1 of 6 | Luisa Gurreiro wears the “Toxic Avenger” makeup, in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Legendary Pictures
Writer-director Macon Blair says he wanted his Toxic Avenger remake, in theaters Friday, to capture the feeling of the original 1984 film but with a brand new story.
The original, directed by Troma co-founders Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman, spawned three sequels, an animated series, and became the face of Troma Entertainment. That film follows Melvin Ferd, a bullied janitor who becomes the mutant vigilante superhero Toxic Avenger.
Blair’s Toxic Avenger is Winston Gooze (Peter Dinklage), a single father who works as a janitor at a pharmaceutical company. Winston falls into the company’s chemical waste and mutates into a green monster with superhuman strength.
In a recent Zoom interview, Blair, 50, discussed the important elements he wanted to retain in a modern Toxic Avenger.
“We wanted to recreate the vibe of the original and the tone,” Blair said. “The actual biographical details, early on we felt like we should do something new and that just made it feel a little more personal to me, as an older person.”
The original Toxic Avenger fell into toxic waste after being bullied by fitness and aerobics buffs at a gym. Blair found a reason for Winston to also wear a ballet tutu like Melvin did at the time of his transformation — this time, Winston is supporting his son’s (Jacob Tremblay) dance aspirations.
After transforming, Winston’s new powers allow him to step in when criminals threaten citizens or hold up a fast food restaurant. He ultimately teams up with a reporter (Taylour Paige) to defeat the company CEO (Kevin Bacon) who is poisoning their city.
The action is comically violent as Winston rips off villains’ limbs. That sort of extreme humor reflects the original Troma tone.
“I didn’t want to come out with a movie that bore no resemblance,” Blair said. “At the same time, we kind of had to appeal to a broader audience who maybe hadn’t heard of Troma or The Toxic Avenger at all.”
Blair’s reference for the cadre of flamboyant villains Winston faces was more mainstream. One of the henchmen wears a chicken mask over his head, another does parkour, one wears clown makeup, and Elijah Wood’s character has a combover and hunchback.
“[In] Robocop, they had the Clarence Boddicker gang where they had the disco guy, the heavy metal biker guy,” Blair said. “They had this gang of cackling, strange bad guys.”
Blair’s Toxic Avenger premiered at film festivals in 2023, 15 years into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and other competing superhero movies. Though inspired by Troma’s original superhero parody, Blair was not trying to compete with other comic book heroes.
“The main thing was to try and make a comedy that was just funny to watch,” Blair said. “Just joking around with the editors and let’s put this in here, let’s put that in there, this sound effect here, we’ll take the voice of somebody and put it over here, just to make ourselves laugh. Little by little, those things would end up remaining in the sound mix.”
One element of parody Blair conceded was a post-credits scene. Marvel made such scenes popular, teasing characters like Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Thanos (Josh Brolin) after the credits roll. This led many fans to wait for the scenes after any superhero movie.
Blair ensured the Toxic Avenger’s post-credits scene would be as meaningless as possible.
“We tried to make it as deliberately boring and promising nothing in the future,” Blair said. “That was the only consideration to the superhero structure we were consciously talking about.”
The look of Blair’s Toxic Avenger also went through some trial and error, with Millennium FX designing some more monstrous versions. Ultimately, Blair chose a version that retained Dinklage’s facial features.
Dinklage did not wear the costume on set, however. Luisa Guerreiro provided the physical character, modeling her performance off a video of Dinklage performing the entire film. Dinklage would later dub his dialogue in.
“I like to think about it as David Prowse and James Earl Jones,” Blair said, referring to the actor wearing the costume and the voiceover artist in Star Wars. “Together they’re Darth Vader. That’s how it worked.”
After screening at Fantastic Fest and Beyond Fest, where UPI reviewed, it took over a year for production company Legendary to find a distributor for The Toxic Avenger. Legendary produces the Godzilla/Kong monsterverse with Warner Bros. and other films with Sony and Universal.
Cineverse will release The Toxic Avenger.
“I was honestly not expecting it to get a theatrical release and here it’s going to be in theaters,” Blair said. “I would much rather wait a couple years to land with someone like that than to have it immediately come out but have it disappear into streaming.”
