Welcome to How Gay Is It? Out's review series where, using our state-of-the-art Eggplant Rating System, we determine just how queer some of pop culture's buzziest films and TV shows are! (Editor's note: this review contains mild spoilers for Universal Picture's Twisters.)
The first true thrill ride of the summer movie season is finally here!
Twisters, the new sequel starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos hits theaters this weekend, and you better strap in if you want to see it.
The action scenes in the movie are some of the best and biggest of the year, matching Furiosa at some points. Director Lee Isaac Chung knows how to make storms even scarier and more intense than they are in real life.
The film follows Kate Cooper (Edgar-Jones), a former storm chaser who quit the game after her best friends died in an intense tornado five years prior to the film's events. Now, she's been drawn back in by the other friend who survived that storm, Javi (Ramos) when he promises her a groundbreaking new tracking system.
Competing with them to get prime position next to these tornadoes is a team led by Tyler Owens (Powell), a cocky and carefree YouTube star from Arkansas. In classic blockbuster fashion, the two teams must work together to survive an epic series of twisters.
Most of the cast is terrific, with Owen's team of country hicks being especially charming. His team is made up of the scruffy and excited Boone (Brandon Perea), scientist Dexter (Tunde Adebimpe) and two of our queer favorites, Sasha Lane as drone pilot Lilly, and Katy O'Brian (Love Lies Bleeding) as the crush-worthy mechanic Dani.
From start to finish, the movie is a wild ride, filled with edge-of-your-seat thrills and impressive set pieces. One scene where a tornado hits a night-time rodeo will make your heart stop with how biblically terrifying it is.
Unfortunately, though, the film is held back by a few issues.
The first, is that Powell's character Tyler Owens is insufferable. His character is annoyingly great at everything – he has killer abs and pecs, he's a weather genius, he's a great driver, and he even used to ride broncos! His character seems to be from a '90s rom-com when men were men, jokes were corny, and movies were worse.
From the moment we meet him, we're told and shown that Tyler is putting lives at risk, both by attracting a bunch of fans who follow him around to storms, and by being reckless when the storms come. He also refuses to take "no" for an answer, never apologizes, and, at one point, asks the film's weather and tornado genius, Kate, "did you know, the tornado rating system isn't based on speed or strength? It's based on damage done."
Of course she knows, she's been studying tornadoes as long as he has! She's a professional and one of the best ever to do what she does.
But he also rescues a puppy! So we're expected to love him, something I could not bring myself to do.
Universal Pictures
My other issue with the film is that the movie really upped the ante when it comes to on-screen death. In the original, only a few people were shown to be killed by the tornadoes. In this film, we see a dozen people getting sucked up into the air to their deaths.
However, while tons of people die horrific deaths in the film, we never see a dead body, making it so we can still comfortably laugh at whatever quip Tyler Owens comes up with next.
This is a similar problem to the Jurassic World movies. In the original Jurassic Park franchise, very few humans and dinosaurs actually died. In the new franchise, human life has no value and we see people torn apart by prehistoric reptiles every ten minutes. It lessens the impact of the deaths and makes the movies feel fleeting.
And exactly how gay is it? Don't even ask. While O'Brian and Lane are super lovable in their roles, this movie practically shoves its straightness down our throats, trying to get us to love Kate and Tyler as a couple.
Overall, the film definitely delivers on thrills and heart-pounding action, but falls short when it comes to characters. Two out of five stars overall, and ZERO out of five eggplants on Out's Eggplant Rating System...
Twisters touches down in theaters on July 19.
