SAN DIEGO (AP) — “The Toxic Avenger” got stuck in the sludge.
Director Macon Blair’s reboot of the classic 1980s cult superhero franchise from Troma Entertainment was shot four years ago and had its festival premiere two years ago, but for a long time, no theatrical distributors would bite.
It had bona fide stars, including Peter Dinklage as the tutu-wearing, mop-wielding, chemically-altered title vigilante, and Kevin Bacon and Elijah Wood as a villainous duo. But the buzz was it was just too weirdly violent for theaters.
“I was definitely anxious, but I never felt like it was going to be doomed,” said Blair, an actor in films including “Oppenheimer” and “Green Room” who previously directed 2017’s “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore.”
Now, Toxie, as he’s commonly known, has emerged. Production company Legendary Entertainment struck a deal with Cineverse earlier this year to give it an unrated theater run in all its gory glory starting Friday.
Last month at Comic-Con International in San Diego, it was given a packed, rapturous panel in the massive, storied Hall H, as if it were a Marvel movie. The cast and creators sat with The Associated Press for an interview during the convention.
“To think that this is where it would have its sort of blast off moment is not something I I ever would have expected,” Blair told the AP. “I would have been happy to wait eight years if that’s what the result is going to be.”
Taylour Paige, who plays a whistleblower who teams with Toxie against Bacon’s nuclear-polluter villain, was more blunt in her description of the long wait.
“It’s like being constipated for a really long time,” said Paige, to big laughs from the rest of the cast. “Because for years you’re like, “When am I gonna go?”
The film is a stew of tones and genres like few others. It’s equal parts splatter, warmth and comedy. Its vibes are very indie, but it often feels big and super-heroic.
The film was a shift from Blair’s other work as both actor and director.
“The idea of doing something that could be more of like a live-action cartoon was really exciting,” he said. “I just kind of wanted it to be very over the top, very ridiculous and, in an affectionate way, very in tune with the vibe of Lloyd’s original.”
Lloyd is Lloyd Kaufman, creator of the franchise that began with the 1984 film and spawned three sequels, a stage musical, a comic-book series, a video game and an animated TV show.
But Kaufman said not until now did the real “Toxic Avenger” appear. His original never got to be as graphic as he wanted it to be because of the censors of the era.
“Macon talked about eight years, I had to wait 40 years to finally see this,” he said. “The original got chopped up, mercilessly.”
He knew from the start that Blair had the right sensibility.
“This Toxic Avenger by Mr. Macon is better than the original,” Kaufman said. “Seriously, it is, it’s a real film. It’s not just a cartoony thing.”
The film’s earnest, family-centered plot features the “Game of Thrones” star Dinklage as Winston Gooze, a sad, down-on-his-luck janitor and single step-dad trying to win the approval of his stepson, played by Jacob Tremblay, who co-starred as a child with Brie Larson in her Oscar turn 2015’s “Room.”
An accident leaves Gooze mutated into the title hero, who is at-first horrified by the buckets of blood brought on by his supercharged mop, before embracing the righteous violence.
“He’s a very kind man and trying to do the right thing,” Dinklage said. “He’s a stepfather, he’s lost his wife, he’s gained her son, and Winston has to walk eggshells because of that.”
After Toxie’s transformation, Dinklage provided only the voice while Luisa Guerreiro performs in a suit that fit the practical-effects style Blair insisted on embracing.
Tremblay was just 14 when the film was shot. He’s 18 now for the release.
“Honestly, I mean it feels like it went by really quickly,” Tremblay said.
Wood’s character Fritz is ashen, hunched over and mostly bald with long strings of hair. He has notes of Danny DeVito’s Penguin from “Batman Returns,” Riff Raff from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and Wormtongue from Wood’s own “Lord of the Rings” films. In other words, it may be the least Elijah Wood role’s he’s ever had.
Blair sent a concept drawing to Wood when he sent the script.
“I immediately fell in love with it and thought, ‘Well, if we can achieve anything similar to this physically, it’ll be fantastic,’” Wood said. “I don’t get the opportunity to, to sort of transform like that often, so to play a character that is so bizarre and has a strange voice and physicality was awesome.”
Blair straddled two worlds during postproduction as filming on “Oppenheimer,” in which he played lawyer Lloyd Garrison, began.
“I’d shoot that during the days and then in the evenings I would go to the soundstage and do the sound mix into the night,” he said. “But at the same time it felt like an embarrassment of riches as far as projects I was getting to do at the time, so I would have let it go forever.”
