Watched it twice already. I love it, have not seen the first one though.
Although, you don't really need to watch the first one to understand this. It has its own good story. Reality, their goal is somewhat impossible but nowadays, a lot of impossible things few years back did happen already.
I don't think their focus goal will be the same with the first one since we already have a lot of technologies for that too. It's a good thing to give scientists new impossible thing to achieve that would definitely help people in the future.
Natural disasters are really hard to fight, I hope we do better for our environment.
Note: This is a fiction movie, anything could not make any sense but it might in the future. There's alot of people that can even predict the future, how come a person who cannot predict a tornado with true basis of the winds and clouds cannot?