An A-Lister Emerges: Glen Powell Did It In 'Twisters'
#281: "Twisters," "Presumed Innocent," "Wag The Dog," "Icarus"
Edition 281:
Hey movie lovers!
This week: Twisters puts the spotlight on my home state, for better and for worse, and the Glen Powell movie star debate is over. Then I’ll catch you up on the streaming show people are buzzing about, give you a hilarious political movie and one to celebrate the start of the Olympics. Plus, this might be my most anticipated edition of “Trailer Watch” in newsletter history.
Twisters
Glen Powell may be the new poster child of the ol’ chestnut “hard work pays off.” Over the past seven months he’s starred in Anyone But You, Hit Man and now Twisters, not to mention a nonstop parade of media and promotional appearances. He’s answered every question, told every anecdote, eaten every hot wing or British snack, played every trivia game or autosearch or putting contest for every TV show and gimmicky YouTube channel in every corner of the internet.
And it’s paid off. He is now, undeniably, one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, muscling Twisters to big fat hit status mostly on his broad Texan shoulders. An $80 million opening in just the United States nearly doubled projections, and now the movie has done $113 million domestic and $156 worldwide in its first full week.
Sidenote: In the rivalry I’ve been cooking up between him and Austin Butler, I’ve been #TeamButler, but I have to admit when I’m wrong (…for now…)
With all that exposure, audiences have gotten a pretty good handle on Powell’s shtick. He plays the swaggering Texan who comes in with the negging banter only to reveal golden retriever energy underneath, unable to hide his maximum efforts to charm both his co-stars on screen and, more obviously, any viewer watching him perform. Powell in Australia as a f-boy, Powell in Texas as a fake hit man, and now Powell in Oklahoma as a tornado-chasing YouTuber.
Since all of these movies have been built on a romantic relationship, Powell has tried hard (he’s always trying hard) to sell audiences on his chemistry with the actress beside him. (Don’t forget that he responded to rumors that his fiery chemistry with Sydney Sweeney during the Anyone But You press tour signaled off-screen romance by saying, essentially, he’s just that charming.) One could almost believe him, until they saw Twisters.
The true protagonist of the movie is played by Daisy Edgar-Jones, who also has a very specific type: bookish, shy and naive, as she appeared in “Normal People” or Fresh (both excellent by the way). It’s not a good match for Powell’s chatty, loose energy, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Apparently Steven Spielberg (an executive producer) saw an early draft of the movie and told them to cut their kissing scene at the end.
So yeah, a spiritual successor to Hellen Hunt’s spitfire character from the 1996 original Edgar-Jones is not, and not only because she is very obviously a British woman attempting to look, and more embarrassingly sound, like she’s from America’s heartland.
Of course I’m going to be harder on the accent than most, since I grew up in Oklahoma. It’s not a big deal, especially since she pretty much ditches it halfway through the movie, but it’s indicative of how the movie looks at the culture of this region as if it’s a foreign country. Is it accurate? That’s not the point. Cultures and customs are observed in the same way something like The Last Samurai handled Japanese culture 20 years ago. The soundtrack of the movie is packed with every relevant country music artist you can think of as part of a really ham-handed effort to market the project to the middle of the country (it’s working).
That’s not the only lengths this movie goes to broaden its appeal. On the Top Gun: Maverick scale of faceless enemies, you can’t do much better than a literal faceless force of nature. Yet despite the danger of death in almost every scene, it’s a movie in which basically no consequential character dies. And unlike the original movie, where the tornadoes serve as something like an aphrodisiac, the closest this movie gets to racy is Powell in a white t-shirt walking through the rain. Some theorized this was an appeal to Gen-Z, who see on-screen romance as “cringe.”
Still, this is a very difficult movie to criticize. The original Twister wasn’t exactly high art, and this movie is going for the same big, loud, dumb summer movie vibes. If anything, it’s better than the original full stop. Filmmaking techniques and digital effects have improved significantly in the last 30 years, so the action sequences are really exciting, and the movie has that fun, zippy energy and satisfying climax to make any moviegoer happy.
It’s not exactly an original movie — in fact, many of the plot points and characters are direct rip-off (ehem, homages) to the original — but it’s not part of a franchise and feels kind of fresh. So a fresh-feeling movie, with new movie stars, geared toward adults, that’s killing it at the box office? You can see why I bite my tongue.
I’m just worried that we as moviegoers have grown so accustomed to the franchise sludge catered to 12 year olds that we’ve massively lowered our expectations, and now when we get something that’s slightly above mediocrity we can’t distinguish it from stuff that’s actually good. If you poke at this movie, the seams start to show (Anthony Ramos’ confusing character, the unnecessary British journalist character, Powell’s character motivations??).
