Twisted Metal Takes a Few Wrong Turns in Its Droll Video Game Adaptation: Review
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The post Twisted Metal Takes a Few Wrong Turns in Its Droll Video Game Adaptation: Review appeared first on Consequence.
The Pitch: It’s a strangely prolific time for video game TV adaptations set in the post-apocalypse: HBO’s The Last of Us offered prestige-drama ruminations on the physical and moral crumbling of a world beset by zombies, and Netflix’s short-lived Resident Evil took a slightly campier approach. Now, new player Peacock has logged on, this time for a wacky, chintzy take on a decidedly less up-to-date video game series: Twisted Metal.
In this version, Twisted Metal is more of a Mad Max story — an apocalyptic event has left America in tatters, with roving gangs of gimmicky vehicular tyrants setting upon whatever poor soul wanders out from the few walled cities that remain. Their only hope for supplies comes in the form of “milkmen,” who ferry goods from one city to the other. One such milkman is John Doe (Anthony Mackie), an amnesia-ridden driver who loves quips as much as he loves blasting fools in his beat-up 2002 Subaru, Evelyn (“EV3L1N”).
Like so many of these stories, the ultimate “one last job” comes a-calling: He’s recruited by Raven (Neve Campbell), the mayor of the cushy, fenced-in New San Francisco, to retrieve an important item from New Chicago and bring it back in ten days’ time. If he does it, he can enjoy paradise. But to do so, he’ll have to outwit the dangers of the new world, from a tyrannical rent-a-cop with delusions of grandeur (Thomas Haden Church) to the psychotic Sweet Tooth (played by the hulking body of AEW wrestler Samoa Joe and the baritone voice of Will Arnett). His only ally in this fight is Quiet (Stephanie Beatriz), an unwitting passenger with mad axe-throwing skills and vengeance on the brain.
An Axle to Grind: For those young enough not to have the PlayStation 1 startup music burned into their cerebella, a primer: Twisted Metal was a gnarly, short-lived game series set in a deadly demolition-derby tournament, where over-the-top drivers used heavily-armed gimmick vehicles to smash, crash, and blast their enemies to kingdom come. The game’s mascot? A giggling, homicidal clown named Sweet Tooth, who blasts missiles out of a refurbished ice cream truck.
It’s not the strongest skeleton on which to hang a story, but Deadpool and Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (and writer/director Michael Jonathan Smith of Cobra Kai) fill it in with plenty of edgy gore and campy, self-referential humor. The upholstery is practically soaked with the meta-chaos of Reese and Wernick’s prior work: In the opening sequence, John narrates his way through a wild car-based shootout in an abandoned shopping mall, Deadpool-style; later, two men are captured by a band of cannibals who dust them with lemon pepper seasoning to make them more succulent. The apocalypse froze all of pop culture in 2002, so music is all Cypress Hill CDs, with decor featuring A Knight’s Tale posters.
The arch style can get pretty grating sometimes, especially in the early episodes where the tee-hee-ain’t-I-a-stinker tone is all the show has to go on. The budget is also one of the show’s greatest enemies: The vehicular combat the games are known for is mostly bookended on either end of the season, with a few decent car stunts sprinkled throughout. Otherwise, the sets and costumes feel pretty cheap, and the camp tone can only take such chintziness so far. (For good and ill, Twisted Metal gives off the vibes of a late-aughts Sci-Fi Channel original series: think Z Nation.)
Twisted Metal (Peacock)
That said, as the season progresses, Twisted Metal eases up the brakes a bit and finds a few more notes to play beyond jokes about torturing captives with Aqua’s “Barbie Girl.” Mackie plays John Doe like an overgrown child, a wisecracking killer who titters with glee as he blasts fools to kingdom come. (There’s more than a whiff of Will Smith in his cackling, charismatic turn.) Ditto Beatriz, who channels just a little Rosa Diaz while giving her no-nonsense foil some dimension.
Mad Max: Rocky Road: Then there’s Samoa Joe and Arnett as Sweet Tooth, whose joint performance turns him into a macabre mix of Bane and The Joker. Granted, he never quite escapes the feeling that he was designed by committee in a particularly South Park-brained subreddit; in his first meeting, he beats up John Doe in a Vegas casino to the tune of Sisqo’s “The Thong Song.” But then, he shows moments of surprising vulnerability — a flashback to the character’s days as a child actor coming apart at the seams feels like you’re watching Nope in reverse.
These slice-of-life moments help leaven Twisted Metal’s oft-obnoxious sense of humor, one that feels like another relic from the early-aughts world the apocalypse froze in amber. Watching John Doe and Quiet bicker for episodes at a time can be grating until they stop at an abandoned family fast-food joint midway through the season for some welcome reflection. Reese, Warnick, and Smith take time to flesh out their central characters, even among the groaner gags; it’s no Last of Us, but you still feel the reasonable weight of a world gone wrong, how the haves maintain their creature comforts at the cost of the have-nots.
The Verdict: Fret not, though; Twisted Metal is still all about vehicular manslaughter, even if the batting average for the show’s self-aware humor is frustratingly low. Fans of the games will be thrilled by Sweet Tooth’s scene-stealing brio, if not the structure of the show’s premise; we have another Mortal Kombat (2021) situation on our hands, an adaptation that serves primarily as a set-up for more to come. But if low-budget and low-brow bloodletting is your thing, there are far worse roads to travel.
Where’s It Playing? Twisted Metal puts the pedal to the metal on Peacock on July 27th.
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Twisted Metal Takes a Few Wrong Turns in Its Droll Video Game Adaptation: Review
Clint Worthington
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