It's Glen Powell's world, and we're just living in it. The "Top Gun: Maverick" and "Anyone But You" star is a storm chaser with enough charisma to fill a 10-gallon hat in the first trailer for "Twisters," in theaters this July.
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"Twisters" is a standalone sequel to "Twister," Jan de Bont's Oscar-nominated 1996 hit which doubled as a divorce drama and a disaster pic. Helen Hunt and the late-great Bill Paxton starred as estranged husband-and-wife storm chasers.
By all accounts, the hotly-anticipated followup has very little connection to the original film (no, Helen Hunt won't be making a cameo). But fans will recognize plenty of callbacks in the heart-pounding "Twisters" trailer, which dropped on Super Bowl Sunday and features multiple characters being blown away by powerful winds in Oklahoma.
Golden Globe nominee Daisy Edgar-Jones ("Where the Crawdads Sing") and Glen Powell star as opposing forces who come together to try to predict, and possibly tame, the immense power of tornadoes. This time around, they battle not one but two powerful cyclones. As one scrappy storm chaser shouts in the trailer, "We got twins! Twins!"
The film follows Kate Cooper (Edgar-Jones), a former storm chaser lured back to the dangerous plains of Oklahoma by her friend Javi (Golden Globe nominee Anthony Ramos, "In the Heights") to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. They come up against self-proclaimed "tornado wrangler" Tyler Owens (Powell), who thinks he's found a way of destroying tornados.
Tyler, donning a cowboy hat, tells Kate, "You don't face your fears. You ride 'em," before twin tornadoes leave the group fighting for their lives.
Golden Globe winner Maura Tierney ("Beautiful Boy") also stars. Brandon Perea ("Nope"), Sasha Lane ("American Honey"), Daryl McCormack ("Peaky Blinders"), Kiernan Shipka ("Chilling Adventures of Sabrina") and Nik Dodani ("Atypical") round out the cast.
"Twisters" was directed by Oscar nominee Lee Isaac Chung ("Minari"), who wrote the script alongside Mark L. Smith ("The Revenant"). The original "Twister" was co-written by sci-fi great Michael Crichton ("Jurassic Park").
Chung grew up in Arkansas and insisted on filming "Twisters" in Oklahoma during tornado season. He used jet engines to generate powerful winds on set, and he tapped the same network of storm chasers who advised the original film.
"When you're out there hanging out with real chasers, you realize that they come from all different places, all different backgrounds," Chung told EW. "So I wanted to fill this film with people who come from all different walks of life. I knew that I wanted audiences to chase tornadoes with this movie, so who are the people who they'd want to chase a storm with? That was kind of the measure that I was using a lot in the way that we cast, but also the way that these characters were shaped and written."
Texas native Glen Powell says it was a "blast" playing the reckless storm chaser Tyler. "When there's something big that everyone else is running away from, Tyler's the guy that runs towards it," he told the outlet.
Practical effects and a commitment to emotional storytelling sets "Twisters" apart from contemporary disaster pics, Powell added: "When you're in the outskirts of Oklahoma getting wind and hay and water and dirt and having Main Street blown across at you, it sure doesn't feel like there's a lot of CGI in the movie."
"Twisters" premieres in theaters on July 19, 2024.
