Lee Isaac Chung gets carried away with Twisters

The personal touch of Minari director Lee Isaac Chung is evident in this surprising sequel to a 1996 summer blockbuster, which turns some blockbuster cliches sideways.

Come on — you already know whether or not you’re going to go see Twisters. You’ve probably already seen it. This isn’t the kind of moviegoing option that people lose sleep over, arguing with themselves about its chances of being worthwhile. The trailer makes it clear: This is Dairy Queen Blizzard — a whole bunch of sugar-high hooey whipped up a blender with the primary purpose of entertaining your taste buds. If you like ice cream, you’re going to get your fix of this eventually, either on the big screen or on streaming.

And you certainly don’t need my detailed synopsis. Several hundred such summaries are waiting for you at Rotten Tomatoes or other review aggregate sites. I doubt anybody heard that a sequel to 1995’s Twister was coming and responded, “Oh, I don’t know… I need to read a detailed plot summary before I can make up my mind.” It’s a Blizzard. It’s full of ice cream and bits of candy. It’s a formula. What do you expect?

If Blizzards aren’t your thing, you probably aren’t even reading this review — unless you’ve come hoping to read a stream of entertaining insults. That’s not going to happen. I like ice cream. I do. I’m just picky about it: I like the good stuff. And that can be hard to find.

And, as whipped ice cream beverages go, Twisters… is pretty good stuff.

Are Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones a better disaster-movie pairing than Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt in the original Twister? [Image from the Universal Pictures trailer.]

Full disclosure: I’ve had the unexpected delight of befriending Lee Isaac Chung through a sequence of interviews, including this one that you can listen to at Image.

And I even had the joy of participating in an early script reading of Minari. (I played the Alan Kim part before he did! I played young Isaac!) So I’m rooting for Isaac as he rides this rocket to Hollywood success, even if I’m a much bigger fan of his earlier work—Munyruangabo, Lucky Life, Abigail Harm, and his deeply moving but little-known documentary I Have Seen My Last Born—than I am of big, broad-stroke crowd-pleasers like Twisters.

(I’m posting links to my full series of posts on the films of Lee Isaac Chung in a Footnote¹ here.)

So, I’ll do my duty and provide some kind of synopsis. What kind of review doesn’t offer information about the ingredients? Here, in short, here’s what you’ll find in this summertime sugar-high:

It opens with a typical Trauma Flashback: Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a weather nerd hell-bent on “taming” tornadoes with new technology. But alas! She and her crack team of storm chasers suffer a tragic, deadly encounter with a wild windstorm. Scarred for life!

Daisy Edgar-Jones standing where the crawdad get sucked up into tornadoes [Image from the Universal Pictures trailer.]

Boom! Fast forward: Now Kate works for a weather service, safely indoors, nicely dressed, watching the storms on screens instead of up-close and person. (I’m a little surprised she hasn’t changed course to pursue a quieter line of work—library science, or something.) She’ll have to be dragged kicking and screaming back into the chase.

So, of course, when one of her former teammates—Javi (Anthony Ramos of In the Heights)—promises her a chance to try out some new-and-improved tornado tech, her resolve collapses like an old barn in a gale-force wind, and Kate’s back, baby! She’ll do it… for science!

Or, maybe she’ll do it for a muscular cowboy with pecs bulging through his white t-shirt?

Go ahead — see if you can smile like this. It feels weird, right? [Image from the Universal Pictures trailer.]

Tyler (played by Hollywood’s New Cruise: Glen Powell) is a storm-chaser who’s in it for the thrills and for the subscribers blowing up his storm-chaser YouTube Channel. He might seem like an asshole the way he brags about ignoring science, thumbs his nose at PhDs, and charges headlong into tornados so he can see what happens when he launches firecrackers up their… up their cones, let’s say. I mean, what scientist wouldn’t swoon for a guy who says things like “You don’t face your fears. You ride ‘em!” (Oooh, wow, says Kate. Maybe I’m afraid of Tyler after all!)

Ah, but that’s just one of many ways that this movie is out to surprise us.