Summary
Anthony Mackie and Stephanie Beatriz are at the helm of Peacock’s post-apocalyptic comedy series,Twisted Metal.The action comedy crafts a live-action adaptation of the video game series that began in the late 1990s. In addition to Mackie and Beatriz, the series stars Thomas Haden Church, Neve Campbell, Richard Cabral, AEW’s Samoa Joe, the voice of Will Arnett, and many others.
Game Rant had the opportunity to talk withTwisted Metal’scostume designer, Liz Vastola, who revealed some of the exciting intricacies involved with adaptinga project that has a pre-existing art form. In doing so, Vastola talks through several of the canonical characters and looks from the series, including Sweet Tooth, whose costume was nearly entirely crafted by hand.
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GR: How much of the design process was remaining truthful to theTwisted Metalgames, and how much was testing the bounds of what you could do to make it your own?
Liz: It’s tricky. Having worked on projects before that had a lore and a history that comes before the current project, you have to takeyour cues first and foremost from the showrunners, in our case, Michael Jonathan Smith, the script, and the cast you’re working with to make sure you’re working within the parameters of the current project. You want to make sure you’re serving the story you’re trying to tell.
One of the first things we did was decide who we wanted to stay really faithful with in terms of look and characterization fromthe many games ofTwisted Metalsince 1995. Once you decide that, you have to go even deeper and understand where you want to pull the look from; what game and why. Then you decide, based on the script, who might have the opportunity for a departure. Once you kind of delineate what the expectations are in terms of look, then you’re able to kind of go from there. Of course, characters that are new to the story require a tremendous amount of creativity and new thinking.
Sweet Tooth was our baseline. When you have a clown as your baseline, you’re able to say, “Okay, because we have this guy existing in this world,what does that mean for new characters?What does that tell you about what your limitations and opportunities are?” From a costume perspective, what it told me was that we could really go there in terms of color, with new and exciting visuals, while still trying to work within the late 90s and early 2000s framework.
GR: Sweet Tooth’s costume is fairly complex despite appearing that he’s dressed minimally to the visual eye. What was the process for designing his look?
Liz: He was handmade head to toe. Actually, the gloves were a found object that we heavily painted and aged but from mask to boots and everything in between, was hand done. When you know you have to replicate a costume from a digital landscape, the first question you have to ask yourself is, “How does the human body operate in this costume?” To our advantage, there were cut scenes where people were acting out the narrative. We already had this cheat sheet of how a human body operates inthe various iterations of Sweet Tooth.
Sometimes when you come to a project where the only existing version of the story is two-dimensional or doesn’t operate on earthly physics, you have to answer some tough questions. “Where did he come from? How did he find all these pieces?” You sort of have to say to yourself, “Where is the sewing machine?” What we know so far is that he’s been living in Vegas so the idea thathe would have access to a clown maskhe could customize totally felt believable to me. The harness, we had a leather smith make it for us. The idea was to harken back to it being made from belts. The pants were meant to look industrial and a little hardcore.
It just felt right in order to create the mask and go back to the old school process of having someone, in our case, an incredible person named Sam Hill, hand sculpt the form, make the mold, then pour a special version of silicone, and go that route as opposed to anything 3D printed to kind of stay in line with the time period. We custom-made the boots because we knew the specific look we wanted, which was the exact one ripped fromTwisted Metal: Black. We knew we wanted to use a specific type of leather, and we needed a little more height. We knew Sweet Tooth needed to be really, really tall,although Joe is tall,so is Anthony. All those requirements were important enough that instead of buying something off the rack, to make sure we built it.
GR: The costumes are all well-tailored to the individual characters and their personalities. Did you create individual design boards for each character or was there anything you drew from outside the game for characters who may not have existed before?
Liz: Almost every individual character, and you could even go into each different group in this world, feel like their own island. For me, that’s informed not only by the way in which they enter into the story, but we thought about this – my department, myself, and Michael Jonathan Smith – the way people in this world who aren’t given the safety of a walled-in city encounter each other andspend a lot of time alone. When they meet other people, they have their own self-expression and telegraph who they are and what they’re about. In the case of Amber, Watts, anybody in the convoy, and even Quiet, they all feel very self-realized. They know what they like, and it’s different from the next person coming to them. I think it’s very close to the way you encounter characters in video games.
When you boot up the game, it’s either a situation where you’re choosing your character, and they splash on screen in a moment, and you’re figuring out if you want to step into this person’s shoes, or you have the optionto change clothes or skinsand acquire different pieces to wear. I think the ethos of this show is the same. Instead of meeting these people and having another person in jeans and a t-shirt, they have a real self-possession of how they dress. They don’t care what people think and it’s really refreshing.
GR: The villains are some of the most strikingly dressed. Both Raven and Agent Stone wear very distinctive colors to separate them from the others. Did you intend for their palettes to let them stand out?
Liz: We were definitely very aware of color being assigned to certain characters. Raven is interesting because everybody knows that character and the lore ofthat character is being a gothic teenager. I knew it was going to be kind of shocking to see her in white and clean and stylish and feel a little bit calmer. It had to be something that lured John in. It had to be part of the ruse. That facade is punctured once we learn more about who Raven is, but we wanted to get her back to her black, gothic roots, but still feel a little more luxurious.
The genesis of the Stone color was him as a younger cop and wanting to use that color blue that I feel mostly exists in vintage or earlier versionsof police and law enforcement.I grew up in New York and remember cops having that wild Parisian blue to them. In doing more research into Topeka, Kansas cops in the 80s and 90s, it was the same. It’s not necessarily the same shirt as when Stone was younger, as it was shorter sleeves, but he’s pulling his lineage of law enforcement from when he was younger to today.
We knew Thomas Haden Churchwanted to do that silver flat top and once that came together with the blue and the glasses, we knew “This is our guy.” The lawmen, by contrast, are basically a collection of people he kept adding to his crew. The impetus of that was that there are some big box stores where the dress code is just to wear the color, wherever it is. We really liked that idea because it could totally undercut his authority.
GR: How doesTwisted Metalcompare to some of the other projects you’ve worked on?
Liz: I love working on projects that are in dialogue with themselves that have a lineage of their own story in other art forms via comic books, via video games, anything. Even just being able to dip into a series or a set of sequelslike working onThe Purge