Stephanie Beatriz on how Twisted Metal represents the real world in 2024
Do you remember back in the day when the fabled video game curse had everyone avoiding live-action adaptations like the plague? Duds like the Bob Hoskins-led Mario movie, Silent Hill: Revelation, and Uwe Boll's The House of the Dead all deserve their reputation, but thankfully, 2024 paints a very different picture.
Coming off the back of a stellar year that saw The Super Mario Bros. Movie break records and Five Nights at Freddy's become a surprise hit, we also saw the small screen embrace our pixel pals with HBO's The Last of Us and Paramount's Twisted Metal. As the latter comes to Paramount+, we spoke to Stephanie Beatriz about the show's relevance in 2024.
Twisted Metal is a not-so-subtle metaphor for the real world
Click to enlargeFor those who don't know, Patamount's Twisted Metal loosely adapts Sony's video game series of the same name. Here, Beatriz plays Quiet - part of a brother and sister duo with Richard Cabral's Loud. She joins forces with Anthony Mackie's John Doe on a tale of vengeance, trying to navigate this vehicular wasteland.
Speaking to GGRecon, Beatriz opened up about what it was like working on Twisted Metal and what drew her to playing a brand-new character in this video game adaptation. Saying the world is "full of haves and have-nots," Beatriz thinks Twisted Metal has an important message.
"There are some people that are interested in trying to figure that out. I think it's really fun and interesting to see it played out in this pretend world of Twisted Metal," says Beatriz. "In a world that sometimes feels more segregated than ever based on religion, race, and sexuality, it's interesting to see the different factions of Twisted Metal at play here."
As for the struggle for power, Beatriz concludes, "There are some people that are using other people as basically a carpet or to get to climb even higher. So, yeah, I absolutely think that it's a not-so-subtle metaphor for the world that we live in now." Although we're not quite at the level of deadly driving tournaments, it sometimes feels like we are.
Twisted Metal is really f*****g funny
Click to enlargeIn terms of what brought the Brooklyn Nine-Nine star to Twisted Metal, it seems the script from Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick won her over. Away from its dark themes and allegory for real life, Beatriz says, "It's really f*****g funny."
She explained, "I think a lot of video games, as they should, take themselves super seriously. But I think one of the things that's so fun about gaming is the camaraderie between people that are playing." With a rag-tag group of unlikely allies teaming up against a common cause, Beatriz reiterated, "I think you get a sense of that in this show."
Similar to how Amazon's upcoming Fallout series looks like it's bringing the funny, Twisted Metal shows the lighter side of the apocalypse. But with Will Arnett voicing an unhinged clown that's played by Samoa Joe, what else did you expect?
All episodes of Twisted Metal Season 1 are available on Paramount+ in the UK from March 21.
