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Call it the Aliens gambit: when making a belated sequel to a hit movie, add an "s", a wildly talented new cast and get one the most exciting filmmakers you can find. That's what makes us look forward to Twisters, the standalone sequel to the 1996 Jan de Bont barnstormer (barnwrecker?).

Once again, our heroes are scientists chasing tornadoes across the American Midwest. Once again, they're clinging on to any nearby pipework for dear life, because this is essentially man/woman against extreme weather.

The original film was a blast in more ways than one, using then-cutting-edge CGI to create its gigantic tornadoes. Twister starred Helen Hunt and the late, great Bill Paxton as bickering scientists – and not-quite-divorced spouses – competing to send a flock of tiny sensors straight up into the funnel of a tornado, the better to understand and predict where they're going to strike. As well as flying cows, it featured a wildly overpowered supporting cast, including a young Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cary Elwes, Alan Ruck and future Tár director, Todd Field.

This sequel is, if anything, more exciting on paper. For one, it's directed by Lee Isaac Chung, whose last film was the moving, funny and Oscar-nominated Minari, the semi-autobiographical story of a South Korean family who move to rural Arkansas to set up their own farm. Chung is stepping up to a big studio film but his background makes this perhaps a more personal film than it would appear.

Any kid growing up on a farm in the Midwest would feel a connection to the original Twister. Arkansas isn't dead centre of the so-called "Tornado Alley", where most twisters touch down, but it's still affected. Chung shot this film in Oklahoma, the state adjoining his home turf, and the trailer shows that much of the action takes place in farmlands and small towns that he would know and understand well.

Then there's the cast. Daisy Edgar-Jones is the lead, Kate Cooper. The star of Fresh and TV's Normal People will be a tornado chaser who's hoping to find a way to unwind the twisters before they can cause devastation. Traumatised by a previous encounter, she hasn't spent time in the field until her friend Javi (In The Heights' Anthony Ramos) lures her out.

Man of the moment Glen Powell channels every ounce of his Texan charisma as Tyler Owens, a weather-baiting social media star who might have the daredevil edge it will take to get Kate's equipment into the air. He seems to combine the outrageous self-confidence of Elwes' character in the first film with Paxton's horse sense for weather, and that can only be a good thing. Powell is on a hot streak right now after Top Gun: Maverick, Anyone But You and Hit Man.

In support we have Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane, Daryl McCormack, Kiernan Shipka and David "the new Superman" Corenswet.

Written by The Revenant's Mark L. Smith, this promises everything you could wish from a Twister movie: more widespread devastation from extreme weather, now strengthened by global warming, and people clinging on in gale-force winds that want to blow them straight to Oz.

In other words, it looks like the most fun you can have with lethal weather conditions. You'll believe a cow can fly.  Helen O'Hara