‘Twisters’ Director Lee Isaac Chung on How ‘Frankenstein’ Inspired the Final Tornado, Kate’s Hero Journey and Debates About That Kiss Scene

variety.com:

Angelique Jackson SPOILER WARNING: This story contains spoilers for “Twisters,” now playing in theaters. “Twisters” director Lee Isaac Chung was well aware that people might be upset about the ending of the disaster thriller — namely the fact that its hero Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her tornado-wrangling knight in tight Levi’s, Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) don’t kiss at the end of the movie. “If you talk to my 13-year-old niece, her uncle made a huge mistake,” Chung tells Variety.

Indeed, for more than an hour and a half of the film’s two-hour runtime, the tension builds between Kate and Tyler. From the first tip of his cowboy hat and their early verbal jabs (he nicknames her “city girl” and she pokes fun at him putting his face on a t-shirt), their chemistry is evident.

Then, after the pair go to the rodeo and survive the massive nighttime tornado that destroys it, Tyler shows up at Kate’s childhood home — charming her mother (Maura Tierney) and ultimately convincing Kate to chase tornadoes together for scientific sport. (The filmmakers nicknamed their first chase the “Datenado.”) The action culminates with Kate single-handedly saving everyone from the film’s fiercest tornado by driving directly into the storm and releasing the redesigned polymer compound into the storm, causing it to die down.

She barely survives the mission – with Tyler and Javi’s (Anthony Ramos as Kate’s college friend, who makes up the other leg of the sort-of love triangle) slo-mo run underlining just how harrowing the whole ordeal was.