It’s a burden the 1996 movie didn’t have to carry, because there were so many more movies (and original, adult movies) coming out each week.
To bring it all back around, I guess my point is to not count on Powell to usher in some new wave of cinematic creativity. He’s being attached to every script in Hollywood right now, and the six that have been announced include a remake of 80s Schwarzenegger movie The Running Man, a remake of the 80s classic Backdraft, and Top Gun 3 (a sequel to a remake of an 80s classic).
And I can guarantee you they’re going to make a sequel to this movie too. Twisterss? Twist3rs? Got a couple years to workshop that one.
Something New
Presumed Innocent (AppleTV+): Originally a novel by Scott Turow, perhaps you’re familiar with the 1990 movie starring Harrison Ford as a district attorney who investigates a murder that he ends up becoming the prime suspect in. It’s a good movie, directed by Alan J. Pecula (All The President’s Men, The Parallax View, Sophie’s Choice). Apple re-made the show with veteran showrunner David E. Kelley at the helm starring Jake Gyllenhaal, updating it to modern day Chicago and sparing no expense in creating the world and populating it with well-known character actors (like I said last week, Apple blow money to make things look a little too good).
If you’ve read the book or seen the movie, you know that there’s a giant plot twist coming at the end of the show about who actually did the murder, so over the past eight weeks I felt like a lot of TV watchers were very compelled to see how the show was going to handle or subvert that revelation. Now the show is over and I think for a lot of us the trance was broken, and we see that while this was a very compelling show week to week, there was as much to hate about it as love. Peter Sarsgaard’s performance was amazing, ditto Bill Camp, and most of the court room stuff really worked. But the home life of Gyllenhaal and his wife, played by Ruth Negga, weighed like an anchor around the show’s neck. Not every show has to be about trauma people!!
Something Old
Wag The Dog (1997): If you’re anything like me, this past week has been an onslaught of political news, analysis, rumor and memes. Since I’ve used movies to help me understand and experience the world for everything else, I went on the hunt for a political movie outside of the obvious lineup — let me list those, in case you haven’t seen The Contender, The Candidate, The American President, Dave and I have a soft spot for Man of the Year.
This movie was such a revelation! Imagine finding a movie you’ve never heard of directed by Barry Levinson (Rain Man, The Natural, Good Morning Vietnam), co-written by legendary playwright David Mamet, and starring Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman! Not to mention a cast including Woody Harrelson, Denis Leary, Willie Nelson, Kirsten Dunst and William H. Macy? I’m sold.
And it turned out to be even better than I imagined. A fictional president faces a PR nightmare, so De Niro’s fixer creates an entire fake war to distract the public, with the help of Hoffman’s big shot Hollywood producer. It’s not exactly the most insightful or sharp political satire, but it’s absolutely hilarious, especially in its skewering of Hollywood. Hoffman’s character made me laugh out loud at a movie more than I have in years.
This movie isn’t currently on streaming but is an absolute must-watch when it is (and is worth dropping the $4 dollars to rent).
Something to Stream
Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix): Hahahahaha just kidding, don’t watch this movie it’s not good.
Icarus (Netflix): In honor of the Olympics opening ceremony kicking off on Friday, I have to shoutout what is not only one of the best Olympics movies of all time, not only one of the best sports movies of all time, but also one of the best spy movies of all time.
This is an example of how fiction can never ever live up to the drama of reality. A documentary filmmaker sets out to make a film about himself taking steroids, but in the process asks advice from a doctor who turns out to be the architect of the Russian Olympic athlete doping scheme. Then over the course of the film, the Russians try to have him killed! It’s fascinating, educational and also unbelievably exciting. A true mastery of the documentary form.
Trailer Watch: A Complete Unknown
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m in way WAY too deep on this Bob Dylan biopic. My love for Dylan has been very loudly proclaimed in this newsletter before, and I’ve been following the inklings of this movie since 2019 (when it was called Going Electric), praying they weren’t going to screw it up. Complicating things further, Inside Llewyn Davis is one of my favorite movies of all-time, in which the Coen Brothers realized his Greenwich Village community of the early 1960s in their story about a fictional folk singer who turns out to be the sort of John the Baptist preparing the world for the coming of Dylan.
But now we have our first look at Timothée Chalamet in what could be a career-defining role, not only looking the part but also singing his own vocals! It doesn’t sound like the original but I’d still prefer this 10 times out of 10. I do have my concerns, including taking too big of a scope in terms of years and whatever is going on with Ed Norton’s forehead as Pete Seager, but I’m choosing to believe that James Mangold (Ford v. Ferrari, Logan, Cop Land) can pull off what is a really ambitious project. I’m trying my very best to temper massive expectations.