All the Ways ‘Twisters’ Pays Homage to the Original ‘Twister’

The plot of 1996’s “Twister” revolves around Dorothy, a piece of technology that the film’s lead characters — the tornado-obsessed meteorologist Dr. Jo Harding (Hunt) and her estranged husband, Bill (Paxton) — designed to study tornadoes. The plot spans just over a day as Bill agrees to rejoin the team for Dorothy’s maiden voyage. It takes four tries — each attempt to launch the sensors into a tornado more death-defying than the next — but Dorothy IV finally flies.

Trailers revealed that “Twisters” would feature Dorothy V — now a relic of an earlier era of storm chasers, though its sensors have gotten a serious upgrade in the form of next-level tech and aluminum propellors (no more cut up Pepsi cans). The tech wasn’t included in the original script, but Chung pitched the idea to producer Steven Spielberg.

“He asked me, ‘How has the technology evolved and how can we show that from the first movie to this one?’” Chung recalls. “I thought, ‘Let’s put in Dorothy and show how Dorothy had limitations,’ and what Javi (Ramos) is going to do next is really the next generation of research.’”

If you look closely at Dorothy, you’ll see a decal for Muskogee State (a nod to Jo and Bill’s alma mater). Kate college crew – Javi, Jeb (Daryl McCormack), Addy (Kiernan Shipka) and Praveen (Nik Dodani) — all studied there too and bonded over the shared mission of finding ways to tame a tornado. “That’s a Muskogee State College van,” Chung points out. ”Praveen is wearing a shirt that has Muskogee State on it. It’s a little thing we don’t make too obvious.”

And that’s not the only reference to “The Wizard of Oz”: Javi’s high-tech chasing team Storm Par drives a fleet of Dodge vehicles (straight-off-the-assembly-line new Ram TRX trucks) named after Dorothy’s fantastic friends — Lion, Tin Man, Scarecrow and Wizard. Why double down?

“I always felt like Kate’s story is a bit like Dorothy,” Chung explains. “She’s affected by this tornado, this thing that happens and that she’s transported, and she meets all kinds of crazy people like Tyler, and ultimately, she finds her way back home.”

Aside from Dorothy, perhaps one of the most obvious homages to the original “Twister” comes in the form of Tyler’s rust red Dodge Ram truck, which echoes the pickup that Paxton’s Bill rents when he rolls back into town at the beginning of the first film.

Sure, Bill’s truck couldn’t shoot fireworks like Tyler’s souped-up pickup, but the red Dodge Ram 2500 is iconic in its own right: surviving getting rolled through twin water spouts while the same cow blew by, driving through a house and ultimately carrying Dorothy into flight.

Coincidentally, when Chung and his family settled in Arkansas in his childhood, a tornado rolled into the area late one night. The family was living in a trailer on a farm, so they ran to his father’s Dodge pickup truck to escape.

“We were heading into the unknown to find a place where we might be able to ride it out,” he recalls. “When the first ‘Twister’ came out, we watched that movie together, not knowing that that scene was in the movie. I remember being locked in just because that reminded me so much of that experience we had when I was a kid.”

For Kate’s wardrobe, costume designer Eunice Jera Lee has said that she was inspired by a number “bad-ass women of cinema,” including Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, Ellen Ripley from Alien, and Thelma and Louise. But one of Kate’s looks pays specific homage to Hunt’s Jo in “Twister”: a white tank top, khaki overshirt and khaki pants.

There’s another “little touch” in a later scene, where Kate wears an oversized baseball shirt that says “Bombers,” alluding to the final scene of “Twister” where a young family emerges from their basement to find their house survived.

“Bombers originally was a reference to a baseball team I believe that [‘Twister’ franchise producer] Frank Marshall was on,” Chung mentions. “And then we bought back that design for Kate.”

Early in the film, the chasing crews check into a local motel after a long day of tracking tornados.

“We’ve probably stayed in Oklahoma,” Kate says as she and Javi begin to reminisce about old tames with their college buddies. They would have Addy (Shipka) check in because “she looked so sweet” and then they’d all pile into one room to save money.

But times have changed now, Kate reminds Javi when he tells her he’s glad to have her back: “I’m not back,” she quips.

To many, it’s a throwaway line, but it just happens to be the exact exchange between Ruck’s Rabbit and Paxton’s Bill at the beginning of “Twister,” when Bill realizes he’s going to have to chase Jo and co. (and a tornado) if he wants her to sign their divorce papers. And so his adventure begins.

