Twisters (2024)

 

I am perfectly content to watch a film that is not challenging but is entertaining and will allow me to consume way more popcorn than I should, enter "Twisters". A legacy sequel to one of the first digital disaster films of that long cycle. The movie can plug in all the pseudo-scientific verbiage it wants, you will not disguise the fact that this is a turnstile mechanism, made to bring in the crowds for a Summer day, and send them out without a care in the world except the calorie count of a large soda and buttered popcorn.  This movie delivers exactly what you want it to, entertainment. 

When the trailer first popped up I was mildly intrigued, because after all, it is a sequel to "Twister", but the preview did not have the same sort of demented energy that the 1996 film had. The teaser trailer told us nothing about characters, story or context, it just gave us a glimpse of the boogie monster. The trailer for the new film can't get away with that, so it tries to sell some star power with Glen Powell. That works a little, but it does feel a bit obvious. When you see the film however, it works much better and there is just enough of a story to make it fun.

Like the previous film, this movie introduces us to characters that we can enjoy and identify with, when we are never going to get much backstory about them. The opening disaster is just as compelling and frightening as  in the original film, and the main character takes a different path as an arc, so they have tried to change it up a bit. However, once you get past that plot device, the story beats are the same. Rival storm chasers, a twister at a big public event space, personal time with an older family member, and a race against the tornadoes at the end. Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kate, our main lead, gets the hero role here at the end, which is fitting since she really is the main character. Glen Powell as Tyler is a cartoon figure at first, but he becomes a more fully realized character as the film goes on. Anthony Ramos, who I first noticed in "The Honest Thief" and "In the Heights" has a more difficult role playing a conflicted colleague, and he is solid.

Let's face it however, no one goes to a movie like this for character development, rather we are driven by the action, and it is very effective here. The opening sequence, the rodeo twister and the climax tornado are the highlight sequences, although there are probably three or four more moments when the twisters are on the loose. Calling the movie "Twisters" reminds me of the choice to make the sequel to "Alien", "Aliens". It is completely appropriate given the number of events we get in the film. 

If there is any social message in the movie, it is very muted. This is not a climate change alarmism film. There is one slight nod toward villainess corporate culture, but it is barely memorable or understandable. To me, the real message of the film is in the vistas, small towns and music that fill the movie. This film has more respect for flyover country than any Hollywood production I have seen in years. The citizens are not presented as hicks who are ignorant, if anything, it is the city folk who follow Tyler on his YouTube channel who come off a bit goofy, but even that is restrained. This movie is carefully scripted to appeal to all four quadrants and all regions of the country, and those overseas viewers will get a much better picture of the middle of our nation as a result. So that is an unintended consequence in the movies favor.

The perfect Summer entertainment has arrived. There are no foul mouthed super heroes, there is no needless nudity, there is plenty of humor but it is very gentile. What more could you ask for? (Maybe some Hot Tamales to put in your popcorn). 

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

 

In the last two weeks we made an effort to catch up on all the Transformer Movies, as a way of preparing to see this one. I would not recommend doing that to anyone who wants to enjoy the films. They work best in small doses and the fact that many of them are two and a half hours is really depressing. I liked the First in the series pretty well when we saw it way back in 2007, but by the time the third one came out, I'd lost interest and even though I saw the fourth one, I'd forgotten it completely. The fifth one is equally forgettable, the main exception to this trend however was "BumbleBee" which was in fact quite enjoyable. 

"Rise of the Beasts" has something in common with most of the films, a solid opening forty minutes. The problem with these films is that once we get to the giant robots fighting each other, for long periods of time, it becomes monotonous. Also, watching Los Angeles, Chicago, Hong Kong and multiple other cites get destroyed is sadly disturbing and repetitive. "Beasts" does us a solid by locating the main battle scenes to the jungles of Peru, sparring us the sight on thousands of people being wiped out for entertainment purposes. Another variation that "Rise of the Beasts" gives us is the absence of a young child in the middle of that final battle. When the little boy in the story, who has sickle cell, talks about going with his older brother on the fight in South America, I started to roll my eyes. Imagine how happy I was when the older brother leaves and the kid is not accidentally smuggled in the trunk of a car or a suitcase. 

Anthony Ramos is the star of the film, and having seen him in a couple of other films, I was glad to see he was still doing good work, although more subdued than you might expect in a film like this. The real stars of these movies are the giant robots, and this version gives us another race of robots called Maximals, which instead of being modeled after cars are modeled after animals. Their leader is an ape robot named Optimus Primal, get it?  The main villain is a planet consuming being called Unicron, but mostly it is the minions of Unicron that we see on screen battling the Autobots. The nice thing about the battles in this film is that we get to see one on one action, frequently isolated, so we can tell what the hell is happening. It still runs long and gets tiresome at the end, but it looks a lot better. The story is more streamlined than any of the other films, so you get a good sense of what the hell is happening most of the time. 

"BumbleBee" will probably continue to be everyone's favorite, but "Mirage" was a robot who I did not want to see destroyed after five minutes, and by the end of the film I sort of liked the relationship that they tried to build through the rest of the film. It is probably a good thing that Michael Bay is producing rather than directing. Steven Caple Jr. seems to know how a movie should look and he tries to keep the story interesting. Like I said, the fight sequences were clearer than in most of the other episodes, but they do go on too long. This would work better if it were a hundred minute movie and the action was selected for story rather than spectacle. At least the jungles offer us a different environment, although futuristic mechanical structures rise out of the ground like instant mashed potatoes, and then become the focus of the fights. 

If you are completist for these films, and want to rank them, I think this one would be the third best. I liked the Mark Wahlberg reference, it was funny, and since the movie is set in the early 90s, it makes a little sense.  The stinger at the end, promoting a different film franchise is not clear, but when your goal is to sell toys, maybe that doesn't matter. I'll bet there are plenty of kids playing with these toys who have told more compelling stories in their backyards. Maybe I should look on YouTube for some of those.