Feeling Some Changes Coming On

As I noted in my review of the 1984 version of The Toxic Avenger, I generally don’t jive with the Troma filmmaking way. While the company has its fans, it’s low-budget, anything goes storytelling can lead to a lot of cheap, unwatchable trash. The Toxic Avenger stood out because while it still felt very much like a Troma film, it had enough story, gags, and adventure to keep the whole rickety adventure on the tracks. It was the rare Troma film that you actually could see going back and watching again as a film, and not just as a joke.

I can’t actually say the same for the other films in the original series. In preparation for the 2023 remake I was going to watch all of the sequels, starting with The Toxic Avenger Part II. However I was only able to get about twenty minutes into that film as it was absolutely unwatchable. All the charm of the original film was quickly lost in the sequel, and I found the movie both grating and dreadfully dull, despite a cartoonish amount of violence going on in the opening scenes of the movie. I couldn’t get through that film, and that meant I wasn’t even going to try the other two sequels, and thus didn’t make it around to the remake when I meant to.

But now, three years later I felt like it was time to rip that band-aid off, if for no other reason than the remake was staring at me all that time from my “to watch” pile and I had to finally bite the bullet and get it over with. Thankfully what I found with The Toxic Avenger ‘23 was not just a solid return to form for the franchise but a massive improvement all around. This remake, written and directed by Macon Blair and produced by Legendary Pictures alongside Troma, actually manages to do what I thought was impossible: it makes The Toxic Avenger into a real, watchable film without even having to cross your eyes or pretend the film is anything more than another Troma joint.

The film focuses on Winston Gooze (Peter Dinklage), a down-on-his-luck janitor working for Body Talk Healthstyle (BTH). Winston is up to his neck in debt, trying to raise his stepson, Wade (Jacob Tremblay), after his wife died. But then, when he gets the news that he has some kind of brain condition that gives him six months to live, and then finds out that his insurance through BTH won’t pay for it, he has to find some other means to stay alive. He throws himself on the mercy of the BTH president, Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon), but Bob mocks Winston, leaving the man with few other options: he decides to rob BTH.

The robbery, though, goes south when Winston runs into J.J. Doherty (Taylour Paige), a woman working to expose the horrible, illegal dumping of chemical waste that BTH has been doing. When a gang of parkour assassins, the Killer Nutz, come for J.J., they shoot and kill Winston as he’s in the way. J.J. escapes, and the Nutz decide to throw Winston into the waste pool. Instead of destroying his body, though, the waste mixes with his brain condition and mutates him, turning him into a super-powered beast of a man (performed in the suit by Luisa Guerreiro). Winston, as Toxie, just wants to keep on living, but once Garbinger finds out that Toxie is alive, and seemingly thriving with new super powers, the evil industrialist will stop at nothing to get that power for himself.

The new version of The Toxic Avenger isn’t a deep movie. Although it has a different story overall from the original version, it’s still a very silly, very weird, very funny little lark of a superhero movie. It knows it’s a dumb bit of parody hero fluff and it doesn’t try to be anything more than that. The point is to have fun hanging out with Toxie as he runs around, kills bad guys with his mop, and generally gets up to dumb hijinx, and the film delivers on that. It’s enough to make any fan of the original film happy.

That said, there are a number of ways that this remake manages to elevate the material and make the whole product better than it has any right to be. For starters, the production values across the board are better. Produced on a much more substantial budget than the $500K of the original film, the film looks pretty darn great. Although specific numbers aren’t available, some sources report the new film cost as much as $200 Mil to make, which seems like a staggering amount for a film that made only $3.4 Mil, and I honestly have my doubts it cost quite that much (although I can’t say for sure), but there’s no doubt that from the set design, to the costumes, to the named actors all showing up in the cast – Peter Dinklage, Kevin Bacon, and Elijah Wood included – this film put a lot of money on screen for all to see.

Those actors also do a great job. Dinklage has the early job of playing Winston, getting us into the sad-sack character and making us care about him. Honestly, it’s a role he could play in his sleep, but Dinklage invests and makes Winston really watchable. He continues to voice the character after his transformation, and Dinklage carries the film as Toxie throughout. Bacon has fun chewing scenery as the villain, and while his performance isn’t as strong, he does at least have fun. And even Wood, who’s here in only a smaller role, puts what he can into the performance to make it memorable.

The film does go in on gore, as you’d hope, giving us a lot of action, and plenty of kills. The violence is splashier, and more enjoyable, here in the remake than in the original film, which really had to work to make anything look even halfway real. I will admit there’s a bit too much CGI, and some kills look a little fake and plasticy, but overall the quality of effects and production for this violent superhero film are pretty solid. This is miles above the original film when it comes to its action.

But through it all the film doesn’t lose sight of what it needs to be: a silly, weird little superhero film. It’s very much not a movie for everyone, with its ultra-violence and comedic gore, but it delivers a ton of laughs while poking fun at itself, the previous movie, and the superhero genre as well. This is a lovingly made homage and parody that knew what it had to deliver: a proper Toxie adventure for fans new and old, and it pretty solidly delivered on all fronts.

Whether the film was a financial success or not (and, as I noted, that’s hard to say when the budget could be either really small or massively overinflated, with no solid reporting either way), it absolutely was a success when it comes to what it needed to do. This is a good remake / reimagining of The Toxic Avenger, one that brings the laughs and the gore and keeps audiences entertained. It’s not for everyone… but then, neither was the original. This film knows what it has to do and it does it. What more can you ask for from a film like this?