Twisters (2024) [Collector’s Edition] – 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray

**/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Kiernan Shipka
screenplay by Mark L. Smith
directed by Lee Isaac Chung

by Walter Chaw Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters is the whistle next to the graveyard, a fascinating companion piece to Adam Wingard’s Godzilla x Kong: the one a spectacle designed to desensitize against our ongoing climate collapse, the other to deaden us against widely-broadcast images of an ongoing genocide. Its only two points of interest are Glen Powell’s sudden ascendance as matinee idol and the astounding majesty of natural phenomena fuelled by man-made climate change–meaning, in its simplicity, the goal is to leave audiences with the dazed satiation one associates with the aftermath of an ostentatious fireworks display: half-deafened, eyes bedazzled, the smell of gunpowder sulphurous in the air. A gut full of barbecued meats and sugared drinks in the American fashion, celebrating our liberation from a monarchy on the back of our God-sanctioned manifest genocide of an Indigenous population. We had fun, but that hangover is a sonofabitch. For me, the best part of Twisters is the extended prologue, where I thought it was going to be a Kiernan Shipka movie.

Alas, this is a Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell movie (Shipka’s character is immediately shipped off to Oz). Traumatized tornado hunter Kate (Edgar-Jones), who has a preternatural ability to deduce the otherwise random paths of tornados (a skill we know is being used because the soundtrack for Field of Dreams rises up for some reason whenever Kate gets starry-eyed), is lured back into the game, Ripley-in-Aliens-style, after her first big run-in with a monster twister results in the deaths of everyone except her and buddy Javi (Anthony Ramos). Javi, who goes to work for a well-funded tornado-hunting agency, wants Kate to help them ascertain the paths of twisters so they can study them from the inside. Meanwhile, social-media sensation Tyler Owens (Powell) arrives on the scene with his million-megawatt grin, a spotless white Stetson, and enough sultry, blue-steel musk to impregnate every woman of breeding age in the auditorium. Kate and Tyler’s meet-cute sets up a sequence where Kate demonstrates her tornado-whispering superpower while egghead Ben (Harry Hadden-Paton), the thankless narrative foil, marvels, “She’s going the wrong way!” “Nope,” says Tyler, his smirk burning like the noonday sun. Tyler may not know twisters like Kate, but you best believe he knows the ladies, nature’s other deadly tempest, amiright?

Ben represents castrated intellectualism, ineffective in both the Alpha of Tyler’s twisto-inferno and the Omega of Kate’s touch-feely oneness with nature. I’ll be honest, I’m a little grateful/surprised–and also not surprised–that an Indigenous actor wasn’t cast as Kate. Ben’s role is essentially that of the author/journalist archetype from westerns who appears in the company of outlaws to chronicle their larger-than-life deeds and who, by the end, learns the zero-sum game of masculinity that elevates dangerous legend over mendacious truths. “You know, our crew is not like your crew, Kate,” Tyler aw-shucks at her, “we don’t need PhDs or fancy gadgets to do what we do. I can guarantee you these guys have seen more tornados than anybody else in this lot combined.” It’s funny because Tyler’s tricked-out rig is loaded with fancy gadgets, including two giant screws that anchor it to the ground so tornados can wash over them while they hoot like a crate of smuggled gibbons, which makes me wonder what it is Tyler is boasting about not having. It isn’t gadgets that men object to, after all–men love gadgets. So what is it? Maybe what he’s saying is that he jury-rigs his own gadgets and doesn’t depend on fancy-schmancy engineers and British-accented twerps like Ben for his technology. It’s a thought punctuated by the very next scene, in which Tyler’s team watches dailies from the day’s shoot to laugh at Ben’s unfortunate panic. Now it’s time for another tornado sequence.

