BEWARE OF MILD SPOILERS: I didn’t hate Lee Isaac Chung‘s Twisters. It’s as empty and formulaic and jizz-whizzy as I feared, but more or less harmless. One swirling, cacophonous calamity after another. Nonstop destruction and disaster with a few deaths layered in. I shrugged, I chuckled, I got through it.

The ‘96 Twister is sooo much better. Much better dialogue (co-penned by Michael Crichton). I missed the His Girl Friday triangle dynamic — Helen Hunt as Cary Grant, Bill Paxton as Rosalind Russell, Jamie Gertz as Ralph Bellamy. I missed the eccentric Philip Seymour Hoffman character. (Poor Philly.) I missed Paxton. (Also dead.) I missed the old-fashioned, almost embarassing CG. I missed the exceptional widescreen lensing. I missed Lois Smith‘s “Aunt Meg.”

Twister’s drive-in movie destruction scene (The Shining is playing) is so much more effective than the indoor movie theatre’s destruction in Twisters. The theatre is located in a one-horse town in a rural Oklahoma region and James Whale’s original Frankenstein (’31) is playing to a full house in the daytime?

It’s interesting how Glen Powell’s Tyler Owens character, initially presented as a cocksure cowboy adrenalin junkie, doesn’t save the day at the end. He turns down the daredevil vibes, yes, and calms down in a soft, sensitive, nice-boyfriend way, but there’s no sex or even a make-out session with Daisy Edgar-Jones, the British actress with the bumpy, broken nose…

What was that airport finale about exactly? Kate (Edgar-Jones’ character) and Tyler are clearly attracted to each other and destined to hook up, but they don’t do anything except talk and confide. Unless I missed something, they don’t even hug or touch.

It’s like Chung was literally ordered to delete any serious chemistry or physical attraction stuff so as not to offend the woke lesbians in the audience. Studio execs to Chung: “We want a vaguely gay vibe here. We certainly don’t want a conventional hetero romantic thing like the old Twister had. Maybe we need a couple of tough lesbos.”

How exactly was Kate responsible for the tornado deaths of her boyfriend, played by Daryl McCormack (the sex worker in Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, that oddball Emma Thompson film about finally getting properly laid at age 60), as well as the blonde girl (Kiernan Shipka) and that oafish, chubby LatinX guy with the tennis-ball haircut and the flannel shirt?

Five years later Javi (Anthony Ramos) persuades Kate to return to Tornado Alley, but he’s also sweet on her. He’s clearly a bit jealous when she starts hanging out with Powell, but then he has an Act Three epiphany and decides to “help” people rather than dig into the tornado research. Strange character arc.

But there’s no villain…not really. David Corenswet‘s Scott, Javi’s business partner, is chilly but not villainous.

The theme of the film is “face your fears,” right? Kate does the brave thing alone at the end. Glen’s not really needed…he just watches!

Daisy sure as shit doesn’t look like the daughter of Maura Tierney. They didn’t even look like cousins.

Has anyone noticed that Katy O’Brian, Kristen Stewart’s lover in Love Lies Bleeding, plays a mechanic on Tyler’s “team”? Has anyone noticed Sasha Lane, the female lead in Andrea Arnold’s American Honey (16), is also part of Tyler’s crew? Lane and O’Brian are both openly gay.

Again — I didn’t hate Twisters. It just keeps coming at you. It’s all formula bullshit but I was chuckling here and there, and I loved the tornado death moments.

I have to at least say this privately, and that’s the irrefutable fact that pretty as she is, Edgar-Jones is no physical match for the muscular, buffed-up Powell. Glen has the pecs and the rugged arm muscles and flat abs, but Daisy — candor requires me to say this — doesn’t have that curvy, pear-shaped-ass thing going on. Sorry.