Eagle-eyed movie goers were convinced that there wasn’t a flying cow in the new Twisters movie – but according to the film’s director, it was there all along.
In the original 1996 incarnation of the movie Twister, starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, a flying cow that gets caught up in one of the tornadoes became an iconic image – so much so that filmmakers decided to pay homage to it in the follow-up, Twisters.
Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos and more, the disaster film — a stand-alone sequel to the original — centres on a group of storm chasers trying to diffuse tornadoes with sodium polyacrylate solution.
Recently, director Lee Isaac Chung said that the new film would avoid having a flying cow scene. However, he has now revealed that there is indeed a brief image of a cow up in the air in the film – and it was even one that he himself missed at first.
“My god, everybody’s been wanting a cow in this movie,” he joked with The Hollywood Reporter, confirming that the cow can be seen towards the end of the film.
He continued: “It’s the hardest thing to spot. 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.”
Previously, Chung told CNN: “Any time I talk to anyone about that original Twister they would say, ‘Oh yeah, the big flying cow movie.’”
“I felt like I would hate to make a movie, update it, and just hear, ‘Oh yes, you made the new flying cow movie.’ So that was it – that was the decision.”
The film has proved a runaway success at the cinema, grossing $123million at the global box office in its opening weekend. This makes it the most successful weekend ever for a disaster movie.
In a five-star review of Twisters, NME wrote: “The flick is also cleverly scripted, with Kate’s motivation slowly teased out as we learn she might just have the means of knocking the ‘nados into a cocked hat.
“The devastation wreaked by the freaky weather is evocatively explored and in this there’s a timely ecological message. Packed with heart, smarts, jaw-dropping effects and an exquisite ensemble cast (shout out to Harry Hadden-Paton’s nerdy British journalist as comic relief), Twisters will have you singing the praises of the multiplex until the cows come home.”