Twisters Footage Reaction: A City Is Ripped To Shreds In This Piece Of Old School Popcorn Entertainment [CinemaCon 2024]

It's been nearly 30 years since tornadoes took the box office by storm with the arrival of the thrilling summer blockbuster "Twister," starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt as a pair of estranged ex-lovers who also happen to be passionate storm chasers. Now, Universal Pictures is stirring the storms up yet again with "Twisters."

Though early reports indicated that "Twisters" would follow the daughter of Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt's characters, it appears the movie is a stand-alone sequel without any characters from the original movie returning. Instead, this is a new chapter following Daisy Edgar-Jones ("Where the Crawdads Sing"), Glen Powell ("Top Gun: Maverick"), Anthony Ramos ("In the Heights"), and Sasha Lane ("Loki"), in an original story that promises to bring the high-speed suspense of "Twister" back to theaters. 

In "Twisters," Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Kate Cooper, a former storm chaser haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado during her college years who now studies storm patterns from New York City. But she is lured back to the open plains by her friend Javi (Anthony Ramos) to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. That means she has to cross paths with Tyler Owens (Powell), a charming and reckless social-media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures with his raucous crew. 

After debuting the first "Twisters" trailer during the 2024 Super Bowl earlier this year, Universal Pictures unveiled new footage during their CinemaCon 2024 presentation in Las Vegas, and our own Ryan Scott was there to watch cyclones tear through the Midwest for our entertainment. Here's what we saw and learned in the new "Twisters" scenes from the presentation. 

You might say that the CinemaCon attendees, including our very own Ryan Scott, were blown away (booooo) by what Universal had in store. "Twisters" director Lee Isaac Chung took the stage in Las Vegas to talk up his lifelong love of tornadoes and his fondness for the 1996 original. As he explained, "Honestly, I was really scared [to make this movie]. But I wanted to run directly into my fear, and not away from it." Revealing that the crew partnered with actual weather scientists and used real footage of tornadoes from actual storm chasers to incorporate into the sequel, the filmmaker hyped up the throwback filmmaking angle of it all and even described it as a "...joyful, fun ride," much to the chagrin of his cast. Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Anthony Ramos were also on hand to talk about the other side of the coin: 120 degree heat, jet engines blowing all sorts of awfulness in their faces (including ice, hay, and more), and all sorts of other unpleasantries.

As for the exclusive footage unveiled for attendees, it starts with a storm rolling through a bull-riding event with Edgar-Jones' character in the stands. A "once in a generation tornado outbreak" brings her out of storm-chasing retirement, by all accounts, and leads to her partnering up with Powell's self-described "tornado wrangler." Fans of the original can expect towering visuals of destruction, extreme weather, and their tragic aftereffects ... all building towards the imagery of two tornadoes merging into one, cars thrown into the air, and one final shot of a twister tearing through an oil refinery. The main takeaway in the room was one of awe at how expensive the film looks and its refreshing vibes as "old-school popcorn entertainment" with "big movie star energy," to quote /Film's Ryan Scott.

The aptly-named "Twisters" hits theaters July 19, 2024.