1996’s Twister had Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt as an on-the-rocks husband-and-wife pair of tornado chasers who have to work together to create an advanced weather alert system. Twisters is more a remake than a sequel, with the story tweaked for the junior multiplex crowd.  

This time a young meteorological scientist with a deep tragedy in her past (“I don’t chase anymore) plays the head of an academic team working on a similar alert system. Their main competition is an opportunistic gang of “tornado wranglers” that’s far more interested in YouTube hits. 

You may remember Daisy Edgar-Jones (who looks uncannily like Anne Hathaway) from Where the Crawdads Sing. The movie stunk, but not for anything she did. Girl’s got a presence and a spark, and it’ll be interesting watching her career. 

Opposite her is Glenn Powell, who has been included in Hollywood’s latest meme: “Hot Rodent Men.” (It’s not really in insult, just a way to describe a certain facial structure. He’s joined in this dubious nomenclature by the likes of Adam Driver, Jeremy Allen White and Barry Keoghan.) No judgment yet on Powell’s acting, mainly because I haven’t seen him do any yet. He’s been the same charmingly dickish guy since Top Gun: Maverick. Let’s give him time. 

Like the first movie, this one features gripping CG scenes of massively destructive storms interspersed with a lot of technobabble and hokey personal interactions. And would it have killed the writers to include a word about global warming and its effect on their subject? Bottom line, it’s pretty much the best you’ll get from a movie named Twisters. Not to mention a good couple of hours in an air-conditioned theater on a hot day. (122 min)