Glen Powell’s Twisters CGI Gets Near-Perfect Review From VFX Artists (Minus 1 Glaring Issue)

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Glen Powell’s natural disaster movie Twisters not only broke box office records for the genre, but it has also garnered rave reviews from the VFX artists at Corridor Crew. Nearly doubling its projected box-office weekend opening in July this year, the legacy sequel’s $81 million debut weekend haul would make it the highest-ever domestic opening for a natural disaster movie and topple the previous record holder, 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow. Following Twisters’ successful box office run, its official Blu-ray and DVD release dates are planned for October 22, 2024.

Ahead of the movie’s forthcoming physical media release, Twisters became the focus of the latest episode of Corridor Crew’s “VFX Artists React” series. Praising the work of visual effects house Industrial Light & Magic, the group begin their commentary on a sequence that shows multiple tornadoes ripping through an oil refinery with fiery consequences, before switching to the giant F5 tornado featured in the movie’s climax.

Despite raving about the movie’s “amazing” CGI effects, the group did take issue with the editorial decisions to cut away from multiple VFX shots too early instead of allowing a better look at the finished renders. First pointed out by Niko Pueringer during the refinery sequence, Sam Gorski would later go on to bemoan the decision to cut away from the finale’s climatic shot as “like a poke in the eyeball.” Check out what Pueringer and the group said in the quote and the video below:

I do have a critique, and it’s not about the visual effects. It’s 100% about the editing and the direction, and that is I’m seeing these beautiful, beautiful renders and it cuts away. Like, “Oh yeah, I want to see more of it…oh, it cut away.” Okay, that truck’s cool, but that giant tornado in the background’s cool, but that’s in the corner, and that kind of happens shot after shot after shot.

The Sequel Was Not Constrained By The Technical Limitations Of The Original Movie

Despite growing increasingly frustrated at Twisters’ decision to cut away from its extensive visual effects shots, Pueringer also concedes that the tornadoes in Twisters and the original 1996 Twister are often referred to as “a monster in a monster film.” As such, the directorial decision not to show too much of the destructive weather phenomena does make sense when viewed through this storytelling lens.

Allan Sanders (Sean Whalen) and Dr. Melissa Reeves (Jami Gertz) in Twister

Twisters 2’s 10 Original 1996 Movie Characters That Can Still Return

With the success of Twisters, a sequel could happen, meaning that the film needs to finally bring back these characters from the 1996 original.

However, Twisters director Lee Isaac Chung had a vast technical advantage in shaping his movie, as opposed to original Twister director Jan de Bont. While de Bont’s movie also made use of CGI effects, the technology was still only very much in its infancy at the time, and instead a great many effects shots were also achieved practically. When work on Twisters was first announced, de Bont even pointed out that many of the weather effects his movie were made by throwing real ice and objects from helicopters. As such, the VFX constraints at the time often necessitated avoiding showing too much of the actual tornadoes.

Meanwhile, as Corridor Crew point out, the VFX shots that ILM were able to produce for Twisters were nearly flawless, and Chung would not have been constrained by the same technical limitations as his predecessor. Therefore, his decision to avoid revealing too much of the tornadoes would have been largely artistic in nature.

The People Are Still The Biggest Part Of Any Disaster Movie

Pueringer’s likening Twister and Twisters to a classic monster movie is quite an astute observation, despite his insistence on needing to see more of the finished CGI shots. The most important aspect of building suspense in any monster movie is not so much the monster itself, but watching how the human characters react to the monster’s presence. Similarly, a giant CGI-rendered tornado may appear frightening, but real peril is only conveyed through the reactions of the characters placed in its path.

As VFX artists, the members of Corridor Crew may bemoan the editorial decisions that cut Twisters’ nearly flawless CGI shots short, but beautifully crafted CGI is really only there to support the story. As such, Chung ultimately made the right decision to keep returning to his protagonists’ reactions rather than attempting to make the CGI tornadoes the stars of the movie.

Source: Corridor Crew

A follow-up to the 1996 original film Twister, Twisters is a sequel set years after the original, said to be fast-tracked by Steven Spielberg and Mark L. Smith, with Frank Marshal as producer. Little details exist about the film, but Helen Hunt is expected to reprise her role as Jo, with the film likely to pay homage to the late Bill Paxton.

Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Release Date: July 19, 2024
Studio(s): Universal Pictures , Warner Bros. Pictures , Amblin Entertainment , The Kennedy/Marshall Company
Distributor(s): Universal Pictures , Warner Bros. Pictures
Writers: Mark L. Smith , Joseph Kosinski , Michael Crichton , Anne-Marie Martin
Runtime: 117 Minutes