Sequels should be relatively easy to produce. Take what worked well about a movie, and add more of it. Double down, so to speak. The best example I can think of is when James Cameron turned the suffocating claustrophobia of Sir Ridley Scott’s Alien into the bombastic, adrenaline-fuelled Aliens. “What’s scarier than one alien? Multiple aliens.” Boom. Hollywood history is made. Now it appears that history is ready to repeat itself, because during the Universal Studios CinemaCon presentation in Las Vegas, we got an extended look at the Twister sequel, Twisters. And it looked magnificent.
Twisters is not a traditional sequel in the sense that it brings back original cast members for a legacy play. Helen Hunt isn’t returning, and we lost original stars Bill Paxton and Philip Seymour Hoffman years ago. Instead, Twisters director Lee Isaac Chung described it to us as a spiritual continuation of the tone and fervor created by the original 1996 thriller (directed by Jan de Bont).
Chung also started off his presentation by acknowledging the obvious – he’s a strange choice to helm a blockbuster saga like Twisters. Lee Isaac Chung makes smaller indie human dramas, like the award-winning Minari. But as he explained, he grew up in the Midwest (Arkansas, to be specific), and lived a life in fear of tornadoes. He understands the power that nature can have on the tornado-alley community. And while he understands the respect that people have on natural tragedies, he wanted his movie to immerse audiences in the experience of the twister, and hopefully convey the wonder and awe that can come with natural spectacle.
And that raw power and intensity was conveyed in the footage that Chung showed. After shouting out Jan de Bont, and telling us that Steven Spielberg, of all people, is obsessed with tornado videos (and watches tornado videos online all the time), Chung introduced his cast, and they introduced the footage. Glen Powell warned that the effects were unfinished, but you couldn’t tell, due to the sheer power and impact of the set pieces on display in the Twisters reel.
The footage opened at a rodeo, where the competition was disrupted by everyone’s phones blaring a weather warning. This scene reminded me of the legendary drive-in theater scene from Twister in the say that the storm dropped on the people quickly, and the devastation was widespread:
The footage then introduces the main characters, singling out two storm chasers in Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and the incredibly named Tyler Owens (Powell), a “storm wrangler” that shuns science and goes by feeling. Naturally, these two will share a romantic spark, but it’ll happen as they dodge some superpowered storms. We got to see TWIN twisters (again, take what worked in the first movie and double it). And the footage closes with a massive tornado bearing down on what looked like a power plant, or maybe even a nuclear facility. EIther way, it looked like things were about to get very bad.
No matter how you slice it, the Twisters footage looked incredible. Glen Powell is every bit a movie star, and the effects look to be as top-notch as we get these days. As I said in my conversation about The Fall Guy, we have a number of movies this summer season that are driven by star power (as well as effects). And it’s a welcome return to an era of movie stars, and not branded IP. More of that, please. Make sure to read more from our CinemaCon coverage, including footage of the Michael Jackson biopic, Todd Phillips talking about the buzz around Joker, and more.
Twisters reaches theaters on July 19.
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