It’s a Herculean feat to transform what should be a dumb summer blockbuster like Twisters into a piece of visual poetry. However, this was director Lee Isaac Chung’s intent from the very beginning after he was tapped to helm the project in late 2022.
When discussing why he and cinematographer Dan Mindel wanted to shoot on 35mm film, the Minari filmmaker stated, “I love the way that film stock could render colors and just how poetic it can make an image look.” It may seem like a pretentious statement at first, but when you see Twisters, you immediately understand why Chung chose to do this.
RELATED: TWISTERS: Things Get Wild With a New Featurette
Not only do the grass colors look greener than green, and you can feel the dirt on both Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), but some of the most potent moments of character growth are represented through Chung’s striking visual storytelling. A shot of Tyler donning a cowboy hat, drenched in heavy rain, is as poetic as movies get. A cowboy who lost his sense of self after being injured far too many times in bull riding, his newfound love of “Tornado Wrangling” helps him retain the “outlaw” status he seems to crave desperately.
But in that specific shot, one can sense his broken self. Beyond the outlandish exterior he showcases when hyping up his legion of fans (“If you can feel it, chase it!”) or live-streaming in his car into “The Suck Zone” with his team, Boone (Brandon Perea), Lily (Sasha Lane), Dexter (Tunde Adebimpe), and Dani (Katy M. O’Brian, with her second collaboration with Lee Isaac Chung after The Mandalorian – Season 3), Tyler doesn’t know where to find himself in the cyclical world he’s now boxed himself in.
It’s through the arrival of Edgar-Jones’ Kate in Oklahoma that his life begins to literally and figuratively shake. Kate doesn’t want to return to storm chasing after her last mission ended in tragedy, with her boyfriend, Jeb (Daryl McCormack), and partners, Addy (Kiernan Shipka), Praveen (Nik Dodani) brutally sucked into a gnarly F5 tornado. But to the request of her friend Javi (Anthony Ramos), she reluctantly accepts to help him place thingamajigs (basically our movie’s “Dorothy”) at Tornadoes so they can analyze them and potentially reduce their intensity.
Javi now works at Storm Par, funded by Oklahoman Marshall Riggs (David Born), who lets Scott (David Corenswet) oversee the operation. At first, the work they do seems to be well-intentioned, but Kate soon realizes that something is afoot after spending more time with Tyler, who, despite his exuberant exterior, has shown to be far more vulnerable and open than Kate initially thought he was.
This push-pull relationship can only be achieved when the filmmaker completely controls his camera, and the emulsifying nature of 35mm film adds a layer of texture to the proceedings before both protagonists even have a chance to meet.
Lee Isaac Chung Brings His Aesthetic Sensibilities to Twisters
With Twisters, Lee Isaac Chung continues to add his sense of poetry to large-scale blockbuster filmmaking. After doing so in the third episode of The Mandalorian – Season 3, Chung makes us sit with the intricacies of nature through specific moments where the wind reverberates on the wheat (after Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver, any shot of wheat captured with such finesse will inevitably cite Snyder’s sci-fi saga), or when leaves fall on Kate’s hand, signaling a change in the weather’s moisture, ripe for a Tornado to form.
All of these small shifts are fully realized on screen and beautifully represent both the shock and awe of seeing Mother Nature’s wrath being exacted over finite humans. In that regard, Chung and Mindel exceed the visual treatment of tornadoes that director Jan de Bont established in 1996’s Twister, even going so far as to treat “The Finger of God” (an F5 tornado) as an actual large finger decimating everything in its path.
Chung also has fun with the concept of “The Suck Zone,” putting fireworks inside a Tornado’s cyclone to illuminate it and show us a side of the phenomenon no meteorologists have seen before, showcasing how the potential of cinema can advance our understanding of events we have no control over. But why doesn’t he talk about climate change? In an era where we can practically feel the incoming devastation in all corners of the world, the arrival of a new installment in the Twister franchise seems ripe to explore how cataclysmic these events have been ever since the original film.
It’s the biggest faux pas Chung and screenwriters Mark L. Smith and Joseph Kosinski commit in Twisters. They completely ignore the cause of rising (and more violent) tornadoes, instead focusing on MacGuffins that are inherently pointless to the story at hand. Thus, the human stakes at play are diluted, even when Javi and Scott go head-to-head when one cares about the people, and the other, profits.
Perhaps there’s a deeper commentary at play here when it comes to rich landlords profiting off climate change, especially when a tornado devastates an entire town. What do you do when you’re only in this game for yourself? Unfortunately, Chung never goes far deeper than asking this central question, other than having Scott say, “I don’t care about the people!” Honestly, for someone currently playing Superman, that’s not a good look. The same can be said regarding Tyler’s group, who brought a journalist (played by Downton Abbey’s Harry Hadden-Patton) to cover his “Tornado Wrangling” activities.
