PlotPlot: a motor-mouthed alien is offered a chance at a better life, but only if he can successfully deliver a mysterious package to a post-apocalyptic desert land. With the help of an ax car thief, he will face vicious robbers who drive destruction vehicles and other open road dangers, including a crazy clown who drives a very popular ice cream truck.
ReviewBack in the 1990s, when the Playstation was the most popular gaming console, Twisted Metal it was one of the games that my friends and I would throw and play together. Driving cars loaded with guns and blowing each other to hell was fun and compensated for the lack of a truly engaging plot. In almost thirty years (damn, I’m old) that Twisted Metal debuting for the first time, numerous attempts have been made to turn the massacre into a feature film. At the tail end of the streaming boom, we finally got an adaptation in the form of this peacock series. With a heavy dose of humor to compensate for the grim dystopian bleeding, Twisted Metal it’s far from what I expected from a live-action adaptation. It doesn’t fully fulfill its potential, Twisted Metal still, it’s a nice, if average, road trip to hell.
Transforming a racing game into a narrative series was always going to be a challenge. More, Twisted Metal it has chosen to explore the dystopian world of the Playstation franchise instead of focusing on the vehicle element. Yes, cars and trucks feature prominently in history. But Twisted Metal it has embodied the world decades after an apocalyptic event divided the civilized world into walled cities and illegal spaces. In this new world, John doe (Anthony Mackie) works as a milkman, a delivery job that causes him to carry out missions in exchange for payment. Not being able to remember much, John is given a mission by the new mayor of San Francisco Raven (Neve Campbell) that sends him across the country to Neflix Chicago. Along the way, John meets Quiet (Stephanie Beatriz), who is out for revenge on Law agent Stone (Thomas Haden Church). The ten-episode series presents independent stories on their journey through the divided Desert States of America while connecting the main quest of both characters.
While many seemingly one-off stories culminate in the tenth and final episode, few of the elements of each chapter remind much of the video game itself. While the first episode has a good follow-up sequence, the vehicle element of the rounded metal takes a back seat for most of the season. The writers do a solid job including many references and call-outs in the games, including characters like Agent Stone, Miranda Zimbatts, Raven, Tooth’s Santaneet, the Holy Men, Granny Dread, Mike and Stu, Bloody Mary and more. There is also a connection to the main video game character Calypso, but most of the time is spent with Anthony Mackie and Stephanie Beatriz as John doe and Quiet. The relationship between these two characters is central to the series, and both are more than up to the task. Beatriz has proven her comedic prowess with her role in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but I was pleasantly surprised by how funny Anthony Mackie is. Channeling Ryan Reynolds ‘ brand of humor, Mackie has a blast playing this character from start to finish.
The series also relies heavily on Agent Stone and Ssibeet Tooth, who both get back stories in this series. Thomas Haden Church is quietly menacing as the face of the law, while Samoa Joe embodies the big sweet tooth. Vancill Arnett, delivering a deep and fierce vocal performance like the glowing klaun, compensates for the physical presence of tooth’s Ssibeet with a flawless voice role. During this season’s ten episodes, much of the narrative brings John Doe and Quiet together as friends and love interests. However, everything is moving towards the final episode, the only entry in the entire race that wins the title of Polished Metal. While the story has an overall search/mission component, it rarely feels like the driving force of the series except for the beginning and end. So much of it Twisted Metal it relies on jokes and graphic violence that it rotates through half a dozen of the ten-episode season.
Developed from a story by Rhett Reese and Paulantanernick, Twisted Metal share a sense of humor with movies Deadpool and Zombieland. However, Twisted Metal you never get the same amount of attention as you see in a movie. With so much time to fill, the series writing team led by Michael Jonathan Smith (Cobra Kaiit fills the story with many clever jokes about a dystopian society. Even so, Twisted Metal it looks very shiny for the post-apocalyptic environment. The team of directors, including directors Kitao Sakurai, Bill Benz, Judesibleng and Maggie Carey, do what they can with the production values, but they pale in comparison to The Dead On Their Feet or The Last Of Us. Despite the lower rate of most episodes, there’s a big dose of retro music in the songwriting, especially some key 90s tunes for chase scenes. But even the well-placed tunes from Evanescence and Cake can’t compensate for the weakness of the series as a whole.
Twisted Metal it leaves itself open to a second season which could come closer to the concept of video games. Bringing several characters and introducing new ones from multiple games to the franchise, Twisted Metal it would have to find a better story to invest with higher stakes and better production values. This PlayStation take on stalanair feels like it would have played better if it had been released twenty years ago. I really like Anthony Mackie’s performance, Twisted Metal it is very generic, lazy and easy to be good. There are some laughs to be had during the first season, but they are poorly, to say the least. With all ten episodes dropping simultaneously, you can go through the series in a few hours and never look back. Or, you can watch the first and last episodes and get the essence of the whole series in less than ninety minutes.
Twisted Metal the first ten episodes of the season July 27 at Peacock.
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