Twisters

Lee Isaac Chung’s film shares no cast with the 1996 picture; nobody comes back, and the only link is the work itself. Dan Mindel shot it on Kodak 35mm and asked Panavision to return his set of Primo anamorphics to factory specification. He had grown tired of how much people tweak lenses, so the softness and distortion at the edges stayed. Most of the driving was captured on the road in moving cars; studio process work accounts for about a fifth of the film. Real storms interrupted the Oklahoma shoot, and Mindel found it hard to shelter exactly as the sky turned spectacular. The production had been planned for Georgia; an incentive package from Oklahoma City moved it to the state the story is set in. Chung never names climate change. He has said he did not want audiences to feel a message was being delivered, while adding that it does not shy away from saying conditions are changing. He shot two endings and used the one without a kiss, on the grounds that what Kate earns should be purpose and company, not romance. A good fit if the drives between storms do not feel like dead time to you. Not for anyone who wants the film to say why the tornadoes are getting worse; it leaves that unnamed.