Throughout Tremendous Bowl LVIII, a teaser trailer dropped that baffled plenty of viewers—it wasn’t the Despicable Me 4 one making enjoyable of AI, however an action-packed Tornado teaser. The trailer showcased the July 2024 film starring Regular Folks’s Daisy Edgar Jones and High Gun: Maverick’s Glen Powell as storm chasers. It featured scary twisters obliterating homes and sucking up unlucky individuals, as tornadoes are wont to do.
However these with data of the long-lasting ‘90s flick Tornado have been a bit misplaced—is Twisters a sequel to that movie or a remake? Let me, the foremost Tornado professional at Kotaku (and certain past), clarify.
Tornado is the most effective film ever
First, an vital assertion: 1996’s Tornado (starring Helen Hunt and late greats Invoice Paxton and Philip Seymour Hoffman) is my favourite film of all time. I used to be a younger youngster after I first noticed it, and it kicked off a lifelong obsession with tornadoes and storm methods—I’ve a number of Doppler apps on my telephone, and I’m nonetheless making an attempt to arrange a visit out west to go see the monsters in particular person. Tornadoes are fascinating not solely due to their harmful, awe-inspiring energy, however due to how uniquely American they’re—they occur elsewhere, positive, nevertheless it’s the actual make-up of the US (the Rocky Mountains, the flat plains of the Midwest, the nice and cozy, damp air from the Gulf of Mexico) that make them so commonplace right here.
However I wasn’t the one one who liked Tornado—it was the second-highest grossing movie of 1996 (behind solely Independence Day) and obtained Oscar noms for its visible results and sound design. Directed by Dutch filmmaker Jan de Bont (Velocity), Tornado is a quintessentially ‘90s motion flick during which a scrappy bunch of storm chasers face off in opposition to each the wrath of mom nature and a gaggle of company sell-outs, as they race in direction of an enormous scientific discovery (and away from tornadoes, after all). There are flying cows, a twister ripping by a drive-in film display screen that’s exhibiting The Shining, and large, sensible explosions. Van Halen wrote a music for it, for fuck’s sake.
![Twister's team of storm chasers stand by Dusty (Philip Seymour Hoffman's) truck.](https://i.kinja-img.com/image/upload/c_fit,q_60,w_645/597c68fffdd35cfbf50b2c9c5fa31cc2.jpg)
Tornado strikes the right steadiness between realism and ridiculousness that we so not often see in fashionable cinema. It exhibits us the true-to-life harmful energy that could be a twister tearing by an open area and tells us that the warnings for these in its path typically come too late. However we’re additionally instructed that Paxton’s character (a storm chaser turned soon-to-be-weatherman) is preternaturally able to predicting when a storm system will produce a twister, or the place that twister will head—and it’s this present that units him aside from the company sell-outs (led by The Princess Bride’s Cary Elwes). It’s absurdly stunning.
Each single particular person in my life is required to observe Tornado in the event that they wish to stay in my life, and I’d implore you to do the identical.
However Twisters shouldn’t be a remake
Now, followers of Tornado have been doubtless confused as a result of there are a components of the Twisters trailer that appear immediately pulled from the unique movie: the workforce searching for shelter beneath a bridge whereas within the path of a large twister, the white-shirt climate individuals (Jones and firm) staring throughout the parking zone at a maverick storm chaser (Powell), and a system that appears similar to the one seen within the unique film, floating doodads and all. The font is even the identical, for the love of Dusty.
Plus, the story facilities round Jones and Powell—and I’ve seen at the very least one publication claiming Jones is the daughter of Hunt and Paxton’s characters, although it’s not confirmed. I can say with confidence that Powell’s character (dubbed “the Twister Wrangler,” whereas Paxton’s character was nicknamed “the Excessive”) is clearly modeled after real-life excessive storm chasers like Reed Timmer, who rides into storms in his automotive, the Dominator, which he’s modified to face up to the highly effective winds and particles. There’s a scene within the trailer during which Powell’s character deploys drills from the underside of his truck that bore down within the floor, ostensibly to stop the twister from lifting up the automotive and hucking it tons of of yards away. Timmer even confirmed to The Oklahoman that he took Twisters author Mark L. Smith storm-chasing, and helped with the movie’s idea.
However based on Leisure Weekly, Twisters is a standalone sequel (not a remake) that gained’t require viewing the unique to know it—although I’d urge you to. Director Lee Issac Chung (Minari) liked Tornado, although, so count on there to be tons of throwbacks even when Jones’ character isn’t immediately associated to the earlier leads (even the unique EW footage have nods to the unique film).
“What was important to me was that it all the time felt like in that first film, which didn’t essentially really feel like a catastrophe film,” Chung instructed EW. “To me, it felt like an journey film, and I all the time liked how that film impressed a era of meteorologists and individuals who have been eager about science and climate simply because it made that examine really feel prefer it was an journey. That’s one thing that I wished to retain with this one.”
I don’t find out about you, however I’m so able to get twisted.
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