Where to stream Twister (1996) before Twisters (2024)

With Twisters touching on July 19th, 2024, a summer full of meteorological action (not of the heat wave variety) is back on the menu. But if you’re curious about the movie that started it all or just want to brush up on the finer points of tornado chasing culture before you dive head first into the biggest blockbuster of summer 2024, you’re going to need to watch Twister, first. Thanks to the wonders of streaming and video on demand, if you have a smart TV or a streaming device, there are more than a few options for watching it at home.

Twister (1996) makes nature the villain

Tornadoes are scary and incomprehensible

More of a spiritual prequel to Twisters than an actual one, Twister was directed by Jan De Bont, director of Speed, and released in 1996 in a Hollywood one-two-punch for the ages. The film follows Helen Hunt as Jo Harding, a woman who — shaped by a personal tragedy early in life — becomes obsessed with observing and understanding what makes tornadoes tick as an adult. At the start of the film, her and her ragtag team of storm chasers and amateur meteorologists are prepping to test a new tool called DOROTHY, which releases multiple smaller ball-shaped sensors into the funnel of a tornado to hopefully take measurements of their inside for the first time.

Bill Harding, Jo’s ex-husband and the co-designer of DOROTHY kicks the present-day story in action by reconnecting with his ex-wife to finalize their divorce so that he can start a new life with his partner Melissa. Nothing quite goes as planned. Bill and Melissa get wrapped up in Jo’s competition with a corporate storm chaser named Jonas (Cary Elwes), Jo’s crew survives multiple run-ins with tornadoes of increasing size, thanks to Jo’s Aunt Meg it becomes increasingly clear that Jo and Bill still have feelings for each other, and their relationship, DOROTHY, and survival skills are put to the test when they’re confronted with the biggest twister Oklahoma has ever seen — and live.

How to watch Twister (1996)

It’s available to buy, rent, and stream

Warner Bros. Entertainment

Twister would go on to be the second highest grossing film of 1996, and while you can’t quite capture the experience of seeing it in a theater before its sequel comes out, you can buy it, rent it, and stream it at home. Twister is available to buy or rent from Apple TV, Google Play Movies, Amazon Prime Video, and Fandango at Home. If you have a Max subscription, you can also stream Twister on the Max app over your choice at no additional cost.

Twisters will take things to the next level

A standalone sequel

Based on its first trailer, Twisters doesn’t appear to have any direct connections to the original film, but it does seem to have plenty of visual and thematic ones. The sequel follows Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar Jones) as she’s reunited with her friend Javi (Anthony Ramos) to test a new tornado tracking system with some striking similarities to DOROTHY. The two find themselves in competition with Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), a storm chaser turned social media star during what looks like a busy storm season in Oklahoma. It’s not clear how, but the dueling approaches of Kate and Tyler looks like they start to matter a lot less once there are multiple tornadoes at play at the same time.

Twisters seems like it will have all the dramatic set pieces and bombastic special effects of Twister, but the real trick will be if it has the same surprising depth of character and theme of the first film. You’ll have to catch Twisters in theaters to find out, and the best way to get ready is to watch Twister before you do. If you’re still hungry for disaster movies after that, read through our list of our favorite disaster movies for even more things you can watch.