“Daisy did that one,” Chung says of the throwback dialogue. “We would all come up with little things in the moment and Daisy came up with that one, which was really great. Her and Tony just did that together.”

Brandon Perea, who plays Tyler’s high-energy videographer Boone, also threw in a few ad libs.

“When he’s harnessing up, he said, ‘We’re entering the suck zone, baby!’” Chung adds, alluding to one of Seymour Hoffman’s famous lines. (“The Suck Zone: it’s the point basically when the twister… sucks you up. That’s not the technical term for it, obviously,” his character Dusty said in the 1996 movie.) “Brandon was bringing stuff from the first one back, and it was a bit infectious.”

One the most memorable sequences in “Twister” takes place when a nighttime tornado strikes a drive-in theater, forcing the patrons underground during an (already terrifying) screening of “The Shining.” Who could forget the image of a tornado ripping through a projection of Shelley Duvall’s scream in the film’s “Here’s Johnny” scene? Chilling.

The new chapter also features a movie-within-a-movie moment as the Tornado Wranglers are forced to shelter in a movie palace as a tornado strikes a small town. What’s playing? It’s “Monster Fest” and the film on the big screen is “Frankenstein.”

“I thought of this film in many ways as a monster movie. Universal has had quite a history of monster films, in which Frankenstein is probably the key,” Chung explains. “Once I had that in mind, I also thought about the way that tornado is born and formed — even the refinery is meant to be mirroring what happens in ‘Frankenstein.’”

Screenwriter Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”) originally scripted the scene for the tornado to be resolved with the screen ripping out; then the storm dies down. But when Chung read that moment, he says, “I just knew that it could really fill people with a deep sense of fear and awe within a movie theater — while they’re sitting in their seats watching this unfold. What I wanted to do is really milk it for all its worth and make that sequence last for quite a long time.”

Both Paxton and Hunt had expressed interest in making a sequel to “Twister” over the years, but their projects never got off the ground. On Feb. 25, 2017, Paxton died after complications of a heart surgery.

Fortunately, his son James Paxton, who was just over a year old when his dad made the first movie, is now an actor, too, and landed a role in “Twisters,” playing a disgruntled motel patron in a key scene.

“Having James agree to have a cameo in this film was incredible — just to have him and have some kind of spiritual connection to Bill on the set with us,” Chung says.

Paxton told Variety he auditioned for the role, but once he got the offer, he and his family had to consider the emotional implications of joining the sequel. Ultimately, it felt like the right thing to honor his father’s legacy and a project that’d been special to him.

“This one is for him and for ‘Twister’ fans. I thought that it was really cool of them to find some way to incorporate that,” James Paxton said. “I wanted to be a conduit for Dad’s spirit. I wish he was the one here to be appearing in this new chapter instead of me, but I’m happy to do it.”

Once on set, he also discovered an interesting connection to Powell.

“Glen had worked with my dad before [on the 2013 indie ‘Red Wing’] and had a couple funny stories he told me,” Paxton shared. ”Then, somehow ‘Spy Kids 3’ came up, and Glen said, ‘This was my first movie ever,’ and I go, ‘That was my first movie ever.’ I was nine years old visiting Dad on the set, and it was Robert Rodriguez’s idea that throw me in as this junior version [of Bill Paxton’s character].”

The Paxtons aren’t the movie’s only family ties: Powell’s parents, Glen Sr. and Cyndy, make a cameo in the rodeo scene (they’ve had a bit part in many of the actor’s movies and are seated directly behind him and Edgar-Jones). Plus, his sister Leslie Powell sings the national anthem to kicks off the star-spangled sequence.

In the same scene, there’s a background actor seated to next to Edgar-Jones who told Chung that she appeared in his breakout film, Oscar nominee “Minari.”

“I was really glad for that,” Chung says. “But then she said, ‘And I was in the original ‘Twister.’”

Turns out the extra had also appeared in an emotional scene where Hunt’s Jo surveys the wreckage of the small town of Wakita and catches a glimpse of a mother, father and their young daughter who reminds her of her own (before her father was swept away in that film’s traumatic prologue).

“That was not us trying to do that. That just happened,” the filmmaker adds excitedly. “What a coincidence? That was insane!”