Twisters: The Film This Summer’s Box Office (and Audiences) Needed the Most

Molly Kurpis ’24 / Emertainment Monthly Co-President and Writer

A summer storm begins to swirl on the Hollywood horizon. The movie market has been hit hard with a surge of franchised, big-budget films such as a sequel to Pixar’s Inside Out, another Despicable Me film, and a continuation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Deadpool vs. Wolverine. But a summer storm is brewing, and there’s a change on the horizon. 

Lee Issac Chung’s Twisters (2024) is cycling through the summer box office — the movie made over $80 million opening weekend, the third-biggest opening of the year so far. Considered a loosely based sequel to the 1996 film Twister, Chung’s newest movie follows the story of ex-tornado chaser Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) five years after her friends were swept away in a catastrophic F5 tornado. Kate’s old dreams of ‘taming a tornado’ with technology were laid to rest, but not after Javi (Anthony Ramos), one of the only survivors from the F5 storm, convinces her to help out with his military-funded tornado tracking system. Kate returns to her roots in Oklahoma, competing with the reckless social media star Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and his crew of misfit tornado chasers. As storm season strengthens, Kate and Tyler realize that the only way to fully ‘tame the tornado’ is to combine their differences and work together to battle the relentlessly swirling sky.

Twisters is an amalgamation of filmmaking done right. While the premise is interesting enough, what makes the movie special, and different from other natural disaster films, is its dedication to making sure that the audience is completely immersed in this turbulent world. Each character has enough nuance to be sustainable: both main and side characters make excellent use of their screen time. The VFX has a magnitude that captures the pure power and essence of a tornado. Music is used beautifully; enough to rally an audience’s excitement during a chase scene, but also to add ambiance to the all-American feel of the film. Lastly, the promotion and social media presence that Twisters and its stars had on the internet created a perfect brew for a summer sweep. 

Spoilers ahead. 

Each character in Twisters is carried by presence. Kate is fearless. Despite the trauma she endured at the film’s beginning, she relearns to trust her storm instincts and believe in her capabilities. She’s the one who calls the shots; she’s the one that people ought to listen to. She’s stubborn, but she’s strong. Kate is an incredibly autonomous protagonist with enough of a built-in backstory for the audience to root for her. However, her character would be nothing without the performance offered by Daisy Edgar-Jones. She has such a range of skills and picks her projects meticulously. Each film and show Edgar-Jones has starred in has grown her skill set as an actor. Twisters is no exception: her cunning personality, intricate facial movements, and effortless chemistry with Glen Powell make her the perfect protagonist. 

Tyler Owens: the all-American hero not seen in theaters since Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Critics and audiences have compared the sequel to Twisters, and not just because both feature the talented Glen Powell. There is a sense of patriotism intertwined with the film’s messages. Without being too invasive or predictable, both sequels pay homage to their predecessors while maintaining a celebration of American culture. Tyler is the epitome of this celebration. He chases tornadoes in a beat-up red truck, blasting Luke Combs and other popular country music artists. He is charming, loud, and egotistical. Reckless and abrasive, Tyler and his crew of generous dare-devils chase tornadoes in Oklahoma for profit. This profit, the audience learns, is donated to families and towns that are devastated by these tornadoes. Tyler is cocky, and constantly butts heads with Kate. But, he has a secret heart of gold and gives back to the community whenever he can. His selfless nature comes to a halt at a critical plot point when he and Kate attempt to evacuate a small town. Tyler ends up getting a serious leg injury that nearly gets him sucked into the tornado. Fortunately, Kate’s past and equally generous heart ensure that Tyler gets to safety; a reflection of her regrets, and an emotional arc for her character. Edger-Jones and Powell’s natural chemistry allows their characters to push one another. Their enemies-to-lovers arc is a popular trope for modern-day audiences, though many are upset that their kiss was removed from the final cut. Whether or not their ending would be more satisfying with it, their evolving relationship in Twisters puts Tyler’s phrase ‘If you feel it, chase it’ in variously nuanced perspectives.

While the main characters have complexities, the side characters and performances add layers of excitement and entertainment to the film. Having a large cast can be daunting, but Chung makes excellent work of making each character useful to the plot in their own, unique ways. Javi, Kate’s only surviving friend from the F5 incident, not only engages the entire plot of the movie but also offers a place for Kate to work through and heal from what they both experienced. As a result, Kate can go back onto the field and do what she does best; find a tornado, and will it to stop. Kate and Javi’s old friends are only present at the movie’s beginning, but they are vital as an emotional catalyst for the audience to become absorbed with the story. Among their crew is Kate’s husband Jeb (Daryl McCormack), Addy (Kiernan Shipka), and Praveen (Nik Dodani). Their chemistry as a group is palpable, and their excitement to finally test Kate’s experiment is felt through their line deliveries and facial reactions. Unfortunately, their demise is felt just as hard; it leaves a cold wrench in the audience’s heart as Kate and Javi try to make sense of their lives after losing those who meant the most to them.

