First Max Steel U.S. Trailer Released

The first U.S. trailer Max Steel, the live-action adaptation of the popular toy line and TV series, has been released.

The film follows 16-year-old Max, who has hidden powers that when combined with an extraterrestrial friend, Steel, produce "the universe's most powerful energy." The two join forces to become super hero Max Steel, a robo-suit-wearing hero.

Direct Stewart Handler describes the film as being Friday Night Lights meets Marvel.

"It's very much designed to be grounded within the teen experience," said Handler in a recent interview. "Besides, I'm a sucker for coming-of-age stories that [relate] how difficult it is to be a teenager."

As far as the long (long, long) production and post-production window, the filmmaker told Yahoo!, who debuted the trailer, that it wasn't a problem with the movie as some had assume that delayed its release.

"I wish it was something sexy and interesting, but it really just comes down to paperwork and release date," Handler said. "It just took a second for them to figure out what date they wanted it on, and find the perfect window for it. It's Mattel's first movie, and [the movie's distributor] Open Road is new, so the handshake took a minute. But now it's onward and release-ward."

Max Steel is just the latest toy line to be turned into a big-budget motion picture after nearly a decade of huge success for Michael Bay's Transformers line. While most of the toy-to-film translations have seemingly tried to ape Transformers's success (see things like Battleship for examples of how this works), Max Steel seems more concerned with capturing the spirit of its source material, with a bit of a dark twist, in the hopes that they'll grab YA fans still looking for a "home" following the end of the Hunger Games franchise rather than taking another swing at the Transformers audience.

Max Steel stars Ben Winchell, Josh Brener, Maria Bello, and Andy Garcia.

Max was an average teen until he started generating Turbo Energy – a power he chose to use to transform himself into a heroic protector of the world. When Max channels his Turbo Energy into his sidekick Steel, a techno-organic alien, he gains all kinds of super-powered abilities and modes: TURBO STRENGTH, TURBO FLIGHT, TURBO HAMMER CLAW, TURBO PRIME and more!

Max Steel has defended the planet from all manner of bad guys – Dread, Makino and the Elementors – but now he faces his greatest challenge yet: stepping up to become the leader of an all new team of turbo-charged heroes… TEAM TURBO!

Max Steel is expected in theaters on October 21, 2016.