‘The Toxic Avenger’ Director Talks Reintroducing Cult Favorite IP

In our modern age of environmental devastation, omnipresent microplastics, and a floating landmass of garbage twice the size of Texas, only one superhero truly represents the sign of these dire times — the Toxic Avenger! The reboot, starring Elijah Wood and Peter Dinklage, is now in theaters.

May his melting countenance smile upon us all and may his ever-smoldering mop of justice continue to wipe crime off the smudged linoleum floor of society. That’s right, turtles. You no longer have a monopoly on chemical waste!

Of course, “Toxie” doesn’t fit into the mainstream superhero mold, but that’s just fine by writer-director Macon Blair (I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore), who guided the contaminated crusader back to the big screen. “I think there’s plenty of room for all different shapes and sizes and weirdness quotients,” he tells me over Zoom. “And so, if this is just in that general universe, but it occupies a space that maybe hasn’t been utilized as much before, then I’m delighted with that.”

In rebooting Troma Entertainment’s cult favorite icon, the filmmaker didn’t want to stray too far from the source material — at least in terms of overall tone.

“I really wanted to stay true to the vibe and texture of the original Toxie, which is to say a kind of juvenile sense of humor. I say that with great affection,” the filmmaker says of his vision for the unrated film headlined by Game of Thrones alum, Peter Dinklage. “Very silly and kind of sweet. There’s not a lot of irony in those early ones.”

His guiding light, of course, was the 1984 original, but also the gag-centric outings from Jim Abrahams and Zucker brothers, David and Jerry. Otherwise known as ZAZ, the trio was responsible for Airplane!, Top Secret!, and The Naked Gun trilogy.

“That’s really what I wanted it to be [like],” Blair notes. “Even though you could think, ‘Well, it’s sort of a superhero,/vigilante movie,’ I said, ‘Look, this is never going to out-action a Marvel movie. It’s never going to have the special effects spectacle of a Star Wars movie. Let’s just treat it straight up like a comedy from the beginning … just think of it as one of those ZAZ movies.’ Those were definitely our North Star.”

When Legendary first acquired the rights to the IP back in late 2018 and put out the call for pitches, however, Blair found himself reluctant to throw his hat into the ring, “because the first one is so singular and it just seemed like, ‘What’s the intention of doing a new one?’” he explains. “In the background of my mind, I was kind of worried that maybe they wanted a PG-13 family-friendly version or something like that.”

But like a mutated moth fluttering toward a radioactive flame, Blair simply could not resist a chance to revisit a character that inspired him to make movies in the first place.

“I was in sixth grade or something, and it really made a lasting impression,” he says. “That was right around the time we were starting to make our own movies, and that influenced how my little group of friends and I we were making [them]

with a VHS camera. So I took a swing at pitching on it, just because it seemed like a way to return to how we made movies when we were 12-years-old. That was the spirit I went into it with, with no expectations. But little by little, they kept responding to my broad pitch and then my more specified pitch — and it was like a snowball. It just kind of gained momentum and eventually, we were shooting.”

Directed by Troma co-founders Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, the original Toxic Avenger centers around Melvin (Mark Torgl), a scrawny and awkward teenager who works as custodian at a local gym and is quite literally bullied straight into a frothing barrel of toxic waste. The accident leaves him horrifically disfigured, but also gifts him with enhanced strength.

Assuming the persona of a vigilante (Mitch Cohen), Melvin decides to fight crime and clean up the seedy town of Tromaville, New Jersey run by the corrupt Mayor Belgoody (Pat Ryan). “There’s something about an underdog that gets to f*** up the powers of corruption that never goes out of style,” Blair says of the original’s rise to cult status. “There’s dozens of movies from all different eras that follow the same pattern. I think that’s something people always relate to.”

There’s also the fact that the OG Toxic Avenger is flat-out bonkers (in the best way possible) and unlike any other film being made at the time. For one thing, it was produced for half a million dollars, resulting a charmingly schlocky and handmade product that greatly appealed to kids hoping to get into the business one day.

“I was really fascinated by movies, but they were all very big and they seemed very expensive and very technical,” Blair adds. “This was kind of the first time — at least that I could remember — of watching a movie and feeling like, ‘Oh, this is just some buddies that got together and did it in their own town.’ It didn’t need to be super-expensive or have big, famous people in it. That aspect of it was very inspiring to myself and my group of friends at that time.”

While it maintains the janitorial element and Toxie’s signature mop and tutu costume accoutrements, the reboot provides an entirely new backstory for the character, reimagining him as a put-upon stepfather named Winston Gooze (Dinklage).

