‘Jurassic Park’ Creator’s Initial Script for ‘Twister’ Was Inspired By Cary Grant’ Famous 1940 Rom-Com That Finally Explains 1 Long-Held Mystery
- Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin were inspired by Cary Grant's His Girl Friday while writing Twister.
- Helen Hunt admits to Twister being a rom-com.
- Lee Isaac Chung shared the Easter Eggs in Twisters were done out of joy.
Directed by Jan de Bont, 1996’s disaster thriller movie Twister, starring Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Alan Ruck, and more, was written by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin. The movie follows a group of amateur storm chasers trying to deploy a tornado research device during a severe outbreak in Oklahoma.
Upon its release, Twister became the second-highest-grossing movie of 1996 and went on to receive positive responses from the audience and the critics. A standalone sequel titled Twisters, starring Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones, was released on July 19, 2024. Ardent movie fans recalled that the original movie’s screenwriters were inspired by a rom-com while writing a disaster thriller movie.
Cary Grant’s rom-com inspired Jurassic Park writer and his then-wife for Twister
Science fiction author Michael Crichton, who had worked with Steven Spielberg on the 1993 adaptation of Jurassic Park, worked on the script for Twister along with his then-wife Anne-Marie Martin. According to Crichton’s testimony in the plagiarism cases that the movie faced at the time, the script was centered around tornadoes after the duo watched the PBS documentary, Nova.
But Looper reported that the duo didn’t break it through until Martin suggested that they got inspired by the rom-com His Girl Friday, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. The 1940s screwball comedy helped the duo get inspired and shaped Twister’s subplots, crafting the movie as a ‘love triangle taking place amid great stress’.
Cracked mentioned that the 1940’s His Girl Friday is mostly remembered for Grant and Russell’s chemistry along with their effortless rat-a-tat dialogues. The publication explains that Twister does have a similar set-up with its twist. It was reported that the screenwriters acted out the scenes as they were writing, improvised their dialogues, and wrote what they came up with.
The banter between Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton in the movie, however, opts for a more realistic 90s’ touch compared to what His Girl Friday showcased. In an interview with Vulture, the actress was asked if the movie was secretly a rom-com, to which she said,
Yeah, totally. I agree. There are a bunch of writers that came in, and the last one was Jeff Nathanson, he was in the middle of helping to break stories for Mad About You. The two of us in the trailer would poke around about what funny things these two characters would say to each other. It’s totally a rom-com. We drive each other crazy. They don’t get back together, then they do.
According to Collider, Jeff Nathanson was one of the several writers that the director explained adjusted to Crichton and Martin’s original draft. There are a few elements that make the story seem like it’s a rom-com, but it has been marketed as a disaster movie with a lot of tornadoes.
Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Twisters pay homage to the original Twister
Top Gun: Maverick star Glen Powell and Normal People actress Daisy Edgar-Jones’ starrer standalone sequel, Twisters, did not forget to pay homage to the original Twister as there have been a lot of Easter eggs. For example, at Muskogee State University, the students in Twisters belong to the same university as Jo and Bill from Twister.
Jo and Bill’s former friend Jonas turned out to be the villains in the original movie, and in the standalone sequel, Javi, played by Anthony Ramos, and his business partner Scott, played by David Corenswet, emerge as the villain. EW describes that the actor saw the character of Scott as morally shady and being a lineage of Jonas from the original movie.
In Twister, Melissa Reeves, who plays the fiancé of Ben in the movie, is an outsider, creating a love triangle between Jo and Bill. She is also, however, a channel for the viewers to know how the storm chasers work, and in the recently released Twisters, Ben, a risk-averse British journalist who had been writing a profile on Tyler, gets sucked into their world, serving as the outsider.
The director of the standalone sequel; Lee Isaac Chung in an interview with Variety, mentioned,
I was just trying to honor the first film and those elements that I love about it, but also to try to let this be something that is coming from me, the things that enliven me, and the choices that I believe in. All those Easter eggs were made out of a lot of joy.
He claimed that the producers advised him not to worry too much about the original movie and to make Twisters according to him, which he says he found very liberating. VFX supervisor Ben Snow, production designer Patrick Sullivan, and former analyst Kevin Kelleher had worked on the previous movie as well, and they all found little ways to pay homage to the original movie.
Twisters is out in theaters.
