Twisters

I love disaster movies and Twister (1996) is one of my all-time favourites. It embodies the 90s, and although cheesy, it's a total comfort movie.

I was really excited for Twisters and the trailers looked like it would live up to the hype. Seeing this tonight I couldn't help but compare the two movies and feel disappointed. Twisters isn't bad, it's just bland.

Jan De Bont had a captivating style of directing with big aerial shots and practical action scenes that worked with the relatively new CGI back in '96. The cast was also stellar (especially Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cary Elwes etc). Twisters at times feels like a caricature of the previous film's characters but uninteresting and not particularly likeable. Daisy Edgar-Jones does a great job and there's decent chemistry between her and Glen Powell (albeit not to the same extent of Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt).

Mark Mancina's score was one of the best action scores of the 90s and I was really looking forward to at least a reference, but unfortunately we only get a generic score from Benjamin Wallfisch. I do rate the solid country soundtrack though.

What are the good things about Twisters? The set pieces are on point - especially the rodeo and finale in the town. The effects are amazing and there's a couple moments of spectacle. I think if you haven't seen (or aren't a huge fan) of the original, you'll probably appreciate this one a lot more.

There's a reason this movie became available on stream so quickly. It simply isn't a good movie. Twister, the original was a classic which included mediocre acting but decent drama. This movie provided less of both. Many years after the first, the CGI offered nothing more and the acting offered less. It's a shame that remakes like this pay no homage to the original movie and lack the talent to improve given all the technological advantages. Powell needs to slow down his career after Top Gun and not make weak movies like this. Tornadoes are so much more catastrophic than depicted in this move and it shouldn't be celebrated in the face of cinema so poorly.

Twisters is certainly well made with a talented core cast. It is far from a bad film, but I found the story to be familiar and predictable as far as disaster films go.

I was happy to settle into something fun and entertaining; I don't think my expectations were too high, but I think Twisters was missing tension, which is a vital part of a film like this. At no point did I feel any of the central cast of characters were under real threat as they bounced between set piece stunts.

Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones are very watchable in the leads and Anthony Ramos does well to give dimensions to a difficult role. There are however, simply too many peripheral characters.

A large portion of the film's runtime focusses on the relationship between the two leads and, aside from Anthony Ramos, there is no time left to flesh out the rest of the supporting cast, who operate largely as comic relief.

Nowhere near as good as the original. Why did they feel the need to remake this? Why can't studios come up with their own new ideas instead of remaking past great movies? What has happened to Hollywood? Where has creativity gone to? It's like they fired or all the best creators quit in Hollywood. I just don't get it. Why are so many movies so horrible today? It's so sad what's been going on lately.

I would highly recommend just watching the original again instead of this mess. The visuals are OK (sometimes), but the original's effects were really good as well, and that was decades ago. The acting and story was subpar at best.

2 out of 10 - save yourself some money and watch the original instead.

Twisters is odd because it's not really a sequel to the original Twister (1996), nor is it a remake. It's its own thing. And that's kind of a good thing. This film is highly predictable, which takes away a lot of the suspense, but it still manages to present a few exciting moments. Also, I expected the visual effects to far surpass the ones from the 90s, but they honestly seem about the same. And there are far too many characters for me to care about any of them individually, except for Glen Powell, who is a whirlwind of charisma. Even with all its eye-rolling moments, I enjoyed watching Twisters.