“I felt like there wasn’t much use in recreating the exact story of a teenager who works at a health club and gets picked on by bullies,” Blair explains. “That had been done so precisely in the first one, that I felt like if we did the exact same story again, it would really put a spotlight on it in a redundant way. And so, I felt like, ‘If we keep the tone and vibe of it intact, but do a new story, a new character, and a new, situation, that would be the way to go.’”

Thankfully, Lloyd Kaufman, who served as producer on the reboot, was entirely supportive of this new direction and even agreed to make a little cameo appearance. “I met with him early on, before I even started writing the script,” remembers Blair. “He went out of his way, very demonstratively, to say, ‘I’m not going to tell you what to do. This is yours.’ At the time, I was kind of [skeptical], like, ‘Yeah, we’ll see…’ But that’s exactly what happened. He was largely hands-off and had a few suggestions for little gags here and there. I don’t remember how he phrased it — and this is a very reductive way to say it — but he was like, ‘Just make sure that it’s fun for the audience.’”

As a downtrodden custodian at a shady, pollution-happy pharmaceutical company run by Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon), Gooze is unable to pay the exorbitant medical bills required to treat his vaguely fatal illness. He tries to steal the money from his employer, but accidentally falls in a pool of toxic waste and emerges as the deformed hero (physically played by Luisa Guerreiro), ready to take on an unjust system of financial inequality and complete disregard for the health of our planet.

“The whole thing about poison in the environment is very hard to disagree with. That comes straight from the original. It’s called ‘The Toxic Avenger.’ You know that’s going to factor into it on some level,” the director says. “It’s not a nuanced movie.”

Prior to writing the script, Blair insisted that the character could not be a CG creation, lest they defile the spirit of the ’84 original. “I was like, ‘It’s got to be a dude in a suit, it’s got to be rated R, and it’s got to be silly,’” he reveals. “In other words, it can’t be a gritty, street-level version. It has to be light and goofy. That was the founding principle.”

After going through a number of concept designs — some of which were “very melty, very decayed, and very grotesque” — the production settled on a less flamboyant interpretation that emphasized Winston’s human features.

“We started to walk it back and and looked at the original makeup from Part I, as well as the softer, friendlier version from the Toxic Crusaders cartoon, which is where the green skin tone came from,” Blair says. “It was a blend of those two, [in addition to] Peter’s facial features.”

A lot of the action set pieces involving dismemberment, disembowelment, and general maiming were also practical, albeit with some light digital touch-ups in post-production.

Getting to work with so many squibs and fake blood made Blair feel like “a kid in a candy shop,” once again bringing the director back to his childhood, when special effects, not storytelling, served as the gateway into making movies (just think of the kids from Super 8).

“The initial way into it was effects and gore effects, how to kill people in cool ways on screen,” emphasizes the director. “It really was like getting to go back to seventh grade. Filling up a rubber with Carrow blood, taping it to your chest, putting a firecracker on it, and now you’ve got a squib. A lot of that was just a lot of fun to see on set, getting to see the technique of the prosthetics, the pneumatics, or however we were doing it. Some of this stuff was enhanced with digital effects, which was a whole new thing for me. But it was all [like] getting thrown back in the briar patch.”

Despite nabbing acclaim at its Fantastic Fest premiere two years ago, The Toxic Avenger didn’t land a distribution deal until earlier this year via Terrifier 3 label, Cineverse, which agreed to release the unrated version currently playing in theaters nationwide. “It’s not exactly a mainstream movie,” concedes Blair. “I think it’s a crowd-pleaser, but for a particular type of crowd, and it just had a hard time finding a home.”

He later continues: “Legendary was able to connect with Cineverse at the right time. They were just coming off the big success of Terrifier 3, they knew how to release a movie that appealed to a niche audience, and they had this upward momentum going on. In hindsight, if we had to wait a couple of years to land with the perfect partner like them, I’m happy to do it. I wouldn’t say I was totally relaxed while it was happening, but on the other side of it, I couldn’t be happier that that’s how it went.”

Should the reboot perform well at the box office, the writer-director has an idea or two for subsequent entries. Why not? The original movie spawned three sequels, the aforementioned cartoon, and a video game based on that aforementioned cartoon.

Nothing is confirmed just yet, but Blair quite likes the idea of time travel and the introduction of “an evil twin” adversary. “There’s any number of possibilities,” he finishes, “because science doesn’t matter and we can do whatever we want.”

To paraphrase Frank Herbert: “Let the toxic ooze flow!”