I’m pretty sure I did watch the original Twister movie, although all I really remember is that it showed a scene from The Shining on a TV screen at a gas station. Basically, I didn’t really remember much of the original when I went to see this one at the cinema.

I didn’t have huge expectations for this movie. Nothing to do with the movie itself, but I figured it wasn’t going to be a ‘difficult’ movie to watch…and since the last movie I saw at the cinema disappointed me, I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much.

I will say that this movie was a lot better and more engaging than I was expecting it to be. The very first scene starts with a group of five tornado chasers, who are actually trying an experiment to weaken and maybe even disrupt a tornado entirely. Right from the start, from that initial opening scene, I felt that this movie was doing more than I expected.

Unfortunately, I did get a bit confused between the characters who initially appeared in the opening scene. The beginning was incredibly intense, but because I didn’t know the characters very well, I didn’t have quite that emotional connection with them when the inevitable happened.

I did think this movie did a good job showing the obvious trauma Kate experienced after what happened to three of her friends. Having her take a completely different path to the trajectory she was originally on worked particularly well…and I could feel her discomfort when Javi reentered her life and wanted her to go back to doing what had caused her so much pain before.

I would have liked a bit more of a scientific explanation as to why Kate was able to tell which tornado was the one they needed to chase/which one was likely to wind down without actually causing damage. While there were some attempts to explain away that ability, there was a little too much reliance on instincts for the genre of this movie.

I will be honest that my first impression of Tyler was that he was a real jerk. It was good that, as the movie progressed, he was shown to have a lot more depth to him than I initially thought. I also really liked his bonds with his crew, although I would have liked a bit more detail about their history and how they all became friends/started working together.

I will say that I’m not a fan of Hollywood’s need to shoehorn romance into everything. I was more of a fan of the friendship bonds that formed…and I could have done without the whole ‘will they, won’t they’ between Kate and Tyler.

Apart from that, though, I did enjoy the movie as a whole. I can’t say that there were many easter eggs from the original movie in this, as I don’t remember the first movie, but I don’t think you need to have seen the original movie to be able to follow this one. I would definitely recommend watching this movie if you’re thinking about it.