Despite not making a new game in over a decade, Sony’s once-popular Twisted Metal video game franchise is making its way to the small screen with a brand new TV show. Peacock’s live-action adaptation of Twisted Metal is set to debut on Thursday, attempting to give a solid story to the game series about vehicular battle royales. Fans have no idea what to expect from the new series, but the early reviews are indicating that something exciting could be on the way.
On Thursday, the first reviews for Twisted Metal arrived online, and some may be surprised to learn that they’ve been mostly positive. At the time of this writing, 21 reviews of Twisted Metal have been submitted to Rotten Tomatoes. The series currently holds a 71% “Fresh” rating on the site, meaning that more than two-thirds of those submitted reviews have been positive.
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ComicBook.com’s Cade Onder was one of those who handed a positive review to Twisted Metal, calling it a “successful video game adaptation” and giving it four out of five stars.
“Twisted Metal is a very charming show that manages to accomplish a lot in its ten 30-minute episodes,” Onder wrote in the review (which you can read here). “There are tons of well-earned laughs, a diverse cast of eccentric characters with fleshed out and unique backstories, and a surprising amount of world-building. It’s almost shocking that the show isn’t longer, given everything it does and how well it pulls it all off.”
Samoa Joe’s Sweet Tooth
There may not be a whole lot of story to the Twisted Metal games, but the franchise does have at least one iconic character that most video game fans can recognize. Sweet Tooth is a psychotic, ice cream truck-driving clown with a penchant for chaos, and it would feel impossible to make a Twisted Metal TV show without including him as a major character.
In the new show, Will Arnett lends his voice to Sweet Tooth, with AEW and ROH wrestling star Samoa Joe providing the physical performance. While speaking with ComicBook.com’s Chris Killian ahead of the show’s debut, Samoa Joe said he tried to keep one of the iconic Sweet Tooth masks after he finished filming.
“No, they wouldn’t let me [keep a mask],” he said. “I made a vaunted effort to steal one off set, at points looking like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, but our props people are very good at what they do and they kept them all away from me. Probably because of the carnage I would wreak with the mask on. Don’t worry, Halloween’s coming up and I have ways.”
What Is Twisted Metal About?
Here’s the official synopsis for Peacock’s Twisted Metal series:
“TWISTED METAL, a half-hour live-action TV series based on the classic PlayStation game series, is a high-octane action comedy, based on an original take by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick and written by Michael Jonathan Smith, about a motor-mouthed outsider offered a chance at a better life, but only if he can successfully deliver a mysterious package across a post-apocalyptic wasteland. With the help of a badass axe-wielding car thief, he’ll face savage marauders driving vehicles of destruction and other dangers of the open road, including a deranged clown who drives an all too familiar ice cream truck.”
