Twisters (2024) review

I Always Want to Ride the Michael Crichton Ride

*Image taken from IMDB. No copyright infringement intended.

March 28, 2025

Categorization: Science fiction

Where watched: Max

Non-spoiler review: So I didn’t know until after watching this movie and Googling it that the original Twister was made/produced or written by Michael Crichton? So it is! That comfortably slides it into the Science Fiction genre, which allows me to review it here.

I was a huge fan of the original Twister movie from 1996 – who doesn’t love the idea of man triumphing against the terrifying forces of nature? Few things must be as satisfying as that.

We don’t have twisters in my country, but trying to run away from one has been a recurring dream of mine since adolescence. I wonder what that means.

Anyway.

The original 1996 Twister was a classic, and the Twisters (2024) is just as good and does the original justice. Basically, heroine is a meteorologist intent on conquering twisters with SCIENCE, but suffers tragedy and then refuses to use her powers any longer, until circumstances force her to retrace her destiny. Yeah, I am no good at recaps obviously, because I hate reading anything about movies I am even slightly interested in, before I watch them. I want everything to be a surprise! Every little detail is a potential spoiler, which would be a shame as this is a really fun movie. So I am trying to include as little as possible to get someone on the fence to watch it, without ruining any good parts.

And in this spirit of encouraging people to watch this without ruining the movie, I have to say something about Michael Crichton’s style. His works have gone mainstream for a reason, and that is, he nails the core of science fiction which, at least for me, is the deciding factor of whether or not I will enjoy a certain Science Fiction work or not.

See, while (as I explained in a previous post on the Emily Wilde books) the core of Fantasy is to make a world one wants to be in, the core of Science Fiction is to make a world that one can relate to. Science Fiction should make you stop and say, hey, this world is only two steps and shake away from the world I am living in now, and what if I reached that point? How would I act? What would I do?

And that is the genius of Michael Crichton; the worlds he creates are truly relatable. You do not have to be a hard-core SF nerd to understand them or empathize with his characters’ dilemmas! His worlds just seem like a natural progression of the human race based on what it is doing right very now. For example, in Jurassic Park, the dilemma is, what if we could bring back extinct life? Would people act responsibly? Answer, they did not but you can totally understand why they failed. In The Andromeda Strain, it is “what if a deadly virus spread and killed people without anyone understanding how it is happening”? What would we do to stop it?” “Would people act in a calm and logical manner and band together for the best interests of humanity as a whole?”

…… Clearly Michael Crichton overestimated the human race.

But anyway.

Twisters' (nonspoilers only!!) world is one where good people have just a little more SCIENCE than what we have now, and we get to see what they do with it, and trust me, for better and for definitely worse, it is believable. Kudos to the movie makers to realistically take into account in this 2024 remake the truly effed up things that society and social media have come to in this day and age.  This is a rollicking fun ride with characters annoying, greedy, brave, and stupid but above all, understandable.  Is the “Science” in this SF movie deep and thought-provoking and complex? No. Is it entertaining to watch though? Heck yeah.

There is one part of the movie though that stayed with me long after it should have, and I need to specially commend it. Whoever came up with the song Out of Oklahoma by Lainey Wilson for the Original Soundtrack needs a raise (by the way, who is Lainey Wilson and why does she make gorgeous country music? This silly Elder Goblin millennial only recently discovered her). They condensed the movie into a wandering, self-discovering, country-driving vibe, and came up with this song. Every time I hear it (Hey Siri, play Out of Oklahoma – at least once every morning driving to work for a month now), I am transported back to the scene in the movie where I think it played, and I feel like I am driving past the farmlands of Oklahoma, the reluctant hero trying to save the world I love despite the (literal and metaphorical) dark clouds overhead and the danger imminent.

“Paint is peelin.. Grass is tallin.. “I’m still feelin like I don’t belong.” Stop a moment with me for a quick reflection on how country music, which is a medium and genre not normally associated with Science Fiction, can improve on a Science Fiction experience. It really doesn’t get any better than that.