The most worth-watching disaster movie this summer, " tornado " (released simultaneously in North America), was released in our mainland. This new film produced by Warner Bros., produced by DreamWorks, and supervised by Steven Spielberg, is the orthodox sequel to the 1996 classic disaster film "Twister."
"Tornado", directed by "" director Jan de Bont and starring the goddess Helen Hunt, invested US$92 million and created a box office myth of US$495 million.
After 28 years, the IP of "Tornado" has also been remade, directed by Lee Isaac Chung , a Korean-American director, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell co-starring.
The movie received a 78% freshness (media score) and a 93% popcorn index (audience score) on Rotten Tomatoes. The global box office easily exceeded 11.8 million in two days of release, and the weekend box office easily reached 80.5 million US dollars. It is a blockbuster film in the summer season.
But in our mainland, "Tornado" was released for 11 days, with a box office of just over 19 million. It is a proper cannon fodder film.
Are Hollywood blockbusters no longer popular? What is the reason why "Tornado" has so few films scheduled in mainland China and cannot make a profit at the box office? Let’s analyze it.
1. From "Storm Chaser" to "Tornado Hunter", the new "Tornado" wins with solid character stories
Due to its geographical location, atmospheric circulation and special climate conditions, the United States has an average of 5 tornadoes every day Tornadoes generate nearly 2,000 tornadoes every year, making it a veritable "Tornado Country." Such extreme weather phenomena have also attracted a large number of scientists to conduct in-depth research on them. These special groups call themselves "storm chasers."
The 1996 "Tornado" tells the story of this group of "storm chasers". At that time, the investment in the film was as high as 92 million US dollars, and Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" team was responsible for the CG special effects of the tornado that resembled the real one.
In that era when computer special effects were just starting out, the special effects scenes that were carefully created at a huge expense seem very crude now, but they were already at the "ceiling" level at the time. In addition, the storyline of the movie is also quite powerful. "Tornado" "swept all the troops" that year, and finally became the runner-up in the global box office that year with a box office of 1.495 billion US dollars.
28 years later, Warner decided to restart this IP and create a new version of "Tornado", which is both a brand new story and a sequel to the 1996 version.
The story continues the setting of the previous work. Female college student Kate Carter (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones) is also a storm chaser. Her lofty ideal is not only to chase tornadoes, but also to conquer tornadoes.
Kate led a team of 5 people to study how to release sodium polyacrylate powder into the air and use its strong water-absorbing ability to absorb water vapor in tornadoes to reduce the power of tornadoes.
Because they encountered a large level 5 tornado, three people in the team, including Kate's boyfriend, were killed in the storm, and Kate gave up her research. It was not until five years later that the surviving team member Harvey (played by Anthony Ramos) found Kate again with his newly developed wind chasing system and recruited her to join the scientific research team funded by a large consortium.
While chasing the tornado, Kate met Taylor Owens (Glenn Powell), an Internet celebrity named "Tornado Cowboy", and she regained her courage and confidence due to his influence.
So Kate restarted research on eliminating tornadoes, and came up with the idea of using silver iodide to absorb the remaining moisture in the air while releasing sodium polyacrylate.
In the end, when another level 5 tornado hit a small town, Kate turned into a "tornado hunter" and used her invention to eliminate the tornado and save the town on the verge of being destroyed. As a sequel, the new version of "Tornado" has been greatly upgraded from special effects to plot. The main creator has carefully polished the story, added characters, and has twists and turns in the plot and climaxes one after another.
A very creative setting in the film is that the heroine Kate tries to use sodium polyacrylate to absorb water vapor to weaken the power of the tornado. Sodium polyacrylate has strong water absorption and is the main material of diapers. Using this property to fight tornadoes may sound like science fiction, but it also has certain scientific basis.
Silver iodide is a common ice nucleation agent and has been widely used in artificial rain enhancement operations. It can also be used to prevent snow, hail, frost, and hinder the formation of storms. It is also logical to use it to "treat" tornadoes. In terms of meteorological science, the screenwriter must have worked hard.
With the blessing of this new invention, the heroine Kate has also transformed from a passive defensive "storm chaser" to an active "tornado hunter".
's identity change from "storm chaser" to "tornado hunter" also gives the movie's story new room for expansion.
2. From the singular "twister" to the plural "twisters", the special effects of the new "Tornado" are more mature, the scene is bigger, the sourness is doubled, the excitement is doubled, and the blood is doubled.
