Bryan Alexander

USA TODAY

It takes a special kind of truck to travel into tornadoes and come out intact. Titus does the trick on the big screen for Into the Storm.

The storm-chasing vehicle, revealed here, plays a pivotal role in the tornado film (released Aug. 8) and will feature prominently in a trailer dropping on Thursday.

"Titus is a giant super military tank of a vehicle," says director Steven Quale. "It's specially built to film tornadoes at close range. And its wedge shape keeps it from getting lifted over."

Quale concedes there are real vehicles out there that serve as storm chasers.

"But ours goes a little further," he says.

It's an impressive look for the team of cutting-edge storm chasers, led by Matt Walsh, portrayed in the film. They are on a quest to capture a tornado on camera very close up for deep-pocketed financial backers.

The group end up in "Tornado Alley" Oklahoma when they are hit by a series of super-storms.

Quale vows to show tornadoes in the same way 2013's Gravity showed outer space. Titus is the craft that takes the viewer there.

The Walking Dead star Sarah Wayne Callies plays a tornado expert who gets caught up in the killer storms, and spent significant filming time in Titus.

Her review of the vehicle from the outside? "It looks totally cool."

However, filming was challenging. The converted Dodge pickup truck, made specially for the movie, didn't make the grade in real life. The car was excruciatingly hard to drive, being 15 feet wider than a normal car.

During their first day of storm filming, the windows leaked.

"Someone had forgotten to seal the rivets so the rain just went straight into Titus," says Callies. "Matt (Walsh) was on the walkie-talkie going, 'Guys, it's raining in the storm chaser.' That thing was an absolute diva. But they sealed the rivets and it was pure movie magic."