"Twisters" has triumphed at the domestic box office with a huge $80.5 million, but what folks on social media keep talking about is the alternate ending.
Earlier in the week, leaked footage depicting stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell filming a climactic scene in which their characters share a passionate kiss went viral, and fans are wondering why the kiss didn’t make it into the theatrical cut.
What I’d been told was the original “kiss” ending didn’t test well with audiences. It rang false for many of them, and that was more than enough of a red flag for Universal to nix it entirely from final cut.
However, it also turns out that Steven Spielberg gave a note to filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung recommending removing the kiss scene from “Twisters” “I think it’s a Spielberg note, wasn’t it? I think it stops the film feeling too clichéd, actually,” says Daisy Edgar-Jones.
"I also think that this movie is not about them finding love," Powell added in the interview. "It's returning Kate to the thing that she loves, which is storm chasing. So that's what you have at the end of the movie. They share this thing, and her passion is reinvigorated, and her sense of home is reinvigorated."
Powell concluded, "I feel like a kiss would be sort of unrepresentative of the right goal at the end of the movie. And it is a good Spielberg note. It's why that kid is still in this game. It's amazing."
Chung recently tackled the unused ending with Entertainment Weekly: “I feel like audiences are in a different place now in terms of wanting a kiss or not wanting a kiss. I actually tried the kiss, and it was very polarizing — and it’s not because of their performance of the kiss,” Chung told . “This [no-kiss shot] was the other option that I had filmed on the day, and I got to say, ‘I like it better. I think it’s a better ending.'”
Spielberg executive produced "Twisters" through his Amblin production company.