The Scene ‘Twisters’ Needed to Really Be a Great Blockbuster

Twisters, Lee Isaac Chung’s sorta-sequel, sorta-standalone follow-up to the 1996 blockbuster Twister, is all set to be the hit of the summer (until Deadpool & Wolverine comes out, anyway). It handily outperformed the box office expectations for its opening weekend, and audiences drawn in by the promise of fearsome tornadoes and Glen Powell in a cowboy hat will likely walk away satisfied.

If it hews a little too close to blockbuster conventions, well, there are worse things for a movie to do. But there is one thing the original Twister has that its follow-up lacks, something that might seem trivial at first glance but is, in fact, the heart of the film: that breakfast scene at Aunt Meg’s.

If you haven’t seen the original Twister, the breakfast scene comes after a particularly action-packed stretch. Tornado chaser Jo Harding (Helen Hunt) has just survived a close encounter with a twister, hiding with her estranged husband Bill (Bill Paxton) beneath a bridge until they’re out of danger. Working alongside Jo and her motley crew of storm chasers, Bill helps them get the best of their sneering archrival Jonas (Cary Elwes) before a couple of waterspouts form in a flooded field, thrashing their truck around and sending hapless cows airborne. (Although, as Bill suggests, it might just be the same cow blown in different directions.)

It’s a lot to take in, which is why it’s such a relief when the team makes a pit stop at the home of Jo’s aunt, Meg (Lois Smith). For a few minutes, the crew is out of mortal danger and relaxing in each other’s company, circled around a table to tuck into the most delicious-looking breakfast you’ll find this side of Phantom Thread. Meg serves up steak, eggs, mashed potatoes, and gravy (which, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Dusty Davies assures us, is “practically a food group”), and the crew take the opportunity to settle down, banter, and boo Jonas when he appears in a news report.

This scene serves several narrative purposes. It illustrates how easily Bill slips back into a familiar social dynamic, in marked contrast to his fish-out-of-water fiancée Melissa (Jami Gertz); it gives us some exposition about Bill’s past as a wild storm chaser nicknamed “The Extreme” (because, as Dusty explains matter-of-factly, he simply “is The Extreme”); it shows us that other characters can tell Jo and Bill still hold torches for each other. But most importantly, it’s a warm, engaging scene on every level: indulging in the comforting Americana of hearty breakfasts and analog TV, the film gives the audience a breather in the company of some terrific character actors (including Hoffman, Alan Ruck, Lois Smith, and future Tár director Todd Field) as they bounce off each other in anticipation of the next funnel cloud.

Twisters tries to approximate that sense of camaraderie, but it never quite gets there. The opening scene, a prologue showing the tragedy that broke apart the old team of Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Javi (Anthony Ramos), comes close enough: There’s a real sense of giddy excitement coursing through the five young storm chasers camping out in their truck, waiting to test Kate’s plan to dissipate a tornado. But even if you went into the movie completely blind, you’d know they were doomed. The prologue is too obviously a miniature, filled with characters displaying one trait each—the caring boyfriend, the slacker, the nerd—and saying each other’s names as often as possible so you know who everyone is before three of them get blown away. (“We did it, Kate!”; “Are the winds weakening, Javi?”)

When Javi shows up years later to lure a traumatized Kate out of her New York office back into the field, we’re introduced to two teams: Javi’s slickly professional crew, and a ragtag bunch of YouTubers led by the charismatic Tyler Owens (Powell). It’s sort of a reversal of the first movie’s slobs-versus-snobs dynamic, and it would have been more interesting if it wasn’t so obvious who Kate will choose when the chips are down. Javi’s team is staffed with total nonentities (save for a hilariously dickish David Corenswet), and Anthony Ramos, bless his heart, is no Glen Powell.

Tyler’s crew, on the other hand, has not only Powell but Sasha Lane, Katy O’Brian, Tunde Adebimpe, and Brandon Perea. That’s a charismatic bunch I would happily spend a whole movie with: at breakfast, on the road, going over viewer metrics, arguing with motel receptionists, whatever. But they’re mostly stuck in the background, hanging out in a motel parking lot with Tyler or handing out supplies in a storm-ravaged town. It’s not like Dusty Davies or Tim Betzler were given Shakespearean depth as written in the original film, but at least they had the opportunity to leave an impression, at the breakfast table and elsewhere. Tyler’s crew doesn’t even get that. (Only Perea, whose performance as the shit-kicking adrenaline junkie Boone would make Philip Seymour Hoffman proud, makes much of an impact.)

I wouldn’t harp on this so much if the relationship between Kate and Tyler felt more substantial. Their initial animosity eventually turns into a friendly rivalry, and then a budding romance, but it simply isn’t given enough room to breathe. A date at a rodeo is promising enough, but it’s cut short by the arrival of a massive twister; later, a visit to Kate’s mother (Maura Tierney) feels perfunctory rather than lived-in, a way to get Kate to share her trauma with Tyler while ushering the plot towards its climax. (They sit down to dinner at one point, but the conversation is awkward and the food isn’t even appetizing.)

Some viewers were bothered by the lack of a kiss scene at the end of the film, but Kate and Tyler never felt like more than friends—especially compared to the romance in the first film, which is sort of like if David Cronenberg’s Crash was about tornadoes.

Twisters isn’t a bad film, but it needed that breakfast scene, or at least something like it. It needed a scene or two to take its foot off the gas and immerse the audience in the world of the film, trusting that they’ll stay invested without a tornado on screen. Both Twister and Twisters are big-screen spectacles, but Twister understood that it’s the little things (such as watching a bunch of beloved character actors absolutely demolish a sumptuous breakfast prepared by Lois Smith) that make the spectacle more impactful.

Twisters, meanwhile, is hampered by the modern obsession with plot above all else, rejecting vibe-building filigree for the sake of a “tight script”. But movies should be more than a tight script: they should be a world for the audience to fall in love with. And it’d be a lot easier to fall in love with Twisters if it’s got, say, quality banter between Glen Powell and Brandon Perea as they arm wrestle in a Waffle House at 3 a.m. (Just spitballing here.)