Posted in: Movies, Universal, Warner Bros | Tagged: anthony ramos, steven spielberg, Twisters

Twisters: Steven Spielberg Vetoed Anthony Ramos's Initial Accent Idea

Twisters star Anthony Ramos explains how executive producer Steven Spielberg vetoed one of the initial ideas for his character, Javi.

Actors, directors, writers, and producers all work on building the smaller aspects of characters. We don't have time to get into the background of every character in a film, so the little things become great examples of "show, don't tell" in filmmaking. This is true from the smallest independent production to projects that need to gross half a billion to get in the green. Twisters is a film that people are excited about. Still, it doesn't have the excitement, buzz, or established fanbases like other July films, like Despicable Me 4 or Deadpool & Wolverine. Plenty of people are fans of the original, but they don't compare to the fandoms of Marvel or the Minions, let's be honest. So this movie could start on the slower side at the box office but spend the rest of the summer near the top of the box office. It does not bring back any of the original characters, but it brings back Steven Spielberg as an executive producer, who played a part in defining a small aspect of Anthony Ramos's character. He explained in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that his character, Javi, was going to have a southern accent, "but then I heard Steven [Spielberg] was like, 'No, I want him to do it in his dialect," or in Ramos's natural speaking voice. This was not an unwelcome veto but one that surprised him slightly.

"It was a little surprising to me," Ramos admits, "but it was really cool, to me, because I've never heard someone who speaks in my vernacular — especially this New York, Northeast, Latino dialect that I have — in a movie of this size, in a place like Oklahoma. It makes me feel it's possible for a kid from the hood to go to a school like OU, study meteorology, be this brilliant meteorologist and storm chaser. This is something that a kid like me could do. I thought that that was really cool."

The little things matter in representation, and even something as small as this matters. Certain people who are racist, even if they don't want to admit it, unfairly associate certain accents and skin tones with levels of education or intelligence. So it's pretty cool that Ramos gets to use his natural-speaking voice for this. Javi plays an important role in the film as he is the link back to Kate's (Daisy Edgar-Jones) past and why she is hesitant to go back into the field during the events of Twisters.

"They used to chase together. You'll see in the beginning of the movie, there's a pretty significant storm, and the trauma of that affects them both in different ways," Ramos explains. "That trauma causes Kate to move away and kind distance herself. And, on the opposite side, Javi is like, 'Yo, I need to dedicate my life to creating the most advanced technology possible, to be able to decipher when these things are going to happen, how they happen, what causes them.'"

Twisters: Summary, Cast List, Release Date

This summer, the epic studio disaster movie returns with an adrenaline-pumping, seat-gripping, big-screen thrill ride that puts you in direct contact with one of nature's most wondrous—and destructive—forces.

From the producers of the Jurassic, Bourne, and Indiana Jones series comes Twisters, a current-day chapter of the 1996 blockbuster Twister. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, the Oscar® nominated writer-director of Minari, Twisters stars Golden Globe nominee Daisy Edgar-Jones (Where the Crawdads Sing, Normal People) and Glen Powell (Anyone But You, Top Gun: Maverick) as opposing forces who come together to try to predict, and possibly tame, the immense power of tornadoes.

Edgar-Jones stars as Kate Cooper, a former storm chaser haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado during her college years who now studies storm patterns on screens safely in New York City. She is lured back to the open plains by her friend, Javi (Golden Globe nominee Anthony Ramos, In the Heights), to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. There, she crosses paths with Tyler Owens (Powell), the charming and reckless social-media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures with his raucous crew, the more dangerous the better. As storm season intensifies, terrifying phenomena never seen before are unleashed, and Kate, Tyler, and their competing teams find themselves squarely in the paths of multiple storm systems converging over central Oklahoma in the fight of their lives.

Twisters features an exciting new cast, including Nope's Brandon Perea, Sasha Lane (American Honey), Daryl McCormack (Peaky Blinders), Kiernan Shipka (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Nik Dodani (Atypical) and Golden Globe winner Maura Tierney (Beautiful Boy). From Amblin Entertainment, Twisters is directed by Lee Isaac Chung and is produced by Oscar® nominee Frank Marshall (Jurassic and Indiana Jones franchises) and by Patrick Crowley (Jurassic and Bourne franchises). The screenplay is by Mark L. Smith, writer of the Best Picture nominee The Revenant. Twisters will be distributed by Universal Pictures domestically and by Warner Bros. Pictures internationally on July 19, 2024.

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