by G.E. Uke, Reporter
When I was young and just getting my legs as a storyteller, I loved the movie Hook. It taught me important lessons about entertainment and stories in general. The biggest was that the antagonist of a plotline is often more important than the protagonist. People LOVE a great villain more than a great hero, particularly when they fall victim to relatable passions. The antagonist of a story can be many things: a person, an organization, a monster, etc. But one of the hardest antagonists to write is nature. Nature is a great antagonist because the struggle for survival is bred into our bones. It’s relatable in ways mere supervillains or secret societies can’t match. Our ancestors had to fight nature to get us where we are today, and their battle was not a story at all. It was real.
Which brings me to Twisters 2024.
The first Twisters movie came out in 1996, and it was excellent. Some movies age well, and Twisters 1996 is one of them. Any remake of that movie had some very big shoes to fill, not in special effects or high melodrama but in its heart. At its core, Twisters is a movie about relationships, the struggle for meaning, and overcoming trauma. The tornados are simply a backdrop.
Twisters 2024 centers around meteorologist and tornado-chaser Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones), who retires after a tornado kills most of her team. She is brought back into the field by her college friend Javi (Anthony Ramos), who has founded a company dedicated to the noble task of researching and predicting tornados. Despite her trauma, she reluctantly agrees to help him for altruistic reasons. Their task is complicated by a group of rival chasers who run a YouTube channel, glamorizing tornadoes and the destruction they cause for fame and money. Leading this group is Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), a handsome “cowboy” and self-styled “Tornado Wrangler” who initially comes across as an arrogant gloryhound.
While this premise might appear two-dimensional, it is complicated by a number of surprise twists and juxtapositions that turn things around by the end of the film. Nothing is as it seems. The character development is surprisingly satisfying, and the special effects are great fun to watch. The main attraction points of Twisters 2024 are: the gung-ho aesthetic of tornado chasing, the special effects, the character development and personalities of the main players (particularly Kate and Tyler), and the backdrops of Oklahoma. All of these were top notch, and Lee Isaac Chung really did his homework when it came to humanizing the actors.
The only negative thing I have to say about Twisters is how unbelievably over the top things got by the second half of the movie. The tornados became so frequent and so destructive that, if they actually manifested with that degree of frequency and intensity, there would be no settlements in Oklahoma at all. Most tornadoes are nowhere near as violent as those depicted in this film, and “fire whirls” (tornados full of flame) are very rare. But the same is true of the danger sharks present, and that didn’t stop Beneath Paris, so I suppose it’s forgivable. I just wonder what all the people in other parts of the world think when they see stuff like this. There ought to be a disclaimer somewhere saying: “This is a dramatization of tornados. They don’t actually destroy two towns a day and create fire whirls on the regular. If they did, there would be no people in Oklahoma.”
Rating: 
ComicsOnline gives Twisters 2024 4 of 5 stars for its excellent casting, action, and heart. A must see for the summer of 2024, and we will be buying it the instant it becomes digitally available.
Keep twisting the night away with ComicsOnline.com for more movies reviews and everything geek pop culture!
Please take a moment to FOLLOW & SUBSCRIBE to our updated ComicsOnline social channels.
We appreciate your support!
INSTAGRAM – COMICSONLINE
BSKY – COMICSONLINE
YOUTUBE – COMICSONLINE
FACEBOOK – COMICSONLINE
TWITTER / X – COMICSONLINE
