Lee Isaac Chung

Lee Isaac Chung is an exciting new name in the eyes of mainstream pop culture enthusiasts thanks to his summer cinematic blockbuster, Twisters. But it’s the nearly 20-year journey of acclaimed filmmaking taken to get to this point that explains why his big tentpole project worked as well as it did. After first turning heads at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival with Munyurangabo and officially breaking through with 2020’s Oscar-nominated Minari, Chung’s substantive catalog finally opened up doors for him to take on big-budget fare. The good news — Chung gave audiences everything they wanted when purchasing a ticket (the thrills, the nostalgia, the tropes) yet packaged it with the same thoughtful flourishes and well-developed characters you’d expect from a celebrated filmmaker. If only all blockbuster movies would try to marry substance with style.

The days are heavy for all of us, so a season of summer escapism feels more important than ever. But in a world where original ideas backed with real money can be hard to find at the box office, Chung was willing to show other directors how to inject the familiar with vivid storytelling. Twisters by all accounts should have been a lazy send-up intended to let nostalgia do the heavy lifting. Instead, Chung served up a favorite for both critics and casual fans.

With the continued emergence of AI and Hollywood’s increasingly shrinking budgets for “movies in the middle,” it feels like moviegoers are guaranteed a future of low-budget dramas fueling the only original ideas forward while the real money is saved for the “safest” bets — which means rehashed visions of previous releases and further iterations of proven franchises. (Next year alone, we have a new Avatar, a Running Man remake, a third Tron, Saw 11, another Jurassic movie and plenty more.) Chung shows us that it’s possible to still pursue excellence and meaning in the craft of filmmaking even if the narrative is a retread. That’s vital for the heart of the industry going forward.