1996’s iconic disaster movieTwisterwas a true box office blockbuster, but its star, Bill Paxton, had one major criticism of the movie itself. Starring Paxton and Helen Hunt in star-making roles, Jan de Bont’s Academy Award-winning epic follows a group of storm chasers attempting to deploy brand-new research equipment directly into a storm during a severe tornado outbreak on the plains of Oklahoma.Twisteris considered one of the premier summer blockbustersfrom the 1990s, and it’s once again become culturally relevant with its standalone sequel,Twisters, setting the tone at the box office for summer 2024.
Twisterbroke new ground in visual and sound effects, and as a result the action was considered a cut above contemporary action and sci-fi thrillers. Playing the storm chaser Bill Harding, Bill Paxton was right in the middle of the original’sbest storm-chasing scenes. However, a criticism he made well after the movie’s debut relates directly to those action sequences, and it’s something that Paxton himself wanted to address in the future.
Twister vs. Twisters: Which Tornado Movie Is Better
The 2024 disaster movie sequel Twisters comes 28 years after the original released, and the two movies have naturally invited comparisons.
Bill Paxton Felt Twister Could Have Been More Intense
As wild as some of the action sequences were in Twister,Bill Paxton believes that the movie in general could have been more intense. In a 2012 interview withAV Club, Paxton spoke about howTwisterhas held up over time, and he specifically addressed how the movie didn’t go as far as he believed it could have. He even specifically addressed how he wanted to direct a sequel toTwisterhimself. Paxton opined:
I’ve always felt like there was a Jaws version of that movie. I always felt like we did the Pepsi Lite version of that movie. [Laughs.] There’s a tougher version of that movie…
Paxton actually pitched an R-ratedTwistersequelthat would have been far more intense than the original.The late actor intended to draw on the 1925 Tri-State tornado outbreak, a three-day stretch that saw 12 tornadoes, including one of the largest and deadliest on record, ravage Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. That single massive tornado lasted almost four hours, ranged well over 200 miles and killed nearly 700 people. By using that outbreak as inspiration, Paxton’s proposed sequel would have had a much darker tone than the originalTwister, and would have been far more intense in its action sequences.
Twisters (Partly) Resolves Bill Paxton’s Issue With The Original Movie
Twistersboasts scenes that are far more intense than anything in the original
Twistersactually addresses Paxton’s thoughts about the original, even though it is considered a stand-alone sequel and not a direct continuation of the story. Thanks largely to modern effects,the tornadoes themselves are even more intense than anything seen inTwister, although to be fair, those storms do hold up particularly well from an effects standpoint. Right from the beginning,Twisterselevates the palpable danger with a storm so intense that several characters are ripped right off the ground and killed.
1996
$92 million
$495.7 million
66%
58%
2024
$155 million
$376.7 million
75%
91%
Frankly,the storms are so intense inTwistersthat they seem like living, breathing monstersas opposed to weather phenomena, and the movie flirts with horror at certain moments. The deadly tornado scene at the rodeo, which actually featured acameo from Bill Paxton’s son, is scarier than any storm depicted in the originalTwister. Theending ofTwistersputs an exclamation point on the whole affair, as the ultra-intense theater scene is above and beyond anything seen before in disaster movies, and certainly gets closer to the R-rated baseline that Paxton would have worked off of in his proposed sequel.
Twister
Cast
In Twister, Bill and Jo Harding, advanced storm chasers on the brink of divorce, must join together to create an advanced weather alert system by putting themselves in the cross-hairs of extremely violent tornadoes. Jo’s childhood was stricken by the trauma of losing her father to a deadly F5 tornado, setting her on the path of a storm chaser. Having developed a new technology with her team named “Dorothy,” Jo seeks to make Tornadoes more predictable to give people a chance to make it to safety. Jo’s obsession created a rift between her husband, but new breakthroughs may bring them back together as the two pursue their greatest challenge yet - an incoming system that will produce yet another F5.