There’s more. How can there be more? I don’t know, but there is. You have every right to ask. Kate has a theory that if you were to load up a tornado with the right chemical at the right time, you could dissipate it before it causes massive damage to human settlements. All her attempts thus far have led to the Oz-ification of her friends, so she’s reluctant to give it another go–UNTIL, that is, she finds out… Jesus, are you bored yet? Let me say, though, that the tornado effects are magnificent, awe-inspiring. Think back to your first IMAX science documentary screening at your local Natural History museum. About midway through the film, a dual tornado appears, then branches off into sister twisters. Ignore the bullshit the people are hooting about and take in the Sam Neill-sees-Brontosauruses grandeur of what a modern mainframe can paint into existence. I confess it took my breath away. A wildfire a couple of years ago decimated the neighbourhood just north of mine in Colorado, resulting in an evacuation during the heart of the pandemic. We never thought it would happen where we are because it never had before–but a once-in-a-century windstorm combined with unusually hot temperatures and drought led to a wall of flame shooting through heavily-developed areas in a Denver suburb. What did I feel when ash fell on our windshield as we raced to save a friend and her pets? It felt like exactly what we bought and voted for.

Twisters is instantly forgettable pop pabulum that makes a gendered morality statement about the palpable evidence of the end of habitable life on this planet. It’s like those bland, expressionless illustrations of people in the middle of an airplane crash on the emergency cards tucked into seatback pouches. Turns out Javi’s company is “ambulance chasing” these storms to get first dibs on the property desperate people who’ve just had their homes steamrolled might now want to sell at a discount. And it turns out Tyler’s social-media clout is being spent on providing potato chips and blankets to those same demolished communities. What are we talking about now? Real estate developers have been the bad guys in movies–and life–since Lex Luthor, but since when are TikTok Influencers the last hope for civilization? Fuck, I’m so old maybe they are; nobody else is stepping up. The supporting cast for Chung’s follow-up to his dulcet, lovely Minari is calculatedly multi-culti, but it resolves as two beautiful cis-het white people finding a love connection at the end of the world. “You don’t face your fears,” Tyler says thoughtfully at a rodeo right before God gives his opinion on lines like this. “You ride ’em.” I have concerns about riding my fears, given that I’m mainly afraid of sharks, but country aphorisms can be tough for me sometimes. I did like the part where a movie theatre is torn apart, suggesting there is literally no place to escape or feel safe when the planet gets sick of our shit.

Twisters is a neo-Irwin Allen tokusatsu extravaganza that purports to be a lot of fun but is more a dead-on reflection of the collective fears of the current moment. Late in the film, as a group of survivors, including Kate and Tyler, take refuge in an empty swimming pool, you’ll note that it’s a redux of the opening sequence showing Kate, again, being the little spoon to a man sheltering her from certain death. What if, instead, Kate insisted on covering Tyler because of her grief over the past and, in the process, dialled down Tyler’s testosterone a couple of notches? Maybe the question is the answer. Without depth, even when the opportunity for it presents itself, Twisters relies on misery-porn and witty-romantic ripostes, scored at high decibels by new country-music bangers and chantillied by a cameo from Maura Tierney, made up to look distractingly like Pixies bassist Kim Deal for reasons I cannot begin to unpack. Is it good? That’s the wrong question. More useful to wonder whether it has adequately prepared us to accept that the rest of our lives will play out against the backdrop of mass death events that, if they were presentable once, no longer appear to be preventable. Just relax, put on your oxygen mask before you help someone else with theirs, put your head between your knees, and pucker up, Buttercup. Originally published: July 18, 2024.

THE 4K UHD DISC
by Bill Chambers Universal brings Twisters to 4K UHD disc in a Collector’s Edition sporting an exquisite 2.39:1, 2160p transfer with Dolby Vision and HDR10 encoding. Despite the decades-long gap between Twister and this sequel, the two movies have a remarkably similar appearance on the format, owing to director Lee Isaac Chung’s fidelity to the Midwest palette and, no doubt, his decision to shoot Twisters on film. That being said, advances in anamorphic cinematography are almost immediately apparent–this is a sharper image with fewer focusing inconsistencies (though as I understand it, the set-pieces were effectively shot in Super35)–and the deep contrast feels less dense than it does on the Twister disc, where it’s prone to crush. I should add that I recently replaced my television, and while I’m still fine-tuning the picture, I’m noticing it manages blacks a lot better than my previous display, so take that with a grain of salt. HDR is again used to embellish diegetic light sources, lending verisimilitude to the storm-chasing sequences as high beams chop through the Pigpen clouds swirling around the vehicles. (This is perhaps all the more impressive considering the headlights are CGI, according to behind-the-scenes footage.) Colours are selectively punchy, like the yellow barrels paying homage to Jaws, while the veneer of film grain is tight and evocative.

