Twisters has quickly become one of the biggest movies of the summer, and for good reason.
Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell and Anthony Ramos, the old school blockbuster serves as a legacy sequel to the 1996 disaster film Twister, and follows a new generation of weather wranglers heading directly into the eye of a storm.
If you haven’t been able to stop thinking about the adrenaline-pumping film since seeing it, or you simply can’t wait to get to the cinema, here are some behind-the-scenes facts you probably didn’t know about the making of Twisters…
First of all, yes, people actually do chase tornadoes
You might have fallen down the tornado rabbit hole on YouTube before, but if you haven’t, there really are people out there who chase down twisters – some for thrills, but mostly for science.
The cast reflected on the real communities who track down storms in a behind-the-scenes feature with iHollywoodTV.
Anthony Ramos shared: “People live a whole life like this, people chase every day. These are real people. This is a real profession.
“This is a lifestyle that people really take seriously, and the data that they’re collecting really does help people, helps save lives.”
Daisy Edgar-Jones also referred to the “need as a human to face something much bigger than yourself”, which she said puts things into “perspective”.
Glen Powell adopted a furry friend for life during production on the movie
If you’ve been following the press trail for Twisters, you definitely won’t have missed the snaps of Glen Powell’s adorable pooch Brisket on the red carpet (along with just about everywhere Glen has been these past few months).
So, it might come as a surprise to discover that his four-legged friend isn’t actually in the movie.
But Brisket is still kind of part of the Twisters family, because the Hit Man actor adopted him while on the set of the movie.
“I was going through a breakup at the time and was in the middle of Enid, Oklahoma, and I had always wanted a dog,” Glen, who’d been dating model Gigi Paris, told Entertainment Weekly.
“It was something I thought about a lot,” he added, describing being overcome with the “desire to be a father”.
After seeing a picture of Brisket on Instagram, Glen took a weekend off filming and flew to Los Angeles to collect his new pup from a rescue centre.
“I was like, ‘Are you sure you want to get a puppy right now?’” recalled director Lee Isaac Chung. “But he did, and everybody loved that dog.”
There are some pretty nifty special effects behind those tornados
Whether you’re a fan of the original Twister film or have only watched the sequel, both films have some pretty wild special and practical effects which put you, quite literally, in the eye of the storm.
In an interview with IndieWire, director Lee Isaac Chung spoke about approaching the tornado scenes in “layers”.
“The ultimate layer, the background layer is going to be the tornado within any frame,” he said. “And that I knew had to be CGI because there was no way to actually capture one in the moment.”
But the filmmaker added that those moments were made all the more real by the practical effects on set, including two jet engines capable of creating 170 to 180-mph winds.
To simulate rain, they also had 10,000-gallon “dump tanks” and high-pressure pneumatic water cannons.
Then when it came to hail, they used a “rubbery water-soluble polymer that resembles ice”, according to IndieWire, which is softer and therefore isn’t as painful when it hits the actors.
If you want a visual insight into how they created those wild weather sequences, the below behind-the-scenes footage shows powerful wind machines and gushing torrents of water being unleashed in the street.
Shooting was a physical challenge for its stars
Glen revealed that the cast didn’t just have to be convincing in their knowledge of the science of tornadoes – they wanted to be physically believable too.
“On the action side, it was full commitment,” Glen told Looper. “[Daisy] put her body on the line. I thought I was going to be the gym rat on this movie. It was not the case. Daisy was in there every time.”
He continued: “We had a lot of great gym time together. And it requires that.
“Audiences don’t show up for a movie like this unless they see that the lead of the movie, and it feels authentic and it feels honest. Daisy breathed authenticity into every frame of it.”
The tornados featured in the film are based on real disasters
As revealed by IndieWire, each of the six tornadoes that Twisters’ visual effects supervisor Ben Snow created were also based on real-life storms.
In particular, the devastating twister that partly destroys a movie theatre at the climax of the film is based on three different tornadoes – one that passed through Kansas in 2023, (captured on film by the storm chasers employed by the production, according to Variety), another in Mayfield, Kentucky in 2021, which killed 76 people and a third that hit El Reno, Oklahoma in 2013 and killed nine people.
You can see a picture of the real movie theatre that was destroyed in Kentucky here.
