot on actual celluloid 🎞️. So yeah, the movie being shot on film 🎞️ really didn't make a difference, and would be unnoticeable to anyone who isn't super into photography and can spot the differences between film photography 🎞️ and digital photography.
But even then, how difference can there be since it's all digitized anyway, and movies shot on film 🎞️ nowadays are indistinguishable from movies shot on digital nowadays. If you showed me two movies made in the 2010s or the 2020s, and asked me to point to which one was shot on film 🎞️, I wouldn't even know which one to point at.
Besides, the pointlessness of shooting the movie on film 🎞️, the movie looks great. All of the technical aspects are well done. It's the characters aren't as memorable as the ones from the first one. There's no Bill and Jo, there's no Dusty, there's no Melissa, there's no Jonas, there's not even an Aunt Meg, even if there are characters in this movie that try to be like those. I don't even really remember their names, I know the actors' names except for the main female lead ♀︎, I don't know who she is. This is the first time I've seen her in anything. She was good, she did a fine job with what she was given, it's that her character was kind of forgettable as was pretty much everyone else.
I still think that Chris Bumbray's complaint about the lack of intimacy between Glen Powell and the female lead ♀︎ still doesn't make sense, nor does it have any merit. Yes, there is something there, yes, they do have feeling for each other, but that doesn't mean they have to end it with a kiss or that the characters need to have sex in order for us to know that they like each other. You horn dog, you Bumbray. People express their love in different ways, especially if they've just met, like these two have.
They've only known each other for a few days at most, do you think they'll be that ready and willing to kiss each other and have sex. This isn't a one night stand we're talking about here. Give them time to really get to know each other first before they really start doing the intimate stuff. I mean, this is the solution to the thing a lot of people have complained about with a lot of other movies with romance elements ❤️, how can the two leads fall in love ❤️ each other if they've only known them for a day or two?
Well, this movie doesn't do that. The two main leads don't instantly fall in love 🥰 with each other after meeting each other for the first time. They develop feelings for each other, there's clearly something there between them that could lead to a relationship, but they don't do it right away like in other movies. And yet, Bumbray has the nerve to complain it here? Then again, this is JoBlo we're talking about here. Their recent output on both of their Originals channels on YouTube as of late have both been garbage. So, we shouldn't be too surprised if Bumbray or any of the other contributors on JoBlo have pretty questionable or just downright bad movie takes.
The plot and the plot structure are pretty much the same as the first movie. Like, the plots of the two films are very similar, and they follow a similar path. Like, Anthony Ramos and the female lead ♀︎ have a very similar dynamic with Glen Powell and his crew that Jo and Bill had with Jonas, where they're all storm chasers, they're all chasing after tornadoes 🌪️, it's just one side is doing it for the science and for the thrill while the other is just in it for fame and fortune 🤑.
But then, they do an uno reverse card on this where it turns out Glen Powell is the Bill equivalent, and Anthony Ramos is the Jonas equivalent, or at least his colleague is. It's like the writer or writers (I don't know if this movie had multiple writers or just one), watched the first movie and were like, "what if we did the same thing, but in reverse? And what if, instead of being rivals the whole time, they actually team up?" I guarantee that was the thought process behind the plot and the characters and character dynamics. What's even the point in doing a standalone sequel if you're just going to copy the first movie pretty much verbatim?
Top Gun: Maverick has the same problem where it's just the first movie again, but in reverse. Except Top Gun: Maverick managed to overcome its rehashed plot by having exciting flying and dogfighting sequences, a lot of cool action, and have a really engaging characters, character interactions, and character dynamics. The human drama and the jet action are what made Top Gun: Maverick such an exciting movie that was able to match or even surpass the first movie in some regards. Not the plot.
Twisters 🌪️ really doesn't have that. It doesn't have interesting or memorable characters, character interactions, or character dynamics. It doesn't really bring anything new or exciting to the table to help it overcome a lackluster plot. It does have interesting action scenes, the tornado scenes 🌪️ are cool, but they aren't enough to make up for the movie's glaring flaws. The fire tornado 🔥🌪️ was cool, but it wasn't a new idea. This movie didn't come up with that, and it's not the first movie to do a fire tornado 🔥🌪️, not by a long shot. They just lifted that from Into the Storm, that found footage tornado movie 🌪️ from 2014. So even one of the cooler scenes in the movie, one of the main selling points of the movies wasn't even new or unique.
I am glad that I didn't see this in the theater because if I did, I would've walked away from it feeling a lot more disappointed than I am from having just watched it on Fandango at Home. I would've probably felt like we wasted our money 💵 on a movie that wasn't anywhere close to being as good as the first one, if I did try to convince myself that it was as good or close. I can't in good conscience recommend this movie to anyone, and I would say you're better off just watching the first movie, or rewatching it if you've seen the first one before.
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