Pay attention to the English title of "Twister". The 1996 version uses the singular "twister", while the new version of "Tornado" uses the plural "twisters".
This shows that the special effects scenes in the new version of "Tornado" will be fully upgraded. There will be more tornadoes, more destructive power, and the scenes will be larger, more realistic, and more unscrupulous.
96 version of "Twister" was responsible for the cg special effects in the film by George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic. After successfully creating the " abyss " alien, "Terminator 2" T-1000, and "Jurassic" After "Park" Dinosaurs, Industrial Light and Magic is going to create realistic tornado special effects for "Tornado".
However, the computing power of computers in the 1990s was relatively backward, the production cycle was slow, and every frame cost money.
Director Bont had no choice but to "spare" and fill most of the film with dense character stories. There were very few scenes of tornadoes, and most of the time the "dragon never saw its tail". It was not until the end of the film that there was a big scene. The tornado drama.
Today's new version of "Tornado" is of course very different from the 1996 version. 28 years later, the CG special effects technology has already been perfected. There is no need to be secretive or to control the duration of special effects scenes too much, so that CG special effects can truly serve the plot.
Comparing the tornado images of the 1996 version and the new version, it can be seen that the pixels of the special effects images in the 1990s were lower, and the boundary between the tornado produced by CG and the real scene image can be clearly seen. Even in the famous "Flying Cow" scene that the film crew is proud of, traces of CG animation can be clearly seen. The new version of
has integrated the CG-produced sky with the real-life shooting scenes, and the tornado has also achieved realistic interaction with the surrounding environment. The plot of
also deliberately emphasizes this kind of interactivity. For example, Kate will judge the strength and movement route of the tornado through the direction of the flying dandelions and the direction of the wheat waves in Tanaka.
In order to enhance the realism and excitement of the special effects scenes, the film also allows tornadoes to destroy power stations, windmills and city blocks, allowing the audience to deeply feel its powerful power.
Summer is the season when tornadoes occur most frequently in the United States. Tornadoes in the film seem to be everywhere, with one coming every 15 minutes on average, which makes the audience feel extremely sad.
3. The "Swamp Girl" single-handedly defeated the tornado. She is a beautiful, sassy and charming woman.
Looking back at 1996, the global box office champion that year was "Independence Day" by "The Master of Disaster Movies" Roland Emmerich (with a box office of US$817 million). The two disaster movies "Independence Day" and "Twister" both defeated Tom Cruise's "Mission: Impossible" (box office: US$458 million) to occupy the top two spots on the list, which shows that disaster movies were very popular back then.
Since then, Emmerich has continued to enjoy it, and released two doomsday movie classics, "The Day After Tomorrow" and "2012" in 2004 and 2009 respectively.With its realistic CG special effects, it has harvested and box office of US$1.554 billion and respectively around the world. It also caused great repercussions when it entered the mainland market and is still talked about by movie fans to this day.
However, as cg special effects technology becomes more and more mature, the shortcomings and shortcomings of disaster films are increasingly exposed, which is how to achieve a rigorous and perfect plot and special effects scenes.
After entering 2010, many directors, including Director Emmerich, lost their way and only focused on creating visual spectacles while ignoring the story itself.
In 2016, Emmerich restarted the "Independence Day" IP to create "Independence Day 2: Resurgence", which not only used the original cast, but also added Chinese actors in an attempt to further open up the Chinese market. However, the movie itself had a cliched and boring story and failed to attract audiences. In the end, it only earned 500 million in box office in the mainland and 384 million US dollars in global box office, less than half of the previous film.
In 2022, Emmerich brought " Moonfall " to conquer the lost ground, but the audience, who had been immersed in Marvel movies for too long, also lost interest in the moon hitting the earth. The domestic box office of the movie was only 158 million yuan, and the global box office was only 66.9 million US dollars. Emmerich was completely defeated. In the next two years, no one dared to touch the disaster theme again, until the new version of "Tornado" was released.
As a rebooted sequel, the new version of "Tornado" has a freshness rating of 78% and a popcorn index of 93%, which is higher than the 96 version with a freshness rating of 67% and a popcorn index of 58%. This is because director Lee Isaac Zheng and screenwriter Mark L. Smith both focus on plot and character creation, and insist on the purpose of making "special effects scenes serve the movie story".
The heroine Kate Carter in the film has a clear and complete growth line. In college, she was in her prime, high-spirited and confident that she could conquer a powerful tornado.