The group seems to act like Cary Elwes’ Jonas in Jan de Bont’s Twister, but they are, in actuality, the new Bill Harding crew (while our film’s “Jo” works for “Jonas,” unbeknownst to her). This reversal seems ripe for Kate to realize her place in the world five years after the tragedy that changed her life. But Chung is so busy filling his movie with as many poetic images as possible that he forgets the central main character should be at the story’s heart.
Daisy Edgar-Jones is Miscast, but Glen Powell Steals the Show
Unfortunately, Daisy Edgar-Jones is no Helen Hunt and is woefully miscast as Kate. That doesn’t mean her character has no strong moments, but they pale compared to how fully developed of a protagonist Jo was in Twister. Thank God Powell completely eats up the screen and harkens back to the late Bill Paxton in more ways than one as Tyler.
He may not be as complex of a character as Bill, but his vulnerable side is the most intriguing he’s been in a major blockbuster, foregoing the old-school charm he’s seemed to convey in films like Devotion, Top Gun: Maverick and Hit Man to slowly pull back on what made him an icon in the storm chasing world (as he says to Kate, “You don’t face your fears. You ride ‘em.”).
However, where Chung lacks in character growth and intriguing dynamics between Kate/Tyler/Javi and the rest of the cast (the underwritten script may be more of a product of the writer’s strike than anything else), he more than makes up for its shortcomings with incredibly-paced and shot action sequences, highly reminiscent of the way Jan de Bont would choreograph them in Twister.
How the wide shots of the vehicles chasing the tornadoes pick up the dirt on the ground, how the rain drenches the cars and renders the environment completely hostile to any form of life was treated with such verve by de Bont, but Chung elevates it by making nature the focal point of attention in his film.
As a result, the action in Twisters is far more vibrant and dynamic than in the original and ultimately becomes a must-witness on the grandest of IMAX screens. Preferring to focus on nature instead of the protagonists, Chung shows us how its imbalance inevitably leads to chaos, even if it can often be stunning (like the fireworks scene).
Sometimes, meteorological events beyond our control are beautiful to see as we realize how fragile we (and this ecosystem) are. How Chung and Mindel capture this on 35mm film reminds most modern filmmakers what a blockbuster should look and feel like, where the audience can imagine themselves being in the heat of the environment with lifelike colors and the cold rain pouring down on them like Powell’s worn-out Tyler reluctantly puts his hat on to recapture the façade he has created for so long.
RELATED: TWISTERS – Dive into the Epic Adventure in New Featurette
With image-making in complete shambles (exacerbated by critics who don’t watch movies beyond their birth date going so far as to defend mediocre cinematography on Twitter because they don’t know any better), Twisters acts like the perfect tonic to the sludge that is currently plaguing modern filmmaking.
With such visceral poetry, Lee Isaac Chung cements himself as a director to watch in the world of blockbusters, especially after breaking out with 2020’s Oscar-winning Minari. With the upcoming Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, Chung will likely continue to infuse his own sensibilities with pre-existing IPs and hopefully pave the way to inspire directors to give the audience their money’s worth from a visual perspective. We can still reverse course. Lee Isaac Chung and Dan Mindel shows us how.
Rating: 4/5
Twisters is playing now in theaters.
About Twisters
Release Date: July 19, 2024
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Screenplay: Mark L. Smith. Story by: Joseph Kosinski
Music: Benjamin Wallfisch
Producers: Frank Marshall, Patrick Crowley
Production: Warner Bros. Pictures, The Kennedy/Marshall Company, Amblin Entertainment
Distribution: Universal Pictures
Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Harry Hadden-Patton, Sasha Lane, Daryl McCormack, Kiernan Shipka, Nik Dodani, David Corenswet, Tunde Adebimpe, Katy M. O’Brian, and Paul Dorn.
Synopsis: Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Kate Cooper, a former storm chaser haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado during her college years who now studies storm patterns on screens safely in New York City. She is lured back to the open plains by her friend, Javi (Anthony Ramos) to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. There, she crosses paths with Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), the charming and reckless social-media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures with his raucous crew, the more dangerous the better.
As storm season intensifies, terrifying phenomena never seen before are unleashed, and Kate, Tyler, and their competing teams find themselves squarely in the paths of multiple storm systems converging over central Oklahoma in the fight of their lives.
Twisters releases in cinemas on July 19 What did you think of the movie? Do you prefer Twister or Twisters? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to follow us on social media!
KEEP READING: MaXXXine Movie Review: Ti West Fumbles the Bag
