Steven Spielberg, who hurt you? Who denied you a smooch in your elementary school days that turned a corner of your heart black and made you hate kissing? If there was ever a movie that felt like it needed more kissing, it’s the recently released Twisters starring Glen Powell, a man who could have chemistry with a plank of wood, and Daisy Edgar-Jones, a woman whose breakout role in Normal People was both romantic and sexy.
Yet the film was notably devoid of kissing, so much so that Edgar-Jones was asked about it in a recent interview with Collider—and she said that it was Spielberg’s idea to cut a kiss in the final scene. Did you hear that? That’s the sound of the internet collectively crying out at what could have been, as we are yet again reminded of the fact that modern movies are far too scared of sex and sexuality.
A semi-sequel based on the action/disaster movie from 1996 (which ends with a kiss between stars Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, BTW), Twisters is about several disparate groups of storm-chasers chasing tornadoes during a record outbreak in Oklahoma. Edgar-Jones plays Kate, a fairly buttoned-up former chaser who lived through tragedy and stopped going out in the field, while Powell is Tyler Owens the tornado wrangler—half cowboy, half meteorologist, who drives a souped-up pickup truck directly into tornado funnels so he can shoot fireworks off in them.
The two are drawn to each other almost immediately, and are brought closer together by their love of tornadoes and their desire to help protect the people who are devastated by them. Tyler shows up at Kate’s motel after a day of storm-chasing and takes her to a rodeo, then uses his body as a human shield to protect her when a tornado hits in the middle of the night. He figures out where she lives (and for some reason, it’s not creepy), and shows up there, too, to try and convince her to pick her scientific studies back up. He’s polite and charming with her mother and looks at her like the entire world lies behind her eyes—the man is smitten, and it’s obvious to us all.
There is yearning there, and a desire to support her research and help her flourish. This is the kind of man we dream about! By the end of the movie, when Kate heads to the airport to fly back to New York where she currently lives, Tyler illegally parks to rush in and tell her how he feels (“if you feel it, chase it!”). As she turns to him, her eyes cast upward, you can almost feel their heart rates increase in tandem—it’s time for them to kiss. Except they don’t. They smile and walk away together after an announcement is made that severe weather is causing flight delays (the only solace I can find in this scene is that Tyler appears to take Kate’s suitcases in a “you’re coming home with me” kinda vibe). In the few days since Twisters’ release, the internet has discovered footage of the kiss and almost universally lamented that it was left on the cutting room floor.
“The most powerful move Kamala could make right now is to come out in strong opposition to cutting the kiss from Twisters,” wrote Clay Keller on X (formerly Twitter). “RELEASE THE TWISTERS KISS CUT,” demanded a Glen Powell fan account. Another Glen Powell fan account urged us to “always remember what they took from us” along with a video of the kiss in question.
Edgar-Jones explained the reasoning behind the kiss getting cut to Collider, saying, “I think it’s a Spielberg note, wasn’t it? Do you know what it is? I think it stops the film feeling too cliched, actually. I think there’s something really wonderful about it feeling like there’s a continuation. This isn’t the end of their story. They’re united by their shared passion for something.”
Powell agreed, saying, “I also think that this movie is not about them finding love. 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. 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.”
But I must ask: porque no los dos? Can we not have a strong, powerful, independent woman who just made a scientific breakthrough in tornado physics make out with a very hot, smart man who adores her? Girl bosses need love, too. Bring back the kiss cut!
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