Twisters (film)
Twisters is a 2024 American disaster film serving as a standalone sequel to Twister. The film was directed by Lee Isaac Chung from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith, based on a story by Joseph Kosinski. The ensemble cast includes Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, and Sasha Lane. It follows clashing groups of storm chasers who investigate a tornado outbreak in Oklahoma.
Talks for a sequel to Twister began in 2020, with Kosinski pitching an idea to Universal Pictures and Helen Hunt, who starred in the original, also expressing interest in a follow-up that was ultimately rejected. Several directors were approached before Chung was hired in December 2022. The cast joined in early-2023 and filming took place around Oklahoma that summer, with a brief hiatus due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Twisters premiered at the Cineworld Leicester Square in London on July 8, 2024, and was released internationally by Warner Bros. Pictures on July 10 and in the United States and Canada by Universal Pictures on July 19. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $372.3 million worldwide.
Plot
Kate Carter works in Oklahoma with storm chasers Javi, Addy, Praveen, and her boyfriend, Jeb. Alongside a Dorothy V doppler, the team launches barrels of sodium polyacrylate beads into a tornado in hopes of reducing its intensity and securing funding for further research. However, the amount of chemicals is insufficient to stop it and the crew is caught in the middle as it intensifies into an EF5. Addy, Praveen, and Jeb are killed, while Kate and Javi survive.Five years later, Kate works at a NOAA office in New York City. Javi, working for mobile tornado radar company Storm Par, offers Kate a one-week position with his team to test a new tornado scanning system using phased-array radar. Kate only accepts after Javi sends a news report about a tornado destroying a town. Kate and Javi join the Storm Par team in Oklahoma, which includes Javi's business partner Scott. Popular YouTube storm chaser Tyler Owens, known as the "Tornado Wrangler", also arrives in Oklahoma from Arkansas looking to capitalize on a predicted tornado outbreak. Tyler is joined by his crew of Boone, Dani, Dexter, and Lily, as well as British journalist Ben.
Storm Par and Tyler's crew chase an EF1 tornado that has touched down in a nearby wind farm. Kate experiences a panic attack, rendering her unable to help Javi set up the final scanner and she instead drives away. The team tracks another storm which produces another EF1, that also produces a Satellite that splits off. Storm Par chases the Satellite after noticing that it is intensifying, but as it reaches EF3 strength, it takes out the third scanner. Kate and Javi barely escape and drive to the nearby tornado-ravaged town of Crystal Springs to help recovery efforts, along with Tyler's crew. Having dismissed Tyler and his team as glory hounds, Kate is surprised to learn they use merchandise profits to aid tornado victims, while Storm Par investor Marshall Riggs profiteers by purchasing tornado-damaged land.
Tyler invites Kate to a nearby rodeo in Stillwater, where they begin bonding. When a large tornado hits, Kate leads Tyler and nearby residents to shelter in an empty motel pool. In the aftermath, Kate and Javi argue about Riggs' intentions, causing Javi to blame Kate for their colleagues' deaths. Distraught, Kate retreats to her mother's farm in Sapulpa. Tyler follows and uncovers Kate's previous research regarding the tornado disruption experiment. Kate initially declines Tyler's offer to help retry the experiment but finally accepts. The next day, they release the beads into a passing tornado, but it fails to dissipate. Using scanning data provided by an apologetic Javi, Kate hypothesizes a change in the experiment to correct a previous oversight, namely adding silver iodide.
The team tracks another tornado developing near El Reno. Javi and Scott's truck is knocked on its side and back upright again; they escape just as the tornado catches fire after striking an oil refinery. The tornado explodes in size becoming a mile-wide EF5 that heads towards El Reno. Javi attempts to rush to El Reno to help recovery efforts, but Scott pressures him to continue their mission for Riggs. Javi abandons Scott by the road and quits Storm Par.
