One of the most satisfying movies of the summer

A standalone sequel to the second-biggest blockbuster of the summer of 1996, Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters may be a millennium apart from Jan de Bont’s original, and share only one character with that classic flying cow of early Hollywood animation (a data machine named Dorothy), but each of these shows is driven by the same creative ethos. To quote a character who rushes to save as many civilians as possible from the massive tornado that ravages an Oklahoma town during the climax of Chung’s film: “Everybody needs to go to the movies!”

Much like its predecessor, this surprisingly romantic and upbeat multiplex fun film strangely blends genres to create a satisfying adventure. Whereas “Twister” transformed a period screwball comedy into an avant-garde disaster movie, “Twisters” effectively reverses that script by throwing a (very) lighthearted modern romantic comedy into the whirlwind of an old-school Amblin adventure.

Glen Powell is there, of course, the deep-dimpled “Anyone but You” star who exudes pure charisma out of thin air as Tyler, a flashy YouTuber who chases tornadoes for tornadoes’ sake. He doesn’t sit well with Kate (Normal People breakout Daisy Edgar-Jones), a doe-eyed scientist whose teenage dreams of solving the tornado crisis are swept away by the same tornado that swallows up all her friends in the film’s opening sequence.

The pressure difference between these characters would be strong enough to drive the plot forward on its own, even without the cloud-sized monsters they hunt across Oklahoma like bigger, whiter land sharks — or the tentative love triangle that threatens to form whenever Kate’s old friend Javi, played by Anthony Ramos, shows up with suspicious motives and military-grade imaging technology. movie The imaging technology allows Chung to muster a measure of Spielbergian wonder that de Bont’s film lacked.

While Mark L. Smith’s script places more emphasis on the destructive power of these natural disasters (and the toll they take on the people and communities crushed in their path), the devastation they wreak is edged with dread, and that dread allows Kate, Tyler, and their ragtag crew of storm-chasing renegades to share in the visceral euphoria of saving hope from catastrophe. Gorgeous people, thrilling action, genuine pathos, and a few quietly delivered comments on predatory climate-change capitalism thrown in for good measure… true to its word, “Twisters” does what it can to bring everyone to the movies, even if there’s not much to say that will please anyone.

It’s always wonderful to see a great summer movie that is simply works The movie is as good as this one gets, let alone a $200 million movie that never lets itself get out of hand. Based on a story credited to Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski, Twisters was conceived by people smart enough to recognize that, despite the 21st-century special effects at their disposal, this sequel couldn’t rely on raw spectacle to the same degree as the original. The days when audiences could be so easily blown away by computer-generated wind funnels are long gone, a fact that presented the film’s creative team with a challenge they saw as an opportunity.

With its relatively limited ability to seed digital on a grand scale, “Twister” had little choice but to rely on its two main characters, or surround them with the best supporting cast a studio could hope to assemble at the time. Rather than fool themselves into thinking that modern tools had freed them from this old-world obligation, Chung and his colleagues chose to follow much the same path. A tornado is a tornado is a tornado (unless it actually is two (both tornadoes), and while “Twisters” can — and often does — manipulate them with a precision that wasn’t possible in the previous film, the people behind this fledgling franchise clearly appreciate that they can only push things so far before it spills over into “The Day After Tomorrow” territory.

So while this sequel offers a stunning image of an EF-5 turning into a hellish inferno as it rips through a power plant, a terrific sequence in which a tornado sucks people out of an empty swimming pool as if it were purposely sucking them in, and a number of scenes in which a powerful vortex forms right at its target, the focus remains firmly on the human cast. By cleverly repeating the semi-ridiculous moment from “Twister” in which Helen Hunt stares at a tornado as if it were the same one that swallowed her father some 30 years earlier, Smith’s script tries to make things personal but not Also personal, and “Minari” director Chung — no stranger to intimate stories set against the epic backdrop of the American heartland — is also well-positioned to walk that line with ease.

Kate embodies the pros and cons of this approach in equal measure. A chimera that combines the previous film’s two main characters into one—often frustratingly recessive—storm chaser, Kate marries Hunt’s formative trauma with Bill Paxton’s reluctant psychic gifts (she has a sixth sense for what a tornado will do next). Kate may not be the most dynamic character in the world, but it’s easy to believe she’s a wounded visionary, and Edgar-Jones sells us on the idea that she might be too wounded to help anyone else.

Tyler is a perfect match for her, then, because the smirk that each tornado spreads across his face makes it seem like he’s mocking the leg scar that last tornado left behind for Kate, and his content-creator thing—a stark contrast to the uniform professionalism of Javi’s team—implies an insufferably carefree attitude toward the real-world effects of a life-destroying weather phenomenon. Tyler’s motto: “If you feel it, chase it.” It’s a clever inversion of the original film, where our heroes were the adrenaline-addicted underdogs and Cary Elwes was the corporate jerk who kept trying to steal the spotlight.

Of course, Powell is just too likable to stick with Kate for long (he delivers a line about a missing dog with Cruise-esque flair), and his character’s crew is just too cool for anyone to mess with — Katy O’Brian, Sasha Lane, Brandon Perea and the great Tunde Adebimpe give de Bont’s all-star cast a run for their money. While it was fun to see Hunt and Paxton’s nearly-divorced exes rediscover their love for each other, “Twisters” does an even cleaner job of extracting palpable emotion from pure spectacle, as the film is at its strongest during the various scenes that force Kate to see the selflessness behind Tyler’s firework-sized flash (though Chung will have to answer to God for making YouTubers look so damn good). It’s rare to see a summer blockbuster where the special effects are so inextricably linked to the emotion, but it stands to reason that in this one, everything should be mixed together like that.

Broadly predictable for a film about a weather phenomenon so volatile it can flatten an entire city in mere seconds, “Twisters” has no intention of reinventing the wheel, but it never forgets that this isn’t our first “tornado” (to borrow Tyler’s favorite T-shirt), and it makes the most of its opportunities to put a 21st-century spin on a classic formula. This is especially true once the film is able to free itself from the rusty shackles of Kate’s grief; through its earnest negotiation with a modern world in which Mother Nature and human nature are both stacked on top of us, “Twisters” urges its characters to fight for a better future despite the headwinds that threaten to flatten them, a plea that Chung commits to with a conviction that his film’s love story sometimes lacks. “If you feel it, chase it.”

And for all the undeserved goodwill “Twisters” bestows on viral content creators, it still makes one of this summer’s most compelling arguments for the big-screen experience. A movie theater may not be the best option. safest a place to hide from a tornado, but this July blockbuster winner makes it clear that huddling in the dark with strangers is a lot better than watching the storm from home.

Grade: B+

Universal Pictures will release “Twisters” in theaters on Friday, July 7. 19.