SPOILER ALERT: This article includes details from Twisters. Read at your own risk!
I hadn’t watched the first Twister since it was released in 1996. I decided to work backward and watched the original after watching a screening of Twisters. I came to one conclusion: we needed some serious fucking in the sequel.
At first, seeing the two hottie stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell hit the skins was not necessarily at the top of my list for this movie. I was more concerned about remembering what the hell happened in Twister starring Oscar winner and Blindspotting star Helen Hunt, the late, great Bill Paxton as well as gone-too-soon Philip Seymour Hoffman, Princess Bride icon Cary Elwes, ’80s cinematic staple Jami Gertz, Succession‘s Alan Ruck, and Todd Field — the guy who directed Tár. With a cast like this and a soundtrack that includes Shania Twain’s “No One Needs to Know”, Twister is a cinematic benchmark for pop culture.
Upon leaving the screening, a friend pointed out how the two rival storm chasers/would-be-lovers of the movie, Kate (Edgar-Jones) and Tyler (Powell) should have kissed in the end — not to fulfill some trope, but to resolve the narrative like a harmonious chord. At first, I thought, “The movie was just very OK for me and a kiss wouldn’t have changed that” but my friend was right. A kiss isn’t the only thing we needed. We needed Kate and Tyler to get down. It wouldn’t have made the movie 100% better, rather, it would have completed a circle that the movie started from the moment Kate and Tyler met.
At the very end of Twisters, after heavy flirting, will-they-won’t-they behavior, and lots of moments when they are abnormally physically too close to each other when doing casual tasks. For instance, look at this still of the characters reading “tornado data” on a laptop.
Twisters hits the same beats as its predecessor. Kate, a tornado genius who has a deep connection with the art of storm chasing, and her former colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos) and the super-duper rigid Scott (the next Superman David Corenswet) work are the more “corporate” and “educated” storm chasers as they go toe-to-toe with the YouTube influencer team of misfit storm chasers including a ragtag group of characters played by Brandon Perea, Sasha Lane, Tunde Adebimpe, and Katy O’Brien — all under the leadership of Tyler, a charismatic meteorologist influencer who loves to put his face on a T-shirt. Even in the beginning, the destined-to-meet-their-demise characters played by Daryl McCormack, Kiernan Shipka, and Nik Dodani serve sultry storm chaser realness.
As a movie, Twisters’ nostalgia factor outweighs its attempt to bring something new to the narrative. With a script by Mark L. Smith and a story by Joseph Kosinski, director Lee Isaac Chung did was great and he gave what he could to the movie, but even Jan de Bont made Speed before Twister. The sequel could have used a director of the blockbuster variety. Twisters had the wild and crazy turns and excitement of a blockbuster movie, but it didn’t quite reach that apex of where action meets camp, which Twister achieved — and this brings us back to the fucking.
I am a completist. Once a movie launches a narrative that blatantly points to a destination where a satisfying kiss or intercourse moment awaits. Even if it has nothing to do with the primary story, if you start to sculpt a romantic relationship in a movie, I want it to pay off in the end.
In the original Twister, we see Jo (Hunt) and Bill (Paxton) characters have a very palpable sexual tension from the beginning because they are a divorced couple, but as soon as we see them interact, we, as an audience, know that they are more than likely going to reconcile and have a kiss at the end. And guess what happens? In the last minutes of the movie, the pair share a wonderful kiss as a crowd of storm chasers celebrates their survival through a tornado.
With Twisters, Kate and Tyler have the same chemistry as Jo and Bill — and props to Edgar-Jones and Powell for putting in that work. However, how is a movie going to have two of the most sexy-ass actors not fuck, let alone kiss? Even in the last moments of the movie, where Tyler performs this great romantic overture at the airport before Kate is supposed to fly back to New York. He rushes to meet her inside. They meet and then they just walk off together.
Boring.
If a movie is going to lean into the expectations and tropes of a blockbuster, why not add the much-needed punctuation mark of a kiss? It’s understandable that the movie, being as progressive as it can be, would want to make the character of Kate an “independent woman” who doesn’t need a man, but she can be smart, independent, sure of herself, and confident and also enter the bone zone with a guy like Tyler — who probably wouldn’t mind being arm candy and nothing else.
The movie is super duper sexual with these quiet moments of sultriness that feel like a country music video from the early 2000s. At one point we see Tyler walks SLOWLY into the rain in a clean white shirt and it is giving Malboro Man horniness.
Kate wears this harness that is supposed to be for her camera, but it doesn’t seem useful at all. However, her Lara Croft lewk is giving Dom energy with that harness. At one point, Kate’s mom (Maura Tierney) insists that Tyler’s character stay at their house overnight. I felt like her mom knew she needed to get laid.
Twisters is horny bait with no sex and no kiss at the end –and how dare they? The entire cast is hot. You have the next Superman up in there playing a hunky dork while Anthony Ramos is running around with a wet T-shirt. Then there’s Tyler’s ragtag group of misfits. They look like they love a nice orgy dome at Burning Man.
To top it all off, everyone, at one point or another gets blown and wet during Twisters. To not have any sort of sexually satisfying catharsis amidst the terror of tornadoes is cinematic blue balls.
