Key Takeaways
- While technically a direct sequel, it only shares a small amount of continuity with the original Twister.
- There are plenty of homages, including a showdown between a motley crew and corporate storm chasers, and a red pickup truck.
- Easter eggs include a cameo from Bill Paxton’s son and an even sneakier cameo from a flying cow.
The movie Twisters was a massive success at the box office. As audiences head to the theaters to see the sequel to Hollywood’s latest blockbuster, some may be wondering how the new film connects to the 1996 smash hit Twister. We’ve compiled all the connections between Twisters and the first film, including tributes and awesome Easter eggs that fans can find as they take on the tornado tamer for round two.
Nearly 30 years after the original Twister, this sequel, directed by Jan de Bondt and starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, takes it up a notch with an even bigger tornado and all-new characters.
Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, whose previous film Minari was nominated for multiple Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won the award for Best Supporting Actress, Twisters does not feature any of the original film’s cast, instead featuring a young storm-chasing crew played by Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell and Anthony Ramos.
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Twisters is a satisfying sequel that will make you want to see it on the big screen.
Twisters is an enjoyable disaster movie with exciting action scenes, great acting, and a thoroughly interesting story.
Twisters is technically a direct sequel
Although they are completely different characters
Universal Pictures
Twisters is an almost entirely standalone sequel, so you can watch it without having seen the first one and not miss anything story-wise. However, there is one very direct continuity between the 1996 film and its sequel. In Twister, Joe (Hunt) and Bill (Paxton) try to get their experimental tornado-measuring device, Dorothy (itself a homage to The Wizard of Oz, the greatest tornado movie of all time), to work. They end up trying four Dorothy units before finally succeeding in sending the little data-collecting sphere into the tornado and collecting all the data.
At the beginning of Twisters, the motley crew, led by Kate (Edgar Jones), are still using the same technology, though they’re now working on Dorothy V. “Our version is Dorothy V, because there were four Dorothys in the first movie,” production designer Patrick Sullivan explained, according to Business Insider.
The film takes inspiration from The Wizard of Oz, with Storm Par teams led by Javi (Ramos) operating under the code names “Scarecrow,” “Tin Man” and “Lion” deploying state-of-the-art radar systems to collect a higher quality of data than the original crew could have ever imagined.
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Before you head to the cinema to see Twisters, let’s review this storm-chasing classic.
A tribute to them all
While not a direct reference, Twisters features a number of homages to the style of the original Twister, including:
Motley crowd vs. corporate storm chasers
The original “Twister” told the story of a ragtag team of storm chasers going up against a group of corporate-sponsored chasers led by Jonas Miller (Cary Elwes). “Twisters” follows a similar dynamic, but with a few changes. Kate originally had a similarly humble beginning as a storm chaser, but after a terrible tragedy and the loss of several friends, she finds herself starting a new life in New York City. She is lured back by Javi, who has secured a large financial backing to complete her lifelong dream of collecting data on tornadoes.
Once in Oklahoma, Kate finds herself on the side of business while her seeming enemies are a group of intrepid YouTubers, led by the charismatic Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), who sell t-shirts and set off fireworks in the middle of tornadoes. Only later does Kate realize she may be on the wrong side and must find a way back to her home state of Oklahoma.
Philip Seymour Hoffman Style
1996’s Twister features a fantastic supporting cast. A fan favorite is Dusty Davis, played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. In a nice homage to Hoffman’s character and the rest of the colorful supporting cast of the original, the sequel styles its independent crew of storm chasers in the fashions set by Dusty: tie-dye shirts, colorful fabrics, and loads of personality. Finally, Kate’s khaki attire is reminiscent of Joe’s style from the original film.
“I’m not going back.”
The original plot of Twister sees Bill returning to Oklahoma to get his ex-wife Jo to sign the divorce papers, only to find himself caught up in a tornado chase again. Throughout the film, the characters excitedly welcome Bill back, and Bill has to repeatedly tell them he’s not coming back – that is, until at the end, when he finally agrees to stay permanently.
Twister follows suit, with Kate repeatedly telling Javi she’s going back to Oklahoma for just a week, and just like in the original, when the characters suggest she’s “back,” she reminds them, “I’m not back!” You can guess how that ends.
Movie Theater Mayhem
One of the most iconic scenes in the 1996 film Twisters is when a tornado creeps up on a crew gathered outside a drive-in theater at night. As the audience flees the screening of Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic, The Shining, the tornado strikes from behind and literally blows the screen off. Twisters pays homage to the film in two ways. The first is a nighttime rodeo that is interrupted by a large tornado, but the second is even more obvious. As a massive EF5 tornado hurtles toward a small town, the crew and many of the townsfolk take refuge in an old single-screen movie theater that’s showing the 1931 classic, Frankenstein. At one point, the wall with the screen literally blows off, revealing the tornado behind it.
That red pickup truck
One of the most iconic images from the original Twister is Bill’s shiny new red Dodge pickup truck, which is used by storm chasers and gets pretty damaged in the process. In Twisters, Tyler drives his own red Dodge pickup truck, which is outfitted with all the gear to protect against tornadoes, plus some nifty technology that allows him to pin the truck to the ground so he can literally drive into the middle of a tornado.
“Naked as the day I was born”
In Twisters, Kate and Tyler end up at Kate’s childhood home, where Kate’s mother regales them with an embarrassing tale of her young daughter running out the house to watch a tornado “naked as the day she was born.” This story pays homage to a similar scene in the original, in which Bill’s old friends tell his new fiancée that they first met him while he was watching a tornado “completely naked.”
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easter egg
As well as sharing stylistic similarities to the first film, these blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Easter eggs directly reference iconic moments from Twister – but you just have to know where to look.
Bill Paxton’s son, James
Perhaps the sweetest Easter egg for fans of the original is the recognition, thanks to a cameo by James Paxton, the son of the late actor Bill Paxton. The son appears as a guest at the motel, giving the clerk a hard time while a tornado looms just outside. “It’s really a cameo, so it’s an Easter egg for my dad and for fans of the original,” James told Entertainment Weekly. “I did this for my dad.”
Photo: Warner Bros.
Flying cow!
One of the most famous scenes in the original Twisters sees the team watch a cow get sucked into a tornado. Fans of the sequel may have missed another flying cow, but Chung confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that there is indeed one in the final tornado scene. Viewers might have to look very carefully, though. It was the visual effects team who managed to sneak the cow in there. “It’s the hardest thing to find… There was some weird pattern on the flying debris, and we finally found it,” Chung said.
Photo: Universal Pictures
Bombers Baseball
At the end of the original Twister, a boy who survived the storm is seen wearing a white T-shirt with the logo of the local baseball team, the Bombers. In the new film, Kate is seen wearing a red version of the same shirt.
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