‘Twisters’ has a few new twists, but not enough to outshine its predecessor

Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell co-star in “Twisters.”

I miss the cow.

If you saw the original, 1996 “Twister,” you remember the airborne bovine. Caught up in a tornado and sent into a surprise spiral, it flew across the screen early on, looking understandably perplexed. We never saw the poor thing again, either. Let’s hope she made it to Oz.

She sure didn’t make it into the new “Twisters,” which opens July 19.

And she’s not all that’s missing.

It’s a very loose remake of the first film, with the story once again featuring a brainy blonde extreme-weather expert, traumatized by a fatal tragedy in her past but determined to understand — and, she hopes, eventually, scientifically tame — these fearsome storms.

And once again, she is joined by a ragtag bunch of misfit storm chasers, takes a break for some family time and wise advice from a loving female relative, deals with crass capitalists and media hounds and — whenever the wind dies down, for a second — locks eyes with a hunky storm chaser.

It’s familiar, and that’s fine. It all worked beautifully the first time: “Twister” was fun escapist fare and one of the biggest hits of the ‘90s. So why doesn’t it work quite as well now?

A quick look at some of the changes might give a clue.

Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton in “Twister” (1996).

Helen Hunt was 33 when she played the female lead in the first film. She had the weight of someone who had been around — and been knocked around — a bit. As soon as we saw her, we knew we had met a confident pro who had a job to do, and didn’t care if we liked that, or her. She was all angles and edges.

Daisy Edgar-Jones is 26 and, in this film, just five years or so out of college. Unlike the first heroine, who stayed to confront her past, Edgar-Jones has run away. When we first see her, she is in a low-pressure desk job in Manhattan. She just wants to fly under the Doppler radar. She’s not looking for trouble.

She’d be a lot more interesting as a character if she were.

If the insistence that our heroine is “likable” is a step backward for Mark L. Smith’s script, its decision to ignore other things — including climate change — is hardly a step forward. Yes, making sure every female character’s journey includes a romance is corny and sexist, but in the first film, that extra, personal element actually raised the stakes.

Plus, the original film’s screenwriter, Michael Crichton, had been smart enough to steal from the best: “His Girl Friday.” Only in his iteration of the Cary Grant/Rosalind Russell classic, Hunt and Bill Paxton played the fondly feuding ex-lovers who were truly at their best at work; Jami Gertz had the thankless, Ralph Bellamy part of the deadly dull third wheel whose presence ends up rekindling their romance.

Daisy Edgar-Jones in “Twisters.”

Yes, the new script goes through the motions of giving Edgar-Jones two love interests. But for all the stormy weather, lightning never really strikes. One character remains pretty firmly in the “I think of you as a friend” camp. Although the other emerges as a far more plausible option, chastity reigns. First base? He never even gets out of the dugout.

This is a particular disappointment because he is played by Glen Powell. In a Hollywood largely populated by uncertain boys, Powell — a college jock in “Everybody Wants Some!!” an astronaut in “Hidden Figures,” a jet pilot in “Top Gun: Maverick,” even a pretend-assassin in “Hit Man” — exudes old-school, movie-star masculinity. He has brought cowboy swagger back to cinema, and he carries this film on his own broad shoulders.

Of course, you don’t go to see a movie like “Twisters” for the acting, or even necessarily for the actors. You go for the ride. So how are the effects?

They’re great, although at this stage, I almost want to add “of course.” (How often do you see an expensive studio movie in which the effects are awful?) Director Lee Isaac Chung hasn’t worked in this area much before: Although he directed an episode of TV’s “The Mandalorian,” his biggest previous film credit is for the heartfelt immigrant story, “Minari.” But he melds CGI and practical effects invisibly here, and the scenes of massive destruction are genuinely impressive.

But where is the cow? Or rather, where is what that cow embodied?

The first film had genuinely surreal lights of fancy. Like the sequence in which Hunt and Paxton’s car had to dodge briefly airborne tractors, now plummeting to earth in front of them, one after the other. Or another scene in which a house suddenly plopped down in the middle of the road — and they had to drive through it.

Or another, welcome moment of humor in which, fleeing gale-force winds, the couple ran inside a barn — only to be confronted by an assortment of swinging scythes and barely secured instruments of destruction that would have made the “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” family jealous. “Who are these people?” Hunt wondered.

That kind of imagination is in short supply here, visually. The film also stints on its supporting cast. (It’s nice to see the quirky Sasha Lane among the twister chasers, but the first movie filled its bit parts with people like Todd Field, Jeremy Davies and Philip Seymour Hoffman, just for starters). And while it has more of a sense of place than its inspiration did (Chung was raised in Arkansas), there is less of a sense of wonder.

Daisy Edgar-Jones with Anthony Ramos, center, and Glen Powell in “Twisters.”

There is, however, a slight sense of uncertainty.

Before the sci-fi and superhero franchises took over popular cinema, Hollywood used to know how to make popular, popcorn adventures like this. Maybe it was an all-star disaster movie, as a huge supporting cast dealt with an upside-down ocean liner or blazing skyscraper. Maybe it was a heroic dad adventure, in which the leading man tried to save his family from a lava flow, or a new ice age.

But Hollywood knew how to make those movies, and how to make them guiltlessly entertaining. Now they seem unsure — and that’s a disappointment for audiences, and possibly a real-life disaster for theaters, which still need to persuade adults to get off their couches and back to the movies.

I can’t help thinking back to the first film, in which the characters fled a tornado-struck drive-in to take shelter in a massive garage. In one of this version’s few smart updates, they flee a street fair under siege to duck inside a movie theater. While they huddle in the dark, and the 1931 “Frankenstein” still plays on the giant screen, “Twisters” seems to slip in a small, hopeful message.

Maybe we’ll all be OK if we can just come together as a community. Maybe, in the end, the movies will save us.

Maybe. But who’s going to save the movies?