Kate, Tyler, and their team evacuate the townsfolk into a nearby movie theater. A derailed streetcar and debris traps Tyler. Kate struggles to free him, but with the arrival of Javi, Tyler is rescued. Kate drives Tyler's truck into the tornado's center. She fires the silver iodide into the tornado, and after a brief struggle with the controls, she launches the polyacrylite beads also, but the vehicle is overturned. The tornado rips the theater open, nearly pulling Lily and Tyler out just as the measures take effect, weakening the tornado. The team rescues Kate and celebrates the dissipating tornado.
Sometime later, as Kate waits at the airport for her plane to New York, Tyler catches up with her to reconcile with her. Upon learning that flights have been delayed because of strong winds, the two swiftly depart for the storm. A closing montage shows that Kate, Javi, and Tyler have joined in a new tornado radar business, and that Ben's story focused on Kate instead of Tyler.
Cast
Production
Development
In 2020, Joseph Kosinski met with Amblin Entertainment and the Kennedy/Marshall Company to pitch a follow-up to the 1996 film Twister revolving around a "new generation" of storm chasers. In June 2020, Universal Pictures announced it was meeting with writers to develop the reboot, with Frank Marshall attached as a producer and Kosinski in early negotiations as director. Around the same time, the studio rejected plans from Twister actress Helen Hunt to direct a sequel. That version, written by Hunt, Rafael Casal, and Daveed Diggs, who collaborated on the television series Blindspotting, would have followed "all black and brown storm chasers", members of a rocket science club at a historically black college and university. In October 2022, Amblin, Universal, and Warner Bros. met with directors for Twisters, a sequel being fast-tracked for an early 2023 production start after Steven Spielberg, an executive producer of the original film, expressed enthusiasm for a script by Mark L. Smith. Filmmaking couple Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Travis Knight, and Dan Trachtenberg were in talks to helm the project, Kosinski having dropped out to direct F1. The studio reportedly wanted Hunt to reprise her role, with the hopes of the story focusing on the daughter of her and Bill Paxton's characters.In December 2022, Lee Isaac Chung was hired to direct the now standalone sequel. Chung's pitch to Marshall, Spielberg, and executive producer Ashley Jay Sandberg included a presentation that intercut footage from Twister and his own Minari, a semi-autobiographical indie drama that cost $2 million, specifically a scene in which characters experience a tornado watch. Chung credited his time at Lucasfilm directing an episode of The Mandalorian as accustoming him to projects with visual effects and noted growing up in tornado alley as inspiration. In preparation for Twisters, he revisited the original film; Spielberg's Jaws and War of the Worlds ; "driving movies" such as The French Connection and Gone in 60 Seconds ; and Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Ran . Character dynamics were influenced by the films of Frank Capra and Howard Hawks, especially It Happened One Night and The Big Sky. Chung was inspired to approach Glen Powell for a lead role after seeing an appearance of his on an episode of the morning show Today; Powell was contacted while filming Anyone but You in Australia to do a chemistry read with Daisy Edgar-Jones over Zoom. Edgar-Jones suggested that her character, Kate, have a camera, in reference to the documentary Fire of Love about volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft; the character was partially inspired by Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz. For Kate's wardrobe, Lee said that Edgar-Jones drew inspiration from the "bad-ass women of cinema", which included Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road, Ellen Ripley from Alien and Louise Sawyer and Thelma Dickinson from Thelma & Louise. Cast members attended a "weather boot camp" to learn about tornadoes from meteorologists and storm chasers. The program was organized by meteorologist and former NOAA analyst Kevin Kelleher, a technical advisor on both Twister films. Paxton's son, James, has a cameo as a motel guest who tries driving away from a tornado. Powell's parents also appear as cameos during the rodeo scene, an occurrence that previously happened in all of his films, starting with Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over.
