The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub interviews
Twisters
stars Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Anthony Ramos.

Twisters
is the standalone sequel to the original 1996 film that introduces new storm chasers and technologies with epic VFX.
In an interview with Collider, Powell, Edgar-Jones, and Ramos reveal the challenges of filming intense scenes, the advice they got from Steven Spielberg, and more.

Tornadoes weren’t the only thing sweeping audiences off their feet in Twisters. The chemistry between leads Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones was certainly a whirlwind, but this isn’t your standard love story, and executive producer Steven Spielberg knew it shouldn’t be treated as such. In this interview with the movie’s main trio, Powell, Edgar-Jones, and Anthony Ramos, we find out why one particularly special scene was left on the cutting room floor and why the movie is actually better for it.

In Lee Isaac Chung’s standalone sequel to Twister (1996), these deadly forces of nature aren’t what they used to be. Storm season has escalated over the years, and former tornado-chaser Kate Carter’s (Edgar-Jones) dreams of taming these tempests were interrupted years ago after a tragic incident in the field. When an old friend (Ramos) tracks her down years later, Kate is reluctantly sucked back onto the trail where she meets influencer and storm chaser Tyler Owens (Powell) and his crew of Tornado Wranglers. Twisters also stars Maura Tierney, Brandon Perea, Sasha Lane, David Corenswet, Katy O’Brian, and more.

While talking with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, Powell, Edgar-Jones, and Ramos sit down to discuss the most challenging scenes post-strike, the intense oner you’ll definitely want to watch a second time around, and the note Spielberg gave that changed the game. We also meet their crew member and Powell’s furry friend, Brisket!

Twisters An update to the 1996 film ‘Twister’, which centered on a pair of storm chasers who risk their lives in an attempt to test an experimental weather alert system.Release Date July 19, 2024 Writers Mark L. Smith , Joseph Kosinski , Michael Crichton , Anne-Marie Martin

Read Our ‘Twisters’ Review

Meet Brisket, the Official On-Set Storm Chasing Dog

COLLIDER: Obviously, we’ll just talk about the dog.

GLEN POWELL: Brisket.

DAISY EDGAR-JONES: He’s our resident Storm Chaser. He’s been chasing.

ANTHONY RAMOS: Our mascot.

EDGAR-JONES: I’ll Glen speak, but he was bought on set.

POWELL: We all adopted Brisket midway through shooting Twisters. He really was born from the storm out of there.

Was Brisket found on set? I don’t actually know the story.

POWELL: No, Brisket was adopted in LA and brought back to Oklahoma City.

EDGAR-JONES: He’s a little pup.

POWELL: Immediately, he was brought to the set of Twisters and then every department became sort of babysitters, and Daisy. And then he played with Tony’s dog, Prince.

RAMOS: Yeah, he played with my dog, Prince, all the time.

POWELL: So, he’s raised by the whole village.

Thank you for sharing the story. The dog is very, very, very cute.

8:20 Related Everyone Originally Said No to This Glen Powell “Genre Mash-Up” This Richard Linklater rom-com almost didn’t make it to the big screen.

Let’s talk about the t-shirt I’m holding. Last night we did a screening with your director and the Super Yaki team, and so we gave these shirts out. Glen, this t-shirt is aimed at you. Is it one of these things where you will actually wear this and walk around in public with it? What’s the rule when you’re on a shirt like this?

POWELL: No, I have that tattooed on my back. I don’t even need to wear the shirt. Most of the time I’m not wearing a shirt anyway.

I’m gonna give this to one of you if you can answer this: What famous director who directed Tár was an actor in the original film?

POWELL: Oh, yeah, Todd Field.

EDGAR-JONES: No way! What scene is he in?

He plays Tim “Beltzer” Lewis. You win the shirt.

POWELL: Thank you. Take off my shirt on the back, I just wanna show everybody… [Laughs]

[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Twisters]

Steven Spielberg Confirms Where the True Love Story Lies in ‘Twisters’

One of the things that I loved is the fact that your two characters don’t kiss in the film. I’ve seen it twice, and both times audiences are like, “I can’t believe they didn’t kiss!” I heard you guys filmed where you kiss and, obviously, they didn’t use it. What was your take on this?

EDGAR-JONES: 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. 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.

POWELL: 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. So that’s what you have at the end of the movie. They share this thing, and her passion is reinvigorated, and her sense of home is reinvigorated. I feel like a kiss would be sort of unrepresentative of the right goal at the end of the movie. And it is a good Spielberg note. It’s why that kid is still in this game. It’s amazing.

When you see the shooting schedule, what day do you have circled in terms of, “Oh my god, I can’t wait to film this,” or, “Oh my god, how the F are we gonna film this?”

EDGAR-JONES: I felt a bit of both for a lot of the scenes, but I think for me it was the motel sequence. There’s a crazy sequence in the film that’s all on a oner. We go to a motel and we hide in a pool and then we come out again and the whole place, the motel has been completely flattened, and we did it all in one shot. I was like, “How the heck are we gonna achieve this with all the things dropping on us?” We had a horse trailer and a vending machine and people being pulled up on wires. For me, that was like, “How is that going to work?” And it turned out. When you’re watching it, you’re like, “Oh my god!” It’s so thrilling and intense for me.

RAMOS: I think it’s any scene we shot outside when we came back from the strike. It was December in Oklahoma and we were all in short-sleeved shirts. Daisy, you had a tank top on.

EDGAR-JONES: Yeah, it froze. That night shoot it froze.

RAMOS: It’s crazy. And I’m watching the scene in the theater at the premiere, and I’m just like, “I was freezing.”

EDGAR-JONES: We couldn’t speak!

RAMOS: We couldn’t even talk. We’re doing the scene, and our mouths are barely moving. I was like, “My three best friends, they all died for your science project.” It was rough. So on the schedule, it was like anything we were shooting outside in the winter when we came back, I was just like, “Oh, please, God, just let us get through this.” But I feel for these guys, though. They had to shoot a massive sequence and get rained on with wind, so I can’t even say anything because they went through it on those days.

POWELL: Look, to make sure audiences feel what this ride should be, you have to go through those elements yourself. That’s what the fun part about this movie is. You have the best in special effects. Obviously, there’s gonna be a visual effects thing that can kind of create the bigger tornado, but in terms of what’s close, what’s actually affecting the characters, yeah, you can’t make a tornado look light. It can’t look friendly because it’s not.

Twisters is ripping through theaters now. Click the link below for showtimes:

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