The Toxic Avenger (2023)

Every movie should have Peter Dinklage in it, and a mop, and be 25% shorter. For my entire adult life I never thought these three pillars of storytelling (brevity, Dinklage, mop) would align. But sometimes the universe tosses you an atheist miracle, which is when Providence, which doesn’t exist, has better things to do than be mean to you.

So, let’s discuss The Toxic Avenger (2023).

Time, etc.

Quick, how long is the movie you’re currently working on, in minutes? That’s a terrible number! You should feel bad about that number, it is so large. Listen: every time someone asks you to explain a choice you made in making your film and you are able to answer with “because it made the movie shorter,” somewhere in the world a drunk driver decides to pull over. One more person leaves Scientology. A Cybertruck crashes into a pile of toilets. You’re doing the Lord’s work, is what I’m saying. And The Toxic Avenger is a masterclass in this kind of narrative efficiency.

The nefarious lab where evil science is being done is located directly below the villain’s mansion. Why would a nefarious lab be in such an odd location? Because placing Science Room directly below Evil Lair means one less establishing shot for the audience to endure, which is the exact amount of establishing shots every movie should aspire to have. Every story needs a unifying internal logic – Lord of the Rings has thousands of pages of world-building, the Mission: Impossible franchise has the relentless evangelizing of Ethan Hunt’s total infallibility, and this movie has “let’s not waste each other’s fucking time,” as its structural backbone. This is magical, and the springboard from which all of the film’s other considerations leap directly into your heart. Technical considerations are just as valid a unifying principle as emotional or thematic ones.

And speaking of emotions: this movie doesn’t waste a single goddamn syllable in establishing its tone. Grim Yet Earnest Buffoonery is blasted out from all feasible points of attack, starting with the film’s opening sequence, in which a crass but passionate reporter stares death in the face and flips the bird at his would-be killers. The whole of the film’s tone, values, and style are conveyed in this moment. There is more said in it than in the entirety of the Bible.

Seriously, the oppressive insanity of The Toxic Avenger’s tone is dialed in so perfectly that there’s a steady background noise of offscreen characters declaring insane, violent, and depressing things – there is such clarity of vision to this movie’s world that it is bursting at the seams with it. When you’re watching a scene in which a father tries to connect with his son and some random, unseen voice declares “I got my dick stuck in a trash compactor again! It fucking hurts! My dick looks like a broken slinky now!” it is impossible to misapprehend what kind of movie you’re watching.

And here is my favorite thing about a movie so unambiguous in its aims, style, and focus: that glorious sense of community! A highly-specific tone requires every actor to be in on the joke. No one is, like, gunning for a fucking Oscar or something. Everybody subordinates themselves to The Cause, and seeing that flawless synergy is what watching the 1960s Packers run the Lombardi sweep must have felt like. 

The End

You should have to get a permission slip to make a movie more than ninety minutes long, and that permission slip should have to be signed by God. The iceberg in Titanic should be in the opening shot of the film, rubbing its hands together menacingly. Every cinematic depiction of the Nativity should pan away from baby Jesus and slowly push in on a cross with an evil mustache. 

Listen: Martin Scorsese perfected filmmaking in 1990 with the “keep stirring the sauce” sequence in Goodfellas. Art as a concept has been treading water since then – you can only aspire to approximate the flawless energy captured in that scene, never surpass it. But you can come close! The more you simplify your movie the faster it will go, the more capacity it will have for lateral movement. So keep those budgets low, those scripts lean, those actors in on the joke, and that fucking sauce stirred. Seriously, it will stick if you don’t.