Twisters had some ultra-realistic sets depicting towns after massive storms.
Nearly three decades after Twister became a hit at the box office, Universal’s pseudo-sequel is upping the ante. Twisters, which hits theaters this weekend, has the technology on its side to make much bigger, badder storms than its predecessor. Wilder weather, of course, causes more devastation, leaving a big job for the production design team to create these terrifyingly realistic environments. Ahead of the Twisters premiere, stars Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Anthony Ramos spoke to ComicBook about the harrowing tornado destruction sets they filmed on.
“I’ll just say, from one of the most impressive days that I think I saw on set in terms of a production build aspect, in terms of the design, they recreated an entire neighborhood,” Powell explained. “There’s a huge tornado that rips through this town and it severs houses in half, which is what happens. In these houses, some things you see that are absolutely untouched, which just happens in real life and then some are destroyed.
“But they built an entire house and you walk through these homes, and there were pictures and the photos and the real life that happened, was happening inside that house before that tornado. It’s just that level of detail is what makes this movie so incredible, because you just don’t see that.”
In addition to the sets that were built, other scenes in Twisters were actually shot in towns and neighborhoods where tornadoes had previously come through, so some of the houses and structures you see in the film were torn apart by nature.
Edgar-Jones went on to say that many of the extras in Twisters were real-life Red Cross workers who have seen a lot of that destruction firsthand.
“We had a lot of background actors and extras who were members of the Red Cross, who obviously deal with real destruction, too,” she said. “So I think the whole thing felt very authentic and sobering.”
In Twisters, after surviving a devastating encounter with a tornado, former storm chaser Kate Cooper monitors extreme weather from behind a computer screen. When an opportunity arises to test cutting-edge equipment, Kate heads to the Midwest to track twisters, putting her on a collision course not only with the deadly phenomena, but also with social-media star Tyler Owens. As the storms in Oklahoma intensify, the pair must unite and combine their unique skills to survive the most extreme weather imaginable.
Twisters stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Sasha Lane, Daryl McCormack, Kiernan Shipka, Nik Dodani, Katy O’Brian, and Maura Tierney. Lee Isaac Chung directed the sequel from a script by Mark L. Smith. Twisters releases in theaters on July 19th.
