Summer of sequels

I HAVE NEVER chased a tornado, but I have watched many summer blockbusters, and I imagine the experience is similar. You wait with trepidation. You bear witness to a freak culmination of events. With the former: rising winds, unstable air conditions, a deluge of rain. The latter: rising stars, unstable scripts, a deluge of marketing. It might be the thrill of your life. Or it might be a damp squib. Either way, you have witnessed an attempt to create something momentous, even memorable. I’m happy to report that Twisters, a summer blockbuster about seeking and destroying tornados, spins in with a bang, not a whimper.

This is a story about the weather – and a standalone sequel to 1996’s Twister – but it is also about a boy and a girl. Kate (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones) is really into tornados, specifically how to stop them. You just need to feed them polymers, which should weigh the twisters down and draw the moisture out. Or something. (The actors deliver a lot of science talk in this film, with admirable conviction, but you do not have to pay attention to any of it). Tyler (Glen Powell) is also into tornados, but he likes to light fireworks beneath them and film the sparky aftermath for his hugely popular YouTube channel. Everything is copy, even the climate.

Their paths cross in Oklahoma’s “Tornado Alley”. It’s a grand return for Kate, who stopped chasing tornados after one killed her friends and partner and fled to New York to work as a meteorologist. Her friend Javi (Anthony Ramos) lures her back into the field with some souped-up equipment from his army days. If they work together, they could fulfil her long-held theories about how to stop tornadoes forever. But they soon run into Tyler and his rag-tag group of vloggers (and their legions of merch-buying fans). At first, Kate and Tyler hate each other, but maybe, just maybe they will find common ground. In fact, is there a chance that Javi’s company Storm Par not be as squeaky clean as he makes out? And perhaps Tyler isn’t as brash as he seems?

You have to hand it to director Lee Isaac Chung, best known for his Oscar-winning family drama Minari, for going small, big and inventive within the parameters of summer churn. His camera loves the open Oklahoma sky and his movie stars’ faces. It is a film for lovers of wheat fields and American small towns. And for those who love seeing both of those things destroyed. The action sequences – twisters rage through motels, factories and school playing fields – are shot with a real sense of drama and also humour. The final set piece, which takes place in a cinema, leads to a shot that belongs to that rarified space between extremely dumb and bracingly smart. I had no choice but to laugh out loud.

If the characters are a little thinly drawn – Tyler loves views, Kate hates… death? – then at least the actors are having fun. Powell, fresh from Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, hops between cowboy swag and puppy boy eyes. Edgar-Jones, an accomplished actor who wept and communicated badly through Sally Rooney adaptation Normal People, holds her own against a cast which includes Maura Tierney, Daryl McCormack and CGI weather.

In the 28 years since Twister, both the weather and Hollywood’s appetite for franchise building have become scarier. Thankfully, neither trend materialises here. You do not have to have seen the original and there are few signs of franchise-building: no-one is Helen Hunt or Bill Paxton’s child. Mercifully little chat about climate change either: I’m not really sure anyone wants to hear about that in a summer blockbuster. Kate is trying to control the weather, of course, while Tyler is exploiting it, and there are some very earnest attempts to address characters’ ethics, but mostly this is a thrill ride, pure and simple. And it has the smarts to know when to play dumb.

This story originally appeared on Esquire UK

Related:

Can the ‘summer of sequels’ save the film industry?

‘Gladiator 2’: Everything you need to know about Paul Mescal’s Roman Empire