Lee Isaac Chung on directing Twisters: “I had to pitch to Steven Spielberg to try to get this job”

Storming its way through the sparsely populated blockbuster prairies of summer 2024, Twisters blows into town with a sexy young cast and a handful of destructive set-pieces. Tornadoes, it seems, are back.

Five years after student storm-chaser Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) saw three of her pals killed by a tornado, she’s lured back to Oklahoma by survivor friend Javi (Anthony Ramos), under the impression they can save lives by using clever tracking devices to help predict future tornadoes. On their return to ‘Tornado Alley’ – the swathe of middle America hit most often by these freakish storms – they cross paths with online sensation and ‘cowboy scientist’ Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and his grungy crew of chasers. Javi turns out to have a property developer corporate backer keen to buy up cheap land from devasted tornado victims, while beyond his brash exterior Tyler turns out to have more heart than his surface smugness might suggest.

This loose sequel to Twister (1996) treads similar ground to that stomped by Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt and Philip Seymour Hoffman some 28 years ago, offering a fun, breezy mix of laughs, hints of romance and Mother Nature destroying all in her path. Here, director Lee Isaac Chung, who broke through with his fourth feature, the semi-autobiographical indie family drama Minari (2020), has stepped up to big-budget filmmaking with aplomb. In London, he explains how westerns and Steven Spielberg pointed him in the right direction, while revealing his own brush with violent nature.

You had an experience with a tornado warning when you were young. Can you tell me about that?

My dad moved us to a farm in Arkansas, and we moved into a trailer home, so it was not tethered to the ground. We had no storm shelter. My parents didn’t have any experience with tornadoes. About three weeks into it, a tornado was in the area and we received a tornado warning on television. This was at night, and my dad just took us in a pick-up truck and said, “We’re going to look for a place where we can hide this thing out.” We got to this place, I fell asleep and then woke up safe in my bed, and that’s my tornado memory. It’s funny, when you’re living in that place, tornado warnings are like rain in London: it’s just something that happens.

Do you have any memories of seeing the original Twister (1996)?

Yeah. Even from that first scene, seeing this family running from a tornado, I felt like that was from our story as a family on a farm. Seeing an adventure story of scientists chasing after tornadoes, I’d never thought that could be a possible story; it was so clever and so exciting.


Why make a sequel 28 years later?

I’ve been wanting to tell a story about things that are much bigger than us – Mother Earth and nature. To be able to do that with a fun summer action film… it’s a really rare situation in which none of the characters are even superheroes. They’re all everyday people and they’re all scientists. This script came in, and it felt very fresh to me.

Were there any films that inspired you along the way, either in look or tone?

I was all over the place with my references on this movie. I was having our crew watch various films, but at the top of that list are some of Spielberg’s films, such as War of the Worlds (2005) and Jaws (1975). Those films are incredible. Then I was looking at westerns, and the idea of someone facing off against a villain. Thelma & Louise (1991), even, was a huge reference for me to try to capture a sense of place and the poetic texture of that place. 

Were there any specific westerns you looked at?

Someone that Dan Mindel, the cinematographer, and I talked about was John Ford. We really loved John Ford films. And Howard Hawks was a very big influence as well, just in terms of having three characters and a very strong female lead, and figuring out how those relationships change and shift. The Big Sky (1952) by Howard Hawks is really big for me. All that love is in the movie, even if it’s not obvious.

You mentioned Steven Spielberg. His company Amblin produced Twisters. Did he give you any advice on the film?

One of the most nervous things for me was I had to pitch to Universal, Warner Brothers and then finally to Steven Spielberg to try to get this job. With him, I knew that there’s no way that I could make anything up or BS him. He is the person who created the textbook. But I found him to be incredibly warm and generous and collaborative throughout this whole process. He was involved. Even in the editing room, he’d come in and we would talk and look at scenes together, and it was just a joy to work with him. I felt like I was learning from the best.

How did you make that leap from a smaller-scale story like Minari to this?

With Minari, we filmed 25 days, and I always thought it felt like a sprint for 25 days. I kept saying to people, “If I could have more days, filmmaking would be a lot easier.” This film was 60 days, so I thought it’s going to be a lot easier. But it was a flat sprint for 60 days. The intensity of this production was the biggest learning curve for me, to face day in and day out. So many chaotic things that were happening with weather, with shutdowns, with the strikes happening, and then also to lead this team into creating this very big technical film.

Having Bill Paxton as the lead in the first film is a hard act to follow. You’ve got Daisy Edgar-Jones in Twisters. What do you feel she brings to the piece?

There’s something about Bill Paxton that I’ve always felt was incredibly trustworthy, and I feel that even with people I’ve met who knew him, that he exuded that in reality. I find that to be very similar for Daisy Edgar-Jones, and also for Glen and for Anthony Ramos. What you see with these guys is what you get. They are very sincere and really down-to-earth good people. I’m sure that they would make Bill Paxton proud.

You mentioned Glen, who plays a cowboy scientist. He’s Hollywood’s man of the moment. What carves him out as being something slightly different?

I love how Glen brought his family with him. One of the things that convinced me that I wanted to work with Glen was this clip that I saw of him, in which his family is in the audience and he’s talking about them, and you could see this interaction between him and his mum and dad. There’s something to him as a person, his upbringing, which is really generous and charismatic. He’s someone I want to be around, and I think that’s something he brings on to the screen. We all want to be with him.

Twisters has preview screenings at BFI IMAX from 17 July 2024.