But after experiencing the sacrifices of her friends and lovers, Kate was brought back to her original shape. In the five years after graduation, she chose to stay away from friends and family and went to New York alone to work as a meteorological consultant.
The appearance of her old friend Harvey brings Kate back to the front line of scientific research, and Internet celebrity Taylor's fearless temperament, which is indifferent to life and death, gives her the courage to face the tornado. Both male characters played an important role in Kate's growth, helping her get out of the shadow of failure and face her own life again.
At the end, when a Category 5 tornado struck, Harvey and Taylor led the town people to hide in the movie theater, but Kate chose to drive into the storm alone and use her invention to fight the tornado head-on.
Now alone, she looks beautiful and sassy, showing off her feminine temperament, which is in sharp contrast to Dr. Qiao who needed a man's protection in the previous work.
This more distinctive, confident and individual female image is the mainstream of movies in the world today.
Kya, who successfully portrayed the "Swamp Girl" in "Girl from the Swamp" two years ago, now shows her gentle yet powerful personal charm in "Tornado". This powerful aura can not only conquer A tornado can also conquer the audience in front of the screen.
4. The giant of Hollywood, but it has been ignored in China. This blockbuster with an investment of 1.4 billion was completely defeated by Shen Teng's new film
In summary, the new version of "Tornado" is compared with those in recent years that only focus on visual spectacles and not on character stories. Disaster movies focus more on character growth and the elaboration of the plot itself. It has the quality of an excellent Hollywood movie in the 1990s, and has made a qualitative leap in the creation of CG special effects. The scenes are gorgeous and the story is powerful.
After experiencing the era of Marvel and DC superhero movies, today's Hollywood commercial movies are returning to the traditional route of science fiction and disaster movies.
The investment in "Tornado" is as high as 200 million US dollars (1.44 billion yuan, imdb website data), which is much higher than the budget of " The Wandering Earth 2", which shows that Warner has spent a lot of money.
Therefore, both Warner and DreamWorks did not allow any mistakes in the arrangement of the story. They found Mark L. Smith, the screenwriter of the Oscar blockbuster " The Revenant ", to write the script, and Lee Isaacs, who became a blockbuster with "Minari", wrote the script. ·Zheng directed the film.
Judging from the finished film, the film is indeed a high-scoring film that combines story and entertainment. It has also been well received by mainstream media and North American audiences, and its box office performance has also grown rapidly.
However, when it came to our mainland, it could not get a good film schedule and the attendance rate was not high. This led to its unsatisfactory box office performance. The media predicted that it would only receive 27 million yuan in the box office.
The problems faced by "Tornado" are also the dilemmas faced by Hollywood movies in our mainland market today.
Compared with " ", which has easily exceeded 2.3 billion yuan in box office within 14 days of its release, "Tornado" lacks the "down-to-earthness" and "amiability" that come with domestic movies.
In the eyes of our countrymen, the Hollywood blockbusters of the past had a sense of freshness and high-end. Its advanced special effects technology and excellent overall quality are clearly visible. Compared with domestic films at the time, it was much higher in terms of technical level and degree of completion.
Therefore, even after 2000, Hollywood blockbusters still have a broad market in the mainland, and their box office is higher than that of mainland movies. However, with the progress of my country's film industrialization, the gap between mainland films and Hollywood blockbusters is narrowing, especially now that our CG special effects technology has also made great progress, and there is basically no big gap with Hollywood films.
The novelty and admiration that Chinese people had for Hollywood movies in the past has gradually faded away without even realizing it.
If the post-70s and post-80s generation have a complex for Hollywood blockbusters, then in the eyes of the post-90s and post-00s generations, who are the current mainstream consumer groups in movie theaters, this complex no longer exists. For them, movies like "Catch a Baby" Such domestic comedies are more attractive.
After all, Hollywood movies are about things on the other side of the world and have little to do with our lives; while domestic movies are about Chinese people themselves, so they will naturally have more intimacy and appear more down-to-earth.
After losing their "freshness", Hollywood movies do not have much advantage compared with domestic movies. Even if they are of good quality, they cannot hit the box office.
This is the reason why "Tornado" is not a hit in our mainland. The next " Deadpool and Wolverine " will also face the same dilemma. I hope it can perform better.
In short, "Tornado" is a good and exciting movie with the temperament of an old-school Hollywood disaster movie. Brother Qie still hopes that it will not be buried and that theaters can increase the number of movies.
(movie Rotten Tomatoes Editorial Department: Hot-Blooded Heart)
