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. Javi watches from a distance as Addy, Praveen, and Jeb are blown away and killed, as a traumatized Kate survives.
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 initially declines but later has a change of heart after Javi sends a news report about a tornado destroying a town without warning and assuring her that they have a chance to save lives. 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 suffers a panic attack causing her to drive away, rendering her unable to help Javi set up the final scanner. 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 EF4 tornado hits, Kate leads Tyler and nearby residents to shelter in an empty motel pool. In the aftermath, Kate confronts Javi about Riggs’ intentions and claims Javi is ignorant to the victims, causing an offended Javi to thoughtlessly blame her for their friends’ 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 later accepts. The next day, they release the beads into a passing EF1 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 are nearly killed but they escape just as the tornado catches fire after hitting an oil refinery. The tornado explodes in size becoming a mile-wide EF5 that begins shifting towards El Reno. Javi attempts to rush into town to help Kate and the Wranglers recovery efforts, but Scott pressures him to continue their mission for Riggs. Javi abandons Scott by the road and quits his partnership with Riggs.
With all shelters full, Kate, Tyler, and their team evacuate the townsfolk into a nearby movie theater. A derailed streetcar and debris traps Tyler and Kate struggles to free him. Javi arrives just in time to help save Tyler before a water tower nearly collapses on them. With no basement to take shelter and the tornado heading straight for the theater, 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 successfully launches the polyacrylite beads, but the vehicle is overturned. The tornado rips the theater open, nearly pulling Lily and Tyler out just as the measures take effect, and the tornado dissipates. The team rescues Kate and celebrates the experiment’s success.
Sometime later, as Kate waits at the airport for her flight back to New York City to gain funding for further research, Tyler shows up. Tyler chases Kate to stop her from leaving and they reconcile. Upon learning that flights have been delayed because of strong winds, the two swiftly depart for the storm. A closing montage shows that Ben’s story focused on Kate and that Kate, Tyler, and Javi have joined in a new tornado radar business.
- Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kate Carter, a meteorologist and former storm chaser
- Glen Powell as Tyler Owens, an internet famous storm chaser and meteorologist
- Anthony Ramos as Javi, Kate’s friend and former storm chaser colleague
- Brandon Perea as Boone, a videographer and member of Tyler’s crew
- Maura Tierney as Cathy, Kate’s mother
- Harry Hadden-Paton as Ben, a London journalist profiling Tyler
- Sasha Lane as Lily, a drone operator and member of Tyler’s crew
- Daryl McCormack as Jeb, Kate’s boyfriend and member of her former storm chasing team
- Kiernan Shipka as Addy, a member of Kate’s former storm chasing team
- Nik Dodani as Praveen, a member of Kate’s former storm chasing team
- David Corenswet as Scott, Javi’s business partner
- Tunde Adebimpe as Dexter, a scientist and a member of Tyler’s crew
- Katy O’Brian as Dani, a mechanic and member of Tyler’s crew
- David Born as Riggs, a Storm Par investor
- Paul Scheer as airport traffic police
- Stephen Oyoung as Mike, a member of Javi’s team
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 (2025). 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 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 (1975) and War of the Worlds (2005) (described by him as “movies about powerful forces of nature or monstrous things coming at you or looming above you”); “driving movies” such as The French Connection (1971) and Gone in 60 Seconds (2000); and Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) and Ran (1985) (for inspiration in capturing weather through camera movement). Character dynamics were influenced by the films of Frank Capra and Howard Hawks, especially It Happened One Night (1934) and The Big Sky (1952). 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 (2023) 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 (2022) about volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft; the character was partially inspired by Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939). 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.
July 19, 2024
