2024, Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) -- download
This movie does pretty much the exact same thing but with YouTube stars, the Internet and the idea that bigger, nastier tornadoes are a thing, and it will only get worse.
Maybe you should give a spoiler warning?
The movie opens with a group of friends chasing a tornado: Kate, Javi, Kate's boyfriend Jeb, Addy and really nervous Praveen. They want to deliver a compound into a tornado, something Kate came up with, that is supposed to dissipate it. They also have a load of the little Xmas bulbs from the original movie. Wink wink, nod nod. Now, if you are like me, you are now thinking, "I don't remember seeing recognizable face Kiernan Shipka in any of the trailers."
<cue your favourite Impending Doom musical piece>
Kate's tornado whispering lets her down, her magical compound doesn't work and everyone but her, and Javi from the safety of his monitoring station (the Xmas bulbs give his a great view of how terrible the tornado is), is sucked up by the tornado.
Five Years Later. Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones, Where the Crawdads Sing) is now a boring weather person... weather scientist? She lives in NYC far away from any seasonal tornado activity. She has lost contact with Javi (Anthony Ramos, Transformers: Rise of the Beast) and even sends her mom to voicemail. But then he comes asking for help. He has a new science plan, one based around placing a triad of sensors which will allow him to 3D map a tornado in action. He still just wants to save lives, or so he claims. In these movies when people have flashy investors you are meant not to trust them. He needs Kate and her ability to sniff out tornados. Despite her PTSD, she agrees.
The first disaster she encounters is not a tornado but a YouTube-r. Following the beat of the other movie, but kind of flipping the table, Kate is with the maligned corporate storm chasers, but there is a new version of the home-sy group --- the Tornado Wrangler (Glen Powell, Hit Man) and his fully equipped team of Good Ol Boys & Girls. Pumping out yee-haws and non-stop country music, they chase down twisters for the Likes.
Of course, they end up at odds with Kate and her new team, but Kate has her magical ability, a gut feeling, an innate understanding of tornadoes, her.... tornado whispering.
The beat of a movie like this has to be Tornado > Character Development > Tornado > Character Development, as the tornadoes cannot just keep happening randomly or there would be no chasing. So, as things develop we get to learn a few things about Javi's company (they are bad guys) and a few things about the Tornado Wranglers -- they are not such bad guys, and Tyler, the oh so pretty face of the Wranglers, is smarter and more empathetic than expected. Both of them take a side quest together which pisses of everyone but does allow Kate to make things better with her mom. Also, figures out why the magic tornado wrangling pixie dust never worked.
With a guy like Glen Powell playing the ultra-macho, tornado wrangler you expect romance to be the main thing on the table. But no, apparently they chose a fan-frustrating no-kiss aspect for the movie, but at least they get to play all flirty-dismissive throughout the movie. His cowboy hat big teeth country music charm does not work on her. Well, it kind of does, but only once he skips past the YouTube camera and works to save people.
Its a fine movie, not great, but for its genre it does a decent job. Powell is the stand-out here, and since the movie doubled its budget in returns, another successfully stepping stone on him becoming the new Leading Man of the Hour?
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