As a young person who loved watching movie trailers as much as the pictures they represented, one of the first times I remember a trailer promising a scene that never even existed was the promo for 1996’s Twister. With the hubbub celebrating the success of its spiritual follow-up Twisters on the 2024 movie schedule, I was reminded of the time that one hell of a stinger actually had no place in the movie it was selling.
But believe it or not, the story behind how that moment became the one that sold this Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt action/adventure romp is even wilder than you’d expect. For a movie that’s gone on to endear itself in people’s hearts for almost three decades, Twister literally wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for a scene that, despite proving the ability to make this movie, disappeared when it became a real project.
Here’s the story of how one of the best ‘90s movies couldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for pushing the envelope of digital effects on a whim.
How Twister Got Its Greenlight, Without A Script
The world of Twister wasn’t born from a script or an elevator pitch like most films. As reported in The Ringer’s retrospective on the film, the idea came from what essentially boils down to a dare. In this case, it was executive producer Steven Spielberg that wanted to see if the digital wizards at Industrial Light and Magic could actually create a realistic tornado.
Arguably one of the best Steven Spielberg movies in existence made this exciting challenge possible. If it wasn’t for 1993’s Jurassic Park pushing the director to scrap his original stop-motion approach to the dinosaurs of John Hammond’s prehistoric paradise, digital effects may not have been in the right place and time to make this sort of thing possible.
Through the efforts of the team of geniuses who had continued to ply their craft in the years between Jurassic Park and Twister, a short, but intense moment of a tractor tire smashing through a truck's windshield became the seed for the movie that would come to follow. As Kathleen Kennedy shared with Wired in 2015, it created a scenario that defines the term 'mixed blessing':
ILM did a proof-of-concept shot for Twister. The minute we took that shot into the studio and they saw it, they said, “Done. We want to make it.” We didn’t even have a script yet!
In essence, the creation of Twister was a big game of fishing. With the tractor tire moment being the bait, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and Amblin Entertainment all bit down hard in a bid for a new potential mega-hit blockbuster. Once again, the impossible was proven to be possible through Industrial Light and Magic's hard work.
The Twister Scene That Made It All Happen
By the time that Twister was beginning to make its rounds, the world of digital effects had grown by leaps and bounds. So clearly whatever it was that ILM cooked up had to have been something that wowed the crowd in a short amount of time. That leads us to the shot that ended the trailer to Twister shown below:
I don’t know about any of you out there, but I remember that final moment stunning me whenever I saw that footage promoting the project in its heyday. Crazily enough, I’d even say that’s a scene that helped define Twister’s legacy, even without being in the finished movie. That’s not just because it got this massive undertaking the greenlight without so much as a scrap of dialogue.
Although the idea itself does sound like it had existed for some time before this clip made it all happen. Much like the process that brought Steven Spielberg and author Michael Crichton together for Jurassic Park, their association looks to have been the inspiration for this monumental task.
How Michael Crichton Helped Flesh Out The Idea For Twister
At this point, our team of creatives were all about whether or not they could create a digital tornado, but not so much about why they would do such a thing. Which meant it was time to actually get a script in the can that could actually shoot and turn into a summer blockbuster. Enter Steven Spielberg’s previous collaborator, and sci-fi mastermind, Michael Crichton, along with his then wife Anne-Marie.
Much like his posthumous bestseller Eruption, the germ of the idea for Twister was something that he’d been nurturing for some time before it even existed. Presumably he shared this idea with Spielberg at some point during their work on Jurassic Park, which then sparked Steven to propose his little dare to ILM.
As to why the man who helped create the concepts of computer viruses, sinister deep fakes and genetic engineering ahead of the curve, the official Michael Crichton website shares that story from the man himself:
From the beginning, the subject seemed to me inherently visual, and therefore should be a script, not a book. Tornadoes are an ideal film subject, because unlike most meteorological phenomena, they are small enough to fit within the film frame, and they last a short time, changing rapidly. … We were further encouraged by early research that showed the premise was valid. … So it seemed as if the story was possible.
As for the inspirations for Twister’s core story beats, we may not have learned as much as we currently know if it wasn’t for a lawsuit that was filed against the Crichtons. Revealed in a 1998 story by Deseret News, Michael and Anne-Marie Crichton apparently cited a combination of NOVA documentaries from PBS and the legendary rom-com His Girl Friday as the recipe for this story’s DNA.
It’s a winning formula, even if people now see Bill as the real villain of Twister. Landing opening weekend grosses that were similar to Twisters’ dominating opening weekend, director Jan de Bont’s OG storm chaser only further cemented the Crichton touch in Hollywood.
The Moment Closest To Twister’s Pitch Reel That Is Included In The Film
For you fans who wanted to see a tornado really ruin someone’s day, this Twister tale has a happy ending. As The Ringer was eager to point out in its own look back at the 1996 classic, there is a scene that kind of serves as a rightful successor to that tractor wheel jump scare.
Included below, for your amusement and/or horror, is that time when Jonas (Cary Elwes) and his associate Eddie (Zach Grenier) get the point when it comes to the darker side of nature:
Did Twister’s Jonas Miller deserve to die? That’s something people can argue until the cows circle ‘round the funnel cloud. What cannot be argued is the fact that one of 1996’s crowning cinematic achievements wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for asking the right questions and taking the right risks.
In turn, that means we wouldn’t have had something like Twisters’ rowdy 4DX experience, and considering what that’s meant to moviegoers at this moment, that would have been an absolute tragedy. As we see Hollywood gearing up to continue forward into a potential Michael Crichton renaissance with the adaptation of Eruption in development, one could see a new horizon to be conquered with that volcanic disaster story’s unique challenges.
As we wait for that new adventure to come to life, it’s a good thing that Twisters is still very much alive and kicking at the box office. With Twister making its streaming home available to anyone with a Max subscription, there’s no shortage of fans that’ll be riding out this legacy of messy relationships forged by intense depictions of bad weather.
