#bc he did NOT do sequels. so we’d still be here wondering what tf is gonna happen to Dusty LMAO

[philhoffman]

Hey! Hope your well! I have to hear your thoughts on the twister sequel announced last week, so unexpected!

I’m doing pretty great thanks, hope you are too!

Ooh I have so many thoughts and feelings about this, many of them conflicting! I guess I just want to hear more before I decide whether to get excited or dread it, lol. I adore Twister and while I’m not inherently opposed to a sequel, I’ve never really wanted one, either.

Nothing can take away from how much fun the first one is, but there are so many ways a sequel, at this point, over 25 years later, can disappoint. Like, a Happiness/Life During Wartime scenario in which the sequel obliterates your ideas about the original characters would the the worst 😭 There’s a possibility it could be a lot of fun, but Twister is such a quintessentially 90s flick that Hollywood does not make anymore, and if they can’t capture that energy…

Without Phil and Bill Paxton, of course, it gets even more complicated. The idea of a sequel without them and their characters is uncomfortable, both in the sadness of their real deaths and the not knowing how it’ll be addressed. Will they be mentioned? You can’t not mention them, right? Will they say Bill and Dusty were killed chasing a storm? That feels kind of cheap to me, I don’t know. I really don’t like that. I refuse to believe they’d recast. It’s weird!

Based on the initial reports, it’s about Bill and Jo’s daughter. It’d be nice if they could say like, “Uncle Dusty is out in Iowa doing [idk, storm videography, whatever his job was in the first movie]!” and leave it at that, but it sounds like Bill’s absence (the actor and the character) will be a bigger part of the story that can’t be mentioned offhandedly.

I’d almost prefer if it was an entirely different group unconnected to the first crew, except mentored by Jo? Then the stakes wouldn’t be so high and there wouldn’t be as much pressure.

After giving it some thought, I think my perfect callback would be a lingering shot of a framed photo in Jo’s house or lab or van — a picture of the whole OG crew, maybe the one of them all sitting on the hood of the Barn Burner? Bill’s not in that picture, so maybe there’s one of him next to it. Show them, remember them warmly, and move on. You don’t have to explain what happened to anyone, you don’t have to kill anyone off, please. Just say “that was then, this is now,” and tell the new story. But what do I know, I’ve never written a screenplay.