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When the first season of Peacock’sTwisted Metaladaptation dropped in July 2023, it did so rather quietly. While recent video game projects like The Last of Us, Fallout, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie were pop culture juggernauts.
Twisted Metal, starring reigning Captain America Anthony Mackie, wound up under the radar. And while that led many to think that meant it was bad, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. Thefirst seasonwas, well, incredibly twisted. I mean, look at the source material it’s based on. If it wasn’t messed up and didn’t follow an evil clown crashing into people while driving an ice cream truck, you’d be livid!
For the youths out there who might not be as familiar, the first Twisted Metal game released on the original PlayStation in 1996. The premise is simple. It’s Super Mario Kart but with none of the subtlety or cuteness. Twisted Metal was vehicular combat with wild characters, over-the-top cars, and surprisingly deep lore.
Its narrative was based around a mysterious stranger, Calypso, holding what was essentially a fight to the death on the streets of Los Angeles. The winner of the competition is granted a single wish, regardless of what it might be.
Previously On Twisted Metal…
Last time on the Peacock adaptation, we mostly set the table for what was to come in the second season. It introduced Mackie as John Doe, a delivery driver in the post-apocalyptic United States. While most of the open spaces in the country have been deserted and are now overrun by criminals, major cities walled themselves off from the outside world.
The first season was all about Doe earning his way into one of the walled cities by taking on a rather dangerous delivery. Along the way we met original characters like Quiet (Stephanie Beatriz) and fan-favorite Twisted Metal icons like Sweet Tooth (played by AEW’s Samoa Joe and voiced by Will Arnett).
While the first season is jammed full of context for the world of Twisted Metal as we get to know its central characters, it isn’t until now that we finally learn about the competition and other drivers viewers might recognize from the classic games.
At Long Last, Twisted Metal Is Doing Twisted Metal
The thrust of this new season is a series of races and competitions, each of which ends in the death and disqualification of many people involved in the race – including a bunch of excellently designed characters pulled right from the games. We meet Mr. Grimm, Dollface, and evenAxel, the half-man/half-car weapon on wheels.
Seriously, Twisted Metal should be praised for the way it adapts its characters into live-action. Sweet Tooth is perfect and Axel is so interesting to look at.
What the introduction of the competition does in Season 2 is throw the pacing into overdrive. There’s constantly a new threat, sidequest, or event changing the shape of what’s to come. In a lot of shows, a pace like this would be off-putting, as I searched for some kind of relief from the constant thrust of action and mayhem.
In Twisted Metal, this tone and pace fit so perfectly that I can’t imagine it any other way. I love HBO’s The Last of Us – well, the first season, anyway – but was so happy for the quieter moments and flashbacks, offering a respite from the chaos. I don’t want that in Twisted Metal. Sweet Tooth doesn’t get any downtime and neither does its audience.
Making Janky Look Pricey
But Twisted Metal isn’t cutting corners. The action set pieces are thrilling to watch, the car and character designs are wonderful. It still looks utterly ridiculous, though. Sweet Tooth’s ice cream truck is there in all its glory. When competitors are taken out, it’s never with any sort of subtlety. Instead, it’s always accompanied by a massive explosion and dramatic turns. It’s just a glorious throwback. Games like Twisted Metal don’t really exist anymore.
It was 2012 when we saw the last Twisted Metal game. Most recently, there was a potentiallive-service iteration in the works, but that never came to be. Twisted Metal, for the most part, is a relic of a bygone gaming era, before epic triple-A titles and indie darlings made up a chunk of the market that wasn’t dominated by live-service games.
If you had told me before that someone could make a live-action version of Axel that doesn’t look incredibly silly, I would not have believed you. They did it, though.
The Characters Are What Counts
Characters are a huge reason why Twisted Metal works as well as it does. Much like the world itself, there is no subtlety. What else would you expect from a maniacal clown, his sidekick, and a character like Axel, literally built into a machine to turn him into a weapon?
On the surface, these personalities seem incredibly thin. Take Axel, for instance. Upon his introduction, he’s simply a visually horrifying monster, like many of the characters we meet in Twisted Metal. As the season progresses, though, we see the depth come to light. He’s a tortured man who was given his powers and vehicle parts against his will. Now, he relies on them. Sweet Tooth is a man torn between his lust for murder and his need to be the best at everything. Sometimes you can’t stop to kill someone if you want to win a race and that’s a difficult lesson for him.
Alright, that’s not as deep a character background as Axel, but there is no way to do anything but love that silly clown and his murderous ways.
How Much Is Too Much?
If I have any issue with the second season, it’s that there are so many characters that giving them all the time to fully develop isn’t possible. There are a number of second- and third-tier characters introduced, including from the games, that I would have loved to spend more time with.
With 12 episodes in a season, there’s only so much time you can spend on all of the side characters who, like it or not, will probably not survive to the end of the competition. Besides, I don’t know what else I’m going to learn about Vermin other than that she’s gross and drives a pest control van.
In the end, Twisted Metal Season 2 is another major dose of what made the first season so fun. It’s a bizarre world, filled with bizarre people and enormous strengths. It plays on humor, over-the-top action, and the right amount of drama between the various character pairings.
Perhaps most importantly, though, Twisted Metal explains what’s wrong with Captain America: Brave New World. Anthony Mackie is clearly having all of his career fun here and saving his serious acting for the MCU. Because in Twisted Metal, he looks to be having as much fun performing as I am watching.
