You don’t need to have seen Troma’s cult classic The Toxic Avenger to appreciate the inhumanity that director Macon Blair unsubtly orchestrates with his excessively out-of-bounds remake — but it helps. Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman’s The Toxic Avenger (1984) introduced a tutu-wearing New Jersey superhero by turning hapless health club custodian Melvin Ferd Junko III into a muscly green brute who starts cleaning Tromaville’s streets with uber-violent justice. It built the house of Troma, spawning a few sequels, a Toxic Crusaders cartoon series, tie-in action figures, and even a rock musical. With his new Toxic Avenger remake, Blair squeezes as much Troma DNA into his “mainstream” version of the hero as he could under a studio banner, striving to honor the underdog scrappiness of both Troma’s cobbled-together exploitation trademarks and Melvin’s cult-iconic legacy as a 98-pound zero to hero whose brutal mutilation of stock character thugs won over the hearts of B-Movie diehards.
The reboot cements Peter Dinklage’s rock n’ roll take on Winston Gooze as standalone canon, leaning into an unlikely hero’s journey riddled with dismemberment and good intentions. It’s Troma-like in its wishy-washy commitment to in-depth story development, all part of the film’s midnight movie charm. That might scare away viewers who aren’t prepared for smash-cuts from one chaotic display to the next instead of boring exposition, but at least you’ll find out real quick if The Toxic Avenger is your speed.
