'Twisters' Cast Reflects On 'Authentic' Damage In The New Film

Twister spun its way into theaters almost 30 years ago. A lot has changed since then. Bill Clinton is no longer President. Fruitopia machines were collected and buried in a pauper’s grave. CDs have gone extinct. It’s a very different world. Also, movies are made a lot differently! That’s what I meant to get to!

When Twister came out, CGI was beginning its stranglehold on movie-making. Movies that were once shot on location or with big, elaborate sets have been mostly relegated to green screens. The tactile nature of these films has gone away, replaced by flat visuals and bad lighting. This problem has especially affected disaster films, which now feel the need to go absurdly big to add stakes to their stories, resulting in computer-generated calamity that looks like a video game cut scene.

Twisters, the sequel to Twister, is looking to make things feel more authentic. Cast members Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Anthony Ramos recently sat down to discuss the new film with ComicBook.com and broke down how the new movie would be aiming for more realistic damage. “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 told the site. “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.”

Powell continued to sing praises for the production on display in the movie. He said, “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.”

Edgar-Jones noted that a lot of the extras on Twisters had firsthand experience with post-storm destruction. She explained, “We had a lot of background actors and extras who were members of the Red Cross, who obviously deal with real destruction, too. So I think the whole thing felt very authentic and sobering.”

All of this praise for the production of the film is undeniably exciting. While it is still to be seen if the quality will reflect onscreen, the effort put into making the catastrophe feel real is a step in the right direction.