‘Twisters’ Flying Cow Homage Explained

From left: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anthony Ramos and Glen Powell in ‘Twisters.’

Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures/Amblin Entertainment

[This story contains spoilers for Twisters.]

Missed the flying cow in Twisters? You’re in good company. Director Lee Isaac Chung said he initially didn’t spot the homage to the original franchise installment himself. 

“My god, everybody’s been wanting a cow in this movie,” says Chung, who recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter. He was skeptical to include anything as literal and outlandish as the areal bovine swept up in a tornado in the 1996 film, seen gently drifting in front of the car, so his VFX team took matters in their own hands. 

Towards the climax of the film, when a F5 tornado is on a collision course with the town of El Reno, Oklahoma, there’s a blink-and-you-miss-it image of a cow caught up in the storm… sort of. “It’s the hardest thing to spot,” explained Chung. “I only spotted it because I noticed some weird marking on a piece of flying debris. I said, ‘Could you freeze that frame?’ I was looking at frame-by-frame shots when we’re doing VFX reviews, and sure enough, there was a cow on that thing.”

It may not be what audiences were expecting, but the shrapnel adorned with a flying cow graphic is indeed there in the final act of the movie — and a much more animal-friendly and, perhaps, realistic sequence than the one in Twister. In the Jan de Bont original, an CGI cow passes by the windshield of the truck occupied by the stars Helen Hunt, Jami Gertz and the late Bill Paxton. The sight is enough to make Gertz’ character wrap up a conversation on her comically large cellphone. 

Sending an actual cow — or, rather, a VFX rendering of one — into a cyclone was always going to be a bridge too far for the spiritual sequel. Chung strived for scientific accuracy as much as possible in his Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell and Anthony Ramos vehicle. “All of the tornado science elements, we tried to be as accurate as possible,” he says. “We do take stretches. There’s science fiction in it. The idea of Kate’s (Edgar-Jones) experiment of what she’s trying to accomplish with the tornado that is very speculative, but it’s based on theoretical science.” 

The experiment in question, which finds Edgar-Jones’ character attempting to take down a tornado with a sort of environmentally-friendly chemical bomb, is currently science fiction, Chung notes. But the tornado formations, their impact on the landscape of the film and all the weather talk? That’s apparently much more accurate. 

As for the end, in which Edgar-Jones’ Kate seems to be finally at peace with her traumatic past and ready to resume a life of storm-chasing, the Oscar-nominated Minari director says he hopes it will be relatable for the audience. 

“What I want people to take away from this has to do with fear, and, in a similar way, anxiety and trauma —  which I hear people talking about quite a lot,” says Chung. “I’ve personally felt a lot of fear in my own work and career. And going from Minari to this project came with a lot of fear, too. So I’m hoping that this film has some feeling to take away in Kate’s journey of how she wrestles with it and how she comes through on the other side.” 

Twisters, with its wink-wink cow cameo, is currently in theaters.