LET’S TWIST AGAIN

TWISTERS

Minari director Lee Isaac Chung leads anew group of cyclone rangers in a standalone sequel to the 90s disaster film.

‘I wondered: what would it be like to make a film focusing on that kind of powerful force?’

LEE ISAAC CHUNG

The original Twister - which starred Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as storm chasers on the brink of divorce, who are thrown back together during an extended spot of turbulent weather - was a massive box-office hit (the second-biggest of 1996) and a notable showcase for nascent digital VFX. Almost 30 years later, we’re getting another film set within that world, though ‘sequel’ might not be quite the right word for the plurally titled Twisters.

‘I consider it a new chapter in this story that [screenwriter/producer] Michael Crichton and [director] Jan de Bont and that team had created,’ Twisters director Lee Isaac Chung tells Teasers. ‘This is just a new chapter in that world that they created, and also that concept of scientists that are, in a very adventurous way, chasing storms and doing scientific research.’

The fresh faces here include Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick) as cocksure storm chaser Tyler, with Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People) and Anthony Ramos (In the Heights) as Kate and Javi, young researchers with a background in studying tornadoes. The zeitgeisty cast also includes Daryl McCormack, Sasha Lane, Kiernan Shipka, Katy O’Brian and new Superman David Corenswet.

But it’s perhaps Chung’s involvement that most intrigues. To date, he’s best known for the Oscar-nominated Minari (for which he was also nominated in the Director and Original Screenplay categories). On paper, that gentle, low-key drama about an immigrant family couldn’t seem further from a full-scale disaster blockbuster. But Twisters belongs to a world Chung knows well.

‘I saw Twister with my dad and my sister, and we went to the movie theatre for that,’ he recalls. ‘I grew up in Arkansas. Somehow, in that part of the country, Twister was a very big movie. We grew up around tornadoes. Just driving around in trucks, and seeing the weather, was a big part of growing up. So it was a movie I always loved.’

And despite that seemingly massive gulf between Twisters and his previous film, Chung does tease some similarities. ‘In a way, it is very different,’ he says. ‘But I do feel like, with Minari, in some ways, I was making a disaster movie. Something that happens to the family is that they have to submit to the Earth, and also a big fire comes and takes away everything.’

Working on the VFX for that fire scene was also a pivotal moment for Chung. ‘I loved doing that… And so after I made that film, I kept wondering: what would it be like to make a film in which I’m just focusing on that sort of spectacle, and that sort of awe, and that kind of powerful force? [Tornadoes] have the same sort of force that a fire does. It can really reveal people, their inner journeys, their relationships… So I was really interested in exploring that with this movie.’

TWISTERS OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 19 JULY.