Commentary: ‘Twisted Metal’ Delaying The Tournament Worked In Its Favor
by Frank Martin
Adapting video games is tricky, as evident by the many failed attempts to do so. Story driven games at least provide a narrative framework for a series or a movie to proceed. However, games taking a tournament approach to their story, such as Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, provide little in way of a blueprint. It’s hard working the concept of a tournament into a story. This goes doubly true for obscure games, like Twisted Metal, which features a tournament of vehicles all trying to destroy each other. So it was the right move for the show to delay showcasing the tournament until its second season.
In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, drivers are the sole means of communication and delivery between walled-off cities. Over the course of the first season, John Doe (Anthony Mackie) and a woman he calls Quiet (Stephanie Beatriz) partner up a vehicle called Roadkill. Their life and the lives of other drivers are thrown upside down when a mysterious man named Calypso (Anthony Carrigan) hosts a demolition derby in which the winner can claim a wish of anything they wanted.
The world of Twisted Metal is absolutely bonkers from the start. It features killer clowns and psychotic motorcycle riders. Throwing all of those crazy characters into a tournament in the first season would have been too much wackiness all at once. The first season — which didn’t feature the tournament at all — served as a buffer to slowly introduce audiences to this wild and crazy setting. By structuring the series that way, the tournament seemed less ridiculous when it became the main feature of Season 2. The adaptation wisely decided to delay the main aspect of the game, which still could have been an error. Instead, it was a bold choice that ended up paying off.
Twisted Metal is now streaming on Peacock.
