Original Twister director says film could not be remade today, even if a sequel is currently in the works
It's because no one uses practical effects anymore, apparently
1996's Twister was a big, big blockbuster about big storms that cause big things to fall out of the sky and wreak havoc on the ground below. It could also never be made today according to its director Jan de Bont—but not for any of the reasons people usually think when they use that phrase.
“When things fell from the sky, there were real things falling from a helicopter,” the director told Inverse in a recent interview. “If you film a car escaping a tornado in a hail storm, it was real ice that came at us. It’s a movie that cannot be remade… That would never, ever happen again.”
Hmm… okay. We have some things to say. First of all, one of the things that fell out of the sky was a cow. Literally a whole ass, still-mooing bovine. It’s pretty hard to believe that poor Bessie was just launched out of a helicopter for the bit, even if she was just a model. (Please do yourself a favor and click play on this clip, even if you’ve seen this movie recently. Helen Hunt’s deadpan “cow” and Jami Gertz’s “I gotta go, we got cows” are both line deliveries for the ages.)
Second, it may have slipped de Bont’s notice, but two recent movies—that, as it happens, are both about big things coming out of the sky and wreaking havoc on the ground below—recently made headlines for their use of practical effects. Cinematographers working on Jordan Peele’s Nope pioneered a never-before-seen “day for night” filming technique because they were so dedicated to shooting on location. (Plus, those photos of the gigantic lights they used to brighten up the desert are still mind-boggling.) Christopher Nolan is also notorious for never using CGI, even to shoot his atomic bomb movie.
Twisters, the upcoming Lee Isaac Chung-helmed sequel starring Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar Jones, and Anthony Ramos, on the other hand? (Which de Bont said he was never consulted on, by the way.) Yeah, that will probably be an over-the-top CGI extravaganza like so many of the other ‘90s reboots happening right now. Just call us when the sharks show up.