Tyler’s group is also filled with star-studded performances. Boone (Brandon Perra) is the over-excited filmographer who captures and posts all of Tyler’s antics. Lily (Sasha Lane) flies a drone over the tornadoes to capture full shots — but she’s also kind, and exhibits small moments of bravery within the movie. Harry Hadden-Patron plays Ben, a bumbling British journalist who follows Tyler around and ends up becoming fascinated with Kate’s story. Tunde Adebimpe and Katy O’Brien play minor roles as tag-along scientists, but their antics and presence make the group feel complete. The antithesis of Tyler’s group is Javi’s; a collection of cold, money-driven government workers who want to chase tornadoes for financial profit, not to save lives. While each minor character does an excellent job at playing the coy and snotty government workers, David Corenswet’s performance as Scott has received praise for his cunning nature, and ruthless line deliveries. 

Another successful aspect of Twisters is its translation of tornadoes on the big screen. The film uses a combination of visual and practical effects, allowing both mediums to overlap and produce the most realistic demonstration of weather as possible. The tornadoes’ scopes are massive. Because the timing and shooting of an actual tornado is unrealistic, CGI artist Ben Snow and his team were able to construct six powerful tornadoes within the movie. Yet, Chung wanted more than just the visual. “Ultimately what makes that background layer feel real is that [the tornado] is doing very tangible things in the foreground,” Chung explains in an interview with IndieWire. “Really what creates drama and tension is when we don’t see [the tornado], and when we’re focusing on its effects.” 

Twisters looks so realistic because a part of it is realistic, at least to the actors. “You’re getting hit with water, and ice, and debris,” Glen Powell explains in a Universal promotional interview. “When you have someone shooting you with a jet engine, there’s really nothing like it.” Within each storm sequence, the actors are constantly getting hit in the face with rain, dirt, debris, and fierce, man-made winds through massive fans and cannon-like structures just out of the camera’s frame. Stunt doubles are rigged to pulleys that throw them backward when getting swallowed by the storm. Most scenes were filmed on location in Oklahoma, instead of a carefully constructed soundstage, making everything all the more immersive on camera. These moments are amplified with surround sound, capturing each slam of an object into frame, each siren getting sucked into one hundred-mile-per-hour winds, each wail of the looming tornado coursing closer and closer to the screen.

Indeed, the Twisters sound design is another successful aspect of the movie as a whole. Most of the songs on the soundtrack are country, working to amplify the movie’s all-American feel. Country artists such as Miranda Lambert, Thomas Rhett, and Luke Combs have created songs that capture the endlessness of farmland, the stomps of bulls at a rodeo, the warmth of a fire at night, and the graying of the sky as a tornado touches down once more. Country music also adds to character design — every time Tyler drives recklessly into a field towards a tornado, one of the songs is blasting from his red pickup truck. The quieter ballads such as Lainey Wilson’s “Out of Oklahoma” plays when Kate returns home, back to her roots, to her old research and her old dreams that she wished to set aside. Not all of the songs are country, which adds a nice contrast to the movie’s sound as a whole. For example, the opening scene when Kate and her friends drive towards the growing storm features Don Omar’s “Salió de Sol.” Omar’s upbeat Spanish song is about celebration, a freeing party song that highlights the warmth of the sun and the endless possibilities the night can become. It is an excellent contrast to what is to happen to these characters only minutes later.

Twisters made excellent use of a marketing and social media team for engaging promotional opportunities. An upside-down car laid out in Times Square; another was “crashed” on a Paris street. A billboard in Quebec had chairs and the back of a motorcycle gutting from the poster. Some of the posters were upturned, the sign destroyed, and the sidewalk around it upheaval. Along with billboards scattered on avenues in Los Angeles and advertisements on yellow taxis in New York City, many movie theaters had a tornado simulator set up against other promotional campaigns for movies. A small, compact cylinder, patrons would get blown with fierce winds, mimicking the same practical effects used within the movie. For promotion, the leads of Twisters are seen using the machine, with mused hair and wild expressions afterward. 

But promotion for these stars stemmed beyond the simulator. While in New York, Edgar-Jones, Powell, and Ramos came on stage during a Luke Combs concert. They shotgunned bottles of beer while Combs’ song for Twisters played in the background — nothing more American than that. The actors also had a strong social media presence, especially on TikTok. The actors performed the viral “Apple” dance, accumulating over 550K likes and 1.4K comments. Another angle was shot revealing the actors dancing to Brisket, Powell’s dog that he rescued while shooting Twisters. Brisket became an internet sensation, winning the hearts of many Powell and Twisters fans. Entertainment Monthly shot their infamous live cover with Edgar-Jones and Powell but included a secondary version of Powell and Brisket. The videos went viral on Twitter, further spreading the message about Twisters and the delight that the actors bring to their promotion.

Twisters is the biggest movie of the summer. While not necessarily in scope, in budget,or in box office scores, Twisters manages to do something a lot of modern films forget: tell a story, and tell it well. Twisters is proof that movies can still be successful without being attached to a franchise. Without a desire to make a profit, without the goal of pushing an agenda or subliminal message, Twisters is a movie for everyone. There are fun characters, good music, terrifying sounds, and a lot of tornadoes. What more does an audience need?