Spoilers for Twisters all the way up to its surprising ending can be found in this story. Don’t say I didn’t warn you about the new movie release!
Twisters made plenty of money opening weekend, after hype helped to build momentum in the weeks before release. As Twisters reviews note, the movie is a big budget spectacle, and it's great people are seeing it the way it’s meant to be seen: on the big screen. However, as much as I dug the general premise of Twisters and the fun Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos and Daisy Edgar-Jones seemed to be having, I do have one complaint about the ending of the movie. Hear me out.
Twisters Does Not End With Quite The Emotional Payoff I Expected
While a good chunk of this excellent action movie is about Edgar Jones’ character Kate reconnecting with her friend Javi (Ramos) after they lost pals and work partners during a devastating tornado, the other huge chunk of this movie is the Kate and Tyler show. Javi brings Kate back into the fold in order to use her smarts and her sixth sense for tracking tornadoes. However, while they are getting down to the work, other tornado chaser Tyler (Powell) and his (seemingly) idiot YouTube pals are shooting fireworks into the twisters. Yes, this is a real plot point, but there’s more to these viral video creators than at first meets the eye.
Tyler is actually a meteorologist and his motivations for running a YouTube account are pure gold, something Kate learns as she gets to know him and the dreams he harbors of saving communities from weather disasters. The two later develop a friendship and a partnership in every sense of the word. Which brings me to my big complaint about Twisters’ ending: The movie cuts out a major kiss between Daisy Edgar Jones’ and Glen Powell’s characters!
How do I know this? First and foremost, the two actors have actually talked about this kiss. During a recent “Hot Ones” interview the two spoke about making out for the movie, and Powell confirms they filmed the scene as they joked about the moment:
Edgar-Jones: ‘I’ve had a number of onscreen kisses in my career.’
Powell: ‘Doesn’t make me feel special.’
Edgar-Jones: ‘They all blur into one.’
Powell: ‘Ouch.’
Oh yeah, and then there’s actual footage from people who were at the airport when Twisters was filming, and yes, there was a smoochfest caught on camera. Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones even high-fived when they finished the scene. It’s adorable. Yet the powers that be chose not to use it in the final movie.
Instead, after Kate saves the day, we do get a really cute scene in which Tyler tracks her down at the airport. When an attendant (in a great cameo from Paul Scheer) gets mad at him for trying to park outside the airport – something we all can identify with – he uses the tool to keep his truck weighted down in bad weather to literally screw his vehicle into the concrete, park the truck, and chase Kate down. It’s very cinematic, but in the very final moments all we get is him taking her suitcase, indicating they’ll stick together. A montage during the credits proves this is correct.
Director Lee Isaac Chung actually told EW he found the kiss "polarizing" which is why he cut it. Powell even joked:
I'm taking a little offense that they didn't want to use it. Maybe it's just my abilities, I don't know.
But the director soothed his ego a bit and said it had nothing to do with Glen or Daisy's performances and had more to do with audiences (allegedly) "being in a different place" these days.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned for thinking the kiss should have been there. The scene is still impactful without a big close-up kiss, and you can tell Kate is going to take a chance on Tyler moving forward. I guess it wasn’t strictly necessary to keep the shot, but dangit, I wanted it!
I wanted that cute-swing-at-the-fences-movie-magic moment and I didn’t get it. And the infuriating thing is I know for a fact the two actors are perfectly capable of onscreen kisses, having engaged in them in projects like Anyone But You, Set It Up, And Normal People. Yet, it seems this kiss was intentionally cut.
Is The Movie Setting Up For Twisters 2?
Though no one has confirmed a second movie yet, the last beats, particularly during the credits, make it clear Kate, Javi and Tyler are going to continue their work to try to take down tornadoes in Oklahoma and save lives. (Ben even wrote his article!) Everything's pointing to their being more from this Twisters universe should the movie do well, and perhaps the kiss was simply saved for a second movie?
In fact, Lee Isaac Chung did say he set the movie up in a way that Kate is like "a tornado" and that Tyler -- who is a tornado chaser -- is set up to chase her. Theoretically this leaves room for more down the line.
The move honestly makes me wonder if Twisters 2 is already being planned and will continue a potential romantic arc between the two characters? Maybe we’ll even get a trilogy of movies in which the third movie has Kate and Tyler splitting up and gives them a similar dynamic to the OG cast of Twister, where Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton are exes who decide to work together. That would be a Twister callback that could work swimmingly well.
I’d say that could be a great setup for Twisters 2, actually, but given we haven’t even seen Tyler and Kate kiss yet, I kind of feel like we should have some romantic emotional payoff in a sequel first. One in the form of a giant, emotional, I-can’t-believe-we-just-survived-this sort of bent. A come for the tornado and stay for the kiss sort of deal.
But check it out for yourself and see what you think. Twisters -- which is very much not a sequel to Twister but is from the same studio and has the same vibe--is in theaters now.
