Twisted Metal is a franchise I got late into, not until Black as my first game I ever boguth for the Playstation 2. I completely fell in love with the dark and gritty take on the franchise and felt the 90s PS1 games were too silly and not mature enough. I eventually changed my opinion after not being an angsty teen and realizing dark cartoony humor was just as fun. When I heard about a movie and/or show being developped I wasn’t sure so I decided to revisit the franchise. I realized that it was perfect as long as they got the mood and atmosphere right. Which is not an easy task, it could easily be messed up, but so much potential.
I saw the trailers and I wasn’t expecting much from this adaptation and wasn’t expecting it to be too fun. It was difficult to get a tongue in cheek and dark aspects of the franchise. This show just got it. It gets the feeling of the different games in the series and blends it all very well. It understands the balance of goofy fun and the dark aspects of it. The tone is the mosts difficult thing to get in many adaptations and they nailed it.
Sweet Tooth was done very well, great casting on both actor and voice actor, he also got a great arc. They managed to make him the anti-villain the franchise deserved. The other villains also work pretty well doing their own thing to drive the plot forward while still keeping you engaged.
There’s plenty of car action, more than I thought it would, but counting it’s a car combat franchise, some people might not think it’s enough and it could definitely use more car action since it’s very light on it, but at the very least it scratched the itch.
I wish they had not changed some of the characters so much, but at the same time I don’t have a huge mark against it since even the own Twisted Metal games would change it around as they pleased from game to game. I do like John Doe’s game origin and story, the character here is well done as well. I love all the references to the game and hope a second season adds even more of those easter eggs.
Yeah not too much car action but we do get some and when we do it’s fun as well. More characters perhaps appeared than they should’ve but not a big copmlain. I want to see more from the lore and more func razy takes. I’ll update this as the second season arrives.
And the second season has arriven, overall I liked it. It fixed some complains while doing somethings worse so it’s not a homerun. They changed Raven which does kinda feel weird, I’m not a fan. The humor and character interaction is not as strong and focusing so much on the continuing storyline of the tournament rather than single episodes hurt the show as some episodes just tell no story and feel like they were dragging the main arc. In fact this season is 4 episodes longer and I think it could’ve been a solid 8 like before. They add a bunch of new characters I dislike by having Dollface be John Doe’s sister, that was a terrible character that also ruined John Doe by giving him his ‘story’ which isn’t that interesting. Sweet Tooth also didn’t feel as great.
With the negatives out of the way, I really enjoyed the season overall, it was nice seeing more characters from the games and how well they interpreted them. I enjoyed how they set up the tournament for the most part as well and yes there is more car action this season. Solid show and it gave us the game in a way that the show could end and be fine or it could go on. Sony is sleeping on this franchise.