If AI Made a Movie, That Movie Would Be "Twisters"
by Ted Kluck
I had a conversation recently with a colleague whose assertion was that the advent of streaming has led studios to basically make movies that are easy to ignore. Meaning, movies with two or three high points that are meant to be watched in the background while someone is doing homework or scrolling TikTok. As a movie lover, for whom the movie or show is always the “main event,” this feels heretical to me, but watching “Twisters” in the theater last night proved the validity of my colleague’s claim.
“Twisters” starred a college-brochure-worthy perfectly-diverse cast of completely forgettable people reading lines off cue cards, and Glen Powell, who is best known for being handsome and arrogant in “Top Gun: Maverick” and also everything else he’s ever been in. Spoilers: he is handsome and arrogant in this, as well. The most competent acting performance in the movie came from Maura Tierney, who played a character’s mother and was onscreen for like six minutes, total.
The ”story” (as it were) was perfectly 2024, in that all of the “relationships” were wan and lifeless and deadpan, lacking stakes or commitment. When the main female character (Kate Carter) shoehorned herself into Powell’s roving band of tornado-chasers, the women in his group responded not with wariness or territorialism, but with free food. It was the cinematic version of a shrug. To me, the most emotionally-impactful moment of the film came when Tierney’s character was deciding not to throw away Kate’s eighth-grade science project, which would of course later end up saving part of rural Oklahoma from its tenth tornado in the span of a couple of hours.
Note: this was an incredibly cool science project featuring a to-scale model of Kate’s town and a man-made tornado involving a powerful overhead fan. It deserves immediate pantheon consideration for Science Projects in Movies, and it would have been insane of Tierney to throw this away.
Powell is actually perfect for this cultural moment, in that he is the perfect blank avatar for the Arrogant White Guy Who Learns An Important Life Lesson from a marginalized person. He can have a ten-year run doing this type of thing, if he wants it. And “Twisters” was the perfect role for him, in that he was able to show that despite the awesome truck and shocking cheekbones, there’s a heart-of-gold in there somewhere, maybe. Over the next decade, Hollywood will “try” Powell in a variety of bad-for-him roles including buddy comedies, an action franchise, and even (sigh) serious stuff…but none of it will be right for him. “Twisters” is right for him.
To be clear, the 1996 version of the same film, Bill Paxton’s “Twister” was stupid as well, but it was stupidly endearing, in that it featured a relationship with something on the line (a marriage on the rocks) and three actors – Paxton, Helen Hunt, and a young Phillip Seymour-Hoffman – who could really cook. There were divorce papers in Act One, an incredible steak-and-eggs food scene in Act Two, and a mid-tornado reconciliation in Act Three, which is to say it was everything you wanted from a dumb 1990s action romance. Also, there were flying cows. Most importantly, the actors seemed committed to the relational capital that was on the line in the film, making the tornados almost ancillary (but still cool to look at).
“Twisters” had a poster-worthy quote (“if you feel it, chase it”), Powell’s cheekbones, and an AI-grade “story” that left a lot to be desired, but proved to be perfect for mid-movie texting and scrolling.