Twisters will suck in a new generation of film fans

The original Twister was a big box office hit when it was released in 1996 and has developed an incredibly healthy following after 20+ years of regular screenings on TV.

The original film saw Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt face off against deadly twisters in the American heartland, while also battling their marriage issues and the ignominy of having Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen on the soundtrack.

The great Bill Paxton is no longer with us and Helen Hunt is out of the picture, but Twister is still a movie that has ingrained itself into pop culture (the flying cow!) so in the modern age of years-later sequels we now have Twisters.

 Normal People star Daisy Edgar-Jones, Top Gun: Maverick hotshot Glen Powell and Hamilton star Anthony Ramos have been tasked with selling Twister to a new generation and they succeed with flying colours.

Edgar-Jones (once again fooling people with brilliant accent work) stars as Kate, a young Oklahoma storm chaser who once had aspirations of defeating tornados with science before turning her back and settling for a nice office job in New York.

Powell is the cowboy YouTube star who has made his name as a self-professed “tornado wrangler” while Ramos and future Superman David Corenswet are budding businessmen who are looking to profit off technology that tells real estate owners when and where tornados will strike.

The corporate angle was in the original Twister film (it was a Michael Crichton-written film, of course it was) but it has become more prominent in Twisters.

This presents interesting dilemmas for the characters; do they risk life and limb to get their equipment out in the field and get the results they need or do they drive into town to help the people who are about to lose everything?

Oscar-nominated director Lee Isaac Chung is pretty overqualified to be directing a 200 million-dollar disaster movie considering his previous film, Minari, was a quiet slice-of-life A24 drama about a Korean-American family on a farm in rural Arkansas.

Isaac Chung turned out to be a perfect choice to direct, because the film often stops to remember that for all the spectacle and awe-inspiring destruction you’ve come to see in a Twister movie, there is always a human element to it.

Twisters has made the most of technology advancing a lot since 1996, with drones, real-time 3D models and satellite imagery helping place the film in the modern day but the film also has a bit of a traditionalist streak.

Glen Powell being the star will invite comparisons to Top Gun: Maverick, but the film also makes a lot more sense when you realise that the film’s director Joseph Kosinski had a significant part in the making of Twisters.

Koskinski worked on the film (and receives a story by credit) before dropping out, but his influence on the film is clear to see.

Just like when Tom Cruise tells the pilots in Top Gun that they cannot trust the computer and they should go with their instinct, Twisters also displays a similar streak.

In any other circumstances, we would slap down a movie for brazenly using clichés like this, but the weird thing about Twisters is that it somehow works.

There is an aversion these days to using clichés and having the characters call it out, but there is an old-fashioned earnestness to Twisters that is oddly refreshing.

Twisters is as subtle as a bulldozer through your living room when it comes to communicating the threats posed by climate change but the difference between this and something like Don’t Look Up is that this movie is po-faced and honest about the dangers posed by climate change, whereas Don’t Look Up is finger-wagging and judgemental about people not taking it seriously enough.

Edgar-Jones and Powell are fantastic replacements for Hunt and Paxton, because Edgar-Jones has the blunderbuss, can-do energy of Helen Hunt or Holly Hunter down to a tee, while Powell is a real Texas cowboy like Bill Paxton or a younger Brad Pitt.

Of course, it’s a bit redundant to spend 700 words or so talking about metaphors, stylistic choices and allegories when you’re talking about a movie like Twisters – the reader at home simply wants to know if Twisters shows cars and houses flying into the air.

The answer is a pleasing, resounding yes.

The best part of Twisters is how nasty and uncaring the tornados are and the big tornado set-pieces are worth the price of a ticket.

In Twisters, the action comes thick and fast and doesn’t mess around; every 20 minutes, you are guaranteed to see a tornado wreaking havoc.

The sound design is deafening in IMAX and the visual effects take great care to mix practical and digital wherever possible.

No matter how many times you see a house crumble like tissue paper and get sucked into a tornado, it never gets old.

One stand-out sequence has our heroes attempt to run for cover while sheltering at a motel and Isaac Chung presents the tornado with the same silent and terrifying grace as a director would frame a Michael Myers rampage in a Halloween film.

There is no stopping them, so all you can do is run and hide.

Twisters ends up being stronger than the first film in many ways; the secret weapon of Twisters is having as deep a supporting actor bench as the original.

The original had a killer supporting cast with the likes of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck, Todd Field and Lois Smith thrown in for colour and Twisters does a great job of making the side characters just as interesting.

Irishman (and former Fair City star) Daryl McCormack, Love Lies Bleeding breakout Katy O’Brian, the ever-reliable Maura Tierney and The Crown star Harry Hadden-Paton help flesh out the world of the movie in some style.

The great disaster films of the 70s (think The Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure) always had overqualified actors delivering silly dialogue and making it sound convincing; Twisters keeps the spirit of classic disaster movies alive.

While it is doubtful Twisters will appear on our year-end top 10 list or get nominated for Oscars like Top: Gun Maverick, the movie is still the best way to pass a rainy sunny afternoon during an Irish summer.

Twister has a well-earned reputation of sucking you in whenever it’s on TV; we can foresee Twisters having a similar half-life until we get Twisters 3: Let’s Twist Again in 2051.