They even used real trees salvaged from actual tornado wreckage
According to the director, production designer Patrick Sullivan (who also worked on the first film) and set decorator Missy Parker even used trees destroyed by actual tornadoes on the set of Twisters.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Lee explained how they “hit the ground running” and “went to places where they were actually salvaging from real tornado damaged areas”.
But those wind machines could be a little challenging for the cast
In a behind-the-scenes feature with iHollywoodTV, Tunde Adebimpe (who plays Dexter), recalled the “chaos” of filming those tornado scenes, in particular feeling the “wind in your eyes” while your “eyeballs are drying out while you’re trying to deliver lines and trying to find the people you’re supposed to deliver your lines to”.
He also joked that there actually wasn’t “a lot of acting going on” during these disaster sequences, since the “adrenaline” of the moment means that your body “does not know that it’s not real”.
The cast and crew really did shoot the movie in the middle of tornado season
The Twisters crew went pretty method when it came to filming, to the point where they really were shooting in Oklahoma in 100-degree heat during tornado season.
“We would drive like two hours out to shoot somewhere, and stay in a small hotel, probably the one hotel in that town. We were really out there, bro,” Anthony told The Independent.
“We were in the middle of tornado season too. So not only were we shooting a movie about tornadoes, but there were really tornadoes happening. It was crazy. Rain, hail – hail, bro! In the summer! I’m like, ‘What is happening?’”
Lee Isaac Chung got some solid advice from Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg is credited as an executive producer on both Twister and its sequel, so he had some pearls of wisdom for director Lee Isaac Chung when it came to making the second movie.
“He said, ‘Don’t show the tornado too much’,” he told Lee (per an interview with SciFiNow). “That was in the beginning. He said, ‘You lose the power of that’. And that’s something he had really honed in his own filmmaking. You don’t show the shark.”
But apparently he’s also to blame for that divisive ending
We’re sorry to say that, if you still haven’t seen the film, there’s no big Hollywood kiss at the end. Although it’s strongly suggested that Glen and Daisy’s characters will be romantically involved after Tyler whisks Kate away from the airport, they never actually seal it with a kiss.
The decision to not feature a kiss – which they did, in fact, film, only for the footage to wind up being cut – was apparently down to Spielberg himself.
“I think it’s a Spielberg note, wasn’t it? Do you know what it is? I think it stops the film feeling too cliched, actually,” Daisy told Collider. “I think there’s something really wonderful about it feeling like there’s a continuation. This isn’t the end of their story. They’re united by their shared passion for something.”
Glen added: “I also think that this movie is not about them finding love. It’s returning Kate to the thing that she loves, which is storm chasing.
But Lee Isaac Chung stood behind his decision
Director Lee has detailed the reasoning behind his decision to omit the kiss. “I think it’s a better ending. And I think that people who want a kiss within it, they can probably assume that these guys will kiss someday,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
“And maybe we can give them privacy for that.”
Twisters is packed full of references to the first movie
Fans of the original may have spotted a few nods to it in Twisters. The big one is that in the first film, they nickname their game-changing scientific device Dorothy.
In Twisters, there’s an updated device called Dorothy, and the Wizard Of Oz homages continue when the Javi’s (Anthony Ramos) breakout teams are called Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion.
Both films also feature climactic moments where a movie screening is interrupted by a violent storm. In Twister, a drive-in theatre is screening The Shining when a deadly tornado hits, and in Twisters it’s Frankenstein.
Oh, and that choice to include Frankenstein was no accident
“I thought of this film in many ways as a monster movie,” Twisters director Lee told Variety. “Universal has had quite a history of monster films, in which Frankenstein is probably the key.”
He went on: “Once I had that in mind, I also thought about the way that tornado is born and formed – even the refinery is meant to mirror what happens in Frankenstein.”
But that film-within-a-film was very nearly different
It turns out that if Lee had had it his way, it would have been Jaws playing in that movie theatre. But Spielberg voted against a nod to his own monster classic.
“It’s funny, I didn’t know what should be playing there for the longest time,” Lee told the Fade To Black podcast. “And I was actually hoping it could be Jaws. I was thinking, ‘it should be Jaws’.”
“I think Steven was being very humble,” Lee added. “And he was looking at different things as well, and we were trading different ideas around.”
He continued: “I remember sending him that [Frankenstein] suggestion…and he said, ‘I love Frankenstein’. And so that kind of happened a couple of weeks before we actually started filming that scene.”
There’s one cameo that serves as a special reference to the first movie
James Paxton, son of original Twister star Bill Paxton who died in 2017, actually appears in the Twisters.
He plays a complaining motel guest who doesn’t heed Kate and Tyler’s warnings to take shelter underground, which means he gets swept up into the twister.
“It’s really a cameo, so it’s an Easter egg for the fans of Dad and the original. I did this one for Dad,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
“I wanted to be a conduit for his spirit there and cheer everyone in this production on to success, because I know he would be.”
One shooting location was also especially meaningful
Shooting some of the film in the real El Reno – where a 2013 storm touched down before intensifying into a twister that killed nine people, including four storm chasers – added extra meaning to some of the scenes.
Director Lee noted that he read the biography of legendary storm chaser Tim Samara, who was one of the people who died in the tornado.
“That tornado was very unpredictable in the way that it behaved, and that was the reason why someone who is such a veteran of storm chasing was caught up in it,” he told Variety.
“I didn’t want to exploit that and use his life, but there is, internally, a nod to that event within that choice to make this El Reno,” he added.
One cast member took inspiration from a Hollywood legend
Fans of the original will immediately recognise Tyler’s right-hand man Boone (played by Brandon Perea’s) as the Philip Seymour Hoffman of the sequel.
And that pressure to be the new Dusty wasn’t lost on him. “Of course, I was terrified, but I was also grateful to be able to play a part that you can make stand out in a sense,” Brandon told The Hollywood Reporter.
“That’s what Phil Hoffman did his entire career. He stood out in these great supporting roles, and he just brought so much fun to the first film. So I just wanted to bring a pinky-nail amount of fun that he brought to it, and I hope I did.”
There’s a special metaphor behind the movie’s airport ending
Apparently Twisters did not end at the airport in an original draft of the script. Instead, Lee pitched the idea because he felt it would have significant meaning.
“I thought the airport would be a great location where Daisy and Glen and [Anthony’s] characters could all come together in some way, and we see that their relationships have been changed,” Lee told Entertainment Weekly.
“I looked at Kate, in some ways, as a tornado. We don’t know where she’s going to go and what’s going to happen to her. And I thought that Tyler should have to chase her — because he’s a storm chaser.”
Kate’s outfits took inspiration from some iconic female characters
Kate’s understated wardrobe in Twisters was very intentional. Costume designer Eunice Jera Lee told Variety that she was inspired by “bad-ass women of cinema” including Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, Ellen Ripley from Alien and Thelma and Louise.
And if one of her looks – a white tank top and khaki trousers and overshirt – looks familiar, that’s because it pays homage to Helen Hunt’s Jo in Twister.
There’s another blink-and-you-miss-it outfit easter egg
Another very subtle homage to the original movie is that Kate wears the same Bombers Baseball t-shirt design that is seen on a young boy who emerges from a basement with his family after surviving the final storm.
“Bombers originally was a reference to a baseball team I believe that [‘Twister’ franchise producer] Frank Marshall was on,” Lee told Variety. “And then we bought back that design for Kate.”
And finally, yes, we can confirm there is a flying cow (if you look hard enough)
One of the most iconic stills from the original movie is a flying cow that drifts past the car windshield in the middle of a storm.
While director Lee initially said he’d be avoiding recreating the scene as an homage to the original, it turns out there is a flying cow after all – that even he initially missed.
“My god, everybody’s been wanting a cow in this movie,” he joked to The Hollywood Reporter.“It’s the hardest thing to spot. I only spotted it because I noticed some weird marking on a piece of flying debris.”
He went on: “I said, ‘Could you freeze that frame?’ I was looking at frame-by-frame shots when we’re doing VFX reviews, and sure enough, there was a cow on that thing.”
The director initially remarked that he didn’t want the cow to become a cheap gimmick in his movie.
“Any time I talk to anyone about that original Twister they would say, ‘Oh yeah, the big flying cow movie,’” he told CNN.
“I felt like I would hate to make a movie, update it, and just hear, ‘Oh yes, you made the new flying cow movie.’ So that was it – that was the decision.”
Twisters is out in cinemas now.