It’s 28 years since Jan de Bont’s Twister introduced the world to the idea that instead of just cowering inside from them with the dog, there are nutters out there who chase after them. And that if you’re a cow in the Midwest during tornado season, you’ll need a parachute.
Now comes Twisters with the promise of more windy mayhem, meteorological chaos and if we’re very lucky, flying Friesians. Normal People star Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Kate Cooper, haunted by a past run-in with a rogue tornado but returning home to get her hands on a groundbreaking new twister tracking system. There she meets Glen Powell’s social media star Tyler Owens, who posts about his own storm-chasing exploits on YouTube. The pair are soon trying to survive the worst the weather gods can throw at them.
Filmed in and around Oklahoma City in the American midwest, plenty of real-life locations were destroyed during the making of Twisters. But where exactly was Twisters shot? Read on to find out.
Is Twisters a sequel of the 1996 movie or a remake?
Even in the era of prequels, sidequels and legacy sequels, Twisters is an unusual one: it has no narrative overlap with the 1996 Jan de Bont movie, no characters cross over and no winky nods to things that Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton did in the first film. That said, the storyline has distinct similarities and there’s a tonne of shared DNA, right down to the Wizard of Oz references.
Who’s in the cast of the new movie?
Normal People star Daisy Edgar-Jones gets her second Hollywood lead role (after Where the Crawdads Sing) as meteorologist Kate Cooper, while Top Gun: Maverick and Hit Man star Glen Powell continues his breakout year as cocky ‘tornado wrangler’ Tyler Owens.
Supporting the two weather-beaten heroes are fellow stormer chasers played by In the Heights’ Anthony Ramos, American Honey star Sasha Lane, Nope’s Brandon Perea, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’s super-twinkly Irishman Daryl McCormack, TV On the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe, and Love Lies Bleeding breakout Katy O'Brian. Living legend Maura Tierney plays Kate’s mum, Cathy.
Who does Bill Paxton’s son play?
In an lovely grace note, Twisters features a cameo from the son of the late, great Twister star Bill Paxton. Look out for James Paxton as a complaining motel guest, unaware that a massive looming tornado is about to render his reception-desk grumbles moot.
What’s the film’s release date in the US and UK?
It’s out in the UK on Wednesday July 17, and in the US on Friday July 19.
Where was Twisters filmed?
Like Twister, the sequel was filmed in Oklahoma – albeit in a different part of the often-tornado ravaged state. The 16,000-strong city of Chickasha stands in for a town called Crystal Springs in Twisters. It’s the first of three settlements to be ravaged by tornadoes in the movie, with three blocks’ worth of on-screen town destroyed by a monster storm.
Production designer Patrick Sullivan, who started his career in the art department of Twister, worked with local residents to dress their home to look tornado-ravaged. His team bought three houses from a local demolition team and merrily trashed them to give an accurate sense of the awesome power of a tornado – and its likely impact on your front room.
Midwest City, Oklahoma was another key location. It’s here that Kate and Tyler stop by a local rodeo for some R&R. Director Lee Isaac Chung used Google Earth to find a motel with an empty lot big enough to hold a purpose-built rodeo and an empty pool that’s turned into an impromptu storm shelter by our heroes.
A key location in Rain Man back in the late ’80s, El Reno, Oklahoma, keeps its name in the movie. This is where the film’s biggest tornado bulldozes its way through an unsuspecting Okie community. For the climactic sequences, a water tower was needed to be situated next a movie theater, sleight of hand achieved by the movie’s VFX team. El Reno’s own real-life farmers lent authenticity to the farmers’ market scenes as extras.
In one terrifying instance of life imitating art – or maybe vice versa – an 80 mph tornado swept through the set during filming, laying temporary waste to production tents and craft services.
The small town of Howe, Oklahoma (pop. 631), is another key Twisters location. Kate’s childhood home were filmed here, using an old Centennial-style house with a barn and an old metal shed nearby. The Affair’s Maura Tierney pops up as Kate’s mum to give her discouraged daughter a pep talk and gets her head back in the tornado-chasing game.
Located in the heart of Oklahoma City, Prairie Surf Studios is a former convention center that was repurposed as a film studio in 2021. Twisters’ interior scenes were filmed here. ‘It’s crazy how much time, planning and resources go into pulling off what nature can do in a matter of seconds,’ says Sullivan. ‘Because of YouTube, we had to meet audience expectations of what tornado damage looks like, because they’re more familiar with it.’
What have the reviews been saying so far?
The critical response has been glowing like a tornado with a firework shot up its ass (to quote Tyler Owens. ‘It’s the rare legacy sequel done right,’ raves The Wrap, while Indiewire calls it ‘a rousing and surprisingly romantic gust of multiplex fun’.
There’s been more mixed responses too, with some critics less impressed by the film’s attempts at break out of its disaster movie box to find depth and grandeur. ‘The more Twisters aims for gravitas, the more hot air it generates,’ notes Screen International.
The BBC’s Nick Barber, meanwhile, bemoans the lack of flying cows and the cloudy motivation of the characters. ‘The problem is that there is no urgent narrative reason for the characters to put themselves in harm's way, so there is no reason for the audience to cheer them on.’
Watch the Twisters trailer below.
Twisters is in UK cinemas Jul 17 and US theaters Jul 19.