Filming
was initially set for the state of Georgia, outside Atlanta, for budgetary reasons. Instead, it commenced in May 2023 in Oklahoma, where the story takes place, marking Chung's return to the state after Minari. The move cost the crew work days and resulted in the removal of some storm sequences. Filming was to take place at Prairie Surf Studios for 40 days and in metro Oklahoma City for 50 days. Ultimately, the shoot took 60 days, approximately 70 percent of which was spent capturing driving scenes. Other locations included the towns of Burbank, Calumet, Cashion, Chickasha, Fairview, Hinton, Kingfisher, Kremlin, El Reno, Midwest City, Okarche, Pawhuska, and Spencer. Filming was suspended in July due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. As six weeks of prep time were necessary to resume production, despite only having three weeks of material to film, the crew began prepping sets before the strike was over. Production resumed with the strike's conclusion in November and wrapped the following month. Dan Mindel was the cinematographer. Patrick Sullivan, who worked on the original film's art department, was the production designer.Twisters was shot on 35 mm film, at Chung's request after receiving support from Spielberg and Mindel, with Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2 and handheld Arriflex 435 and 235 cameras from Arri, using Panavision T-Series, C-Series and Primo anamorphic lenses. In preparation for the film, Mindel watched Westerns, road films, and films produced during the Golden Age of Hollywood set in rural America. He listed The Last Picture Show as an influence on the film's "Americana" style. Dailies were processed in Los Angeles, so the crew could not review their footage for several days. To maintain continuity, Mindel aimed to film under overcast weather, unless the script asked for blue skies. Because the shoot occurred during tornado season, delays were frequent. "It was happening every three days or so," Chung recalled, "We were always getting shut down—lightning, wind storms, and then storms that were producing tornadoes came through as well." Challenges arose in El Reno due to heat waves, lightning storms, and strong winds, as well as the presence of "a jet engine on set that you could barely talk over" and the need for a bright, hot key light to produce the "feeling of a storm-like sky", according to Chung. A set of an El Reno farmer's market was destroyed by a storm with 80-mile-per-hour winds, forcing the crew to rebuild it so they could destroy it again for a scene. The farmer's market in El Reno consisted of 40 vendors and market stalls. Many of them were inspired from different local farmer's markets, featuring produce sellers, baked goods and local artisans. The set decorating team manufactured, researched and met with local farmers and vendors from all over Oklahoma. Fake versions of the goods, including pies, vegetables and cakes were created using soft and safe materials to avoid hurting the cast and crew by the wind and water machines. A former military meteorologist was hired to monitor weather conditions with a squad of radar watchers, and film safety experts enforced protocols for shutting down production and sheltering when necessary.
The prologue was shot during the first week. It used practical effects such as hail, rain, and wind machines to simulate the storm, though the overpass that characters hide under was enclosed in blue screen. While parts of the sequence were filmed on location, the overpass was rebuilt on a makeshift studio backlot near Prairie Surf Studios. Three locations—Crystal Springs, Stillwater, and El Reno–are ravaged in the film by tornadoes. Scenes set in El Reno were filmed on location, while a 4-block stretch of land in Chickasha stood in for Crystal Springs and Midwest City portrayed Stillwater. Early versions of the script had the Stillwater tornado surround a college baseball game, but Chung suggested changing it to a rodeo. For the rodeo, a metal-roofed grand stand, a ticket booth, an announcer booth, concession booths and a small marketplace with a few vendors were constructed. The walls were also dressed with faded Hatch Show Print posters that consisted of iconic woodblock prints that promoted music stars such as Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton to suggest history and a faded "Americana" vibe. The pool of the motel where characters take shelter was constructed for the film; a hole was dug out of the motel's lawn and, since the pool is empty, no plumbing was required. After the shoot, the pool was removed and the hole was filled to restore the lawn. The theater sequence was shot on soundstages at Prairie Surf, using vintage seats from a closed Colorado movie theater; exterior shots were filmed in El Reno. It was Chung's decision for the characters to be viewing Frankenstein, a reference to Universal's "monsters" franchise. Kate's mother's farmhouse was located in the town of Howe. The accompanying barn was initially a metal shed, which the art department skinned with wood from Missouri to resemble an Oklahoma barn. The barn's interior was built at Prairie Surf. Two versions of the ending were filmed; one where Kate and Tyler kiss, and the one in the film, in which they do not. Spielberg suggested the non-kiss take to solidify that Kate's character arc was about her returning passion for storm chasing. Automaker Stellantis provided several vehicles for use in the film, including a Ram 1500 TRX and a Ram 3500 used by Powell's character Tyler Owens as a Tornado Intercept Vehicle.