This isn’t one of Universal’s negligible UHD bumps, as the included 1080p copy is fine on its own but looks comparatively flat, dim, and electronic. The accompanying Dolby Atmos track, in its 7.1 downmix, reminded me of a Disney release in that it sounded timid until I cranked the volume a couple of notches above reference level. This is a state-of-the-art soundtrack, though, without the early-digital roar of the first film; I kind of miss that era of mixing while recognizing it’s been replaced by a far more sophisticated approach to sound design. The audio on Twisters is big and enveloping but conscientious of ear fatigue, keeping the subwoofer on a short leash. Dialogue clarity is impeccable no matter how cacophonous things get.

Both the UHD and HD Blu-ray platters contain the complete line-up of supplementary material, starting with a feature-length commentary from Chung, who is initially quite voluble but somewhat low on gas by the end. (It was recorded a week and a half after he finished the film.) Off the top, he points out a cool Easter egg in the Universal logo that is easy to miss and talks about how the SAG strike forced them to finish shooting the movie in the middle of winter, necessitating much visual trickery to restore the grass to its summertime verdancy. He touches on aspects of the production not discussed elsewhere, such as how so many of the locations were just long stretches of road they chose by map, but two solid hours of Twisters talk does grow a little tedious. I laughed when Chung confessed to not really knowing how or why these college kids are using equipment that obviously belonged to the characters from Twister, yet I also wondered how this self-professed fan of the original reconciled his indifference to whether he was making a reboot or a sequel.

Video-based extras, in 4K SDR, launch with a 2-minute block of “Deleted Scenes” (three in total), none of which are the kiss allegedly cut from the end of the film at Sammy Fabelman’s behest. Next, a “Gag Reel” (4 mins.) begins with a sorta-funny fakeout that eats up a surprisingly substantial portion of the runtime. B-roll-rich making-of featurettes kick off with “Tracking the Fronts: The Path of Twisters” (15 mins.), in which various members of the cast and crew sentimentalize Twister while ruefully acknowledging that climate change has transformed it into a quaint snapshot of a time when storms were seasonal. We learn that life often imitated art, too, as real weather events interrupted the staging of fake weather events during the Oklahoma shoot. The longest piece at 24 minutes, “Into the Eye of the Storm” opens with Glen Powell calling Daisy Edgar-Jones “one of those Swiss Army knives of an actress” and Chung concurring. Powell, Anthony “Tony” Ramos, et al.: all great. I feel like Kiernan Shipka gets more screentime here than in the movie proper as we watch her and her co-stars get yanked into the air over and over again. Chung outlines the “personalities” of each storm (the first one is Jaws, the last one is Frankenstein) and reveals that the combination motel/rodeo set was more or less a found location. The thirst trap “Glen Powell: All-Access” (3 mins.) meanwhile reveals that Powell is the spitting image of his parents, who have cameos in the rodeo scene, and that his dog is the cutest thing on four legs.

“Front Seat to a Chase” (5 mins.) finds Jones, Powell, and, aw, Powell’s pooch hitching a ride with Dr. Sean Waugh and his real-life gang of storm chasers, though not enough is made of it. Documentarian Sean Casey says that Twister kicked off a whole storm-chasing movement; the footage he’s acquired since 1999 served as a reference for Twisters‘ visual effects. “Voice of a Villain” (6 mins.) is a rare and welcome, if finally too brief, segment on sound design, profiling the work of Twisters‘ supervising sound editor, Al Nelson. Although I wish it were nerdier, wonkier, we do discover things like how the howling wind is the sound of a slowed-down Huey, and I love that Nelson’s team interviewed tornado survivors to get a sense of not only what they heard but also the way they heard it. Lastly, “Tricked-Out Trucks” (5 mins.) returns to the storm chasers to discuss the inspirations behind Tyler’s Inspector Gadget truck in the film. Stateside copies of the Twisters 4K combo pack come with a digital code.

123 minutes; PG-13; UHD: 2.39:1 (2160p/MPEG-H, Dolby Vision/HDR10), BD: 2.39:1 (1080p/MPEG-4); English Dolby Atmos (7.1 TrueHD core), French DD+ 7.1, Spanish DD 5.1; English SDH, French, Spanish subtitles; BD-100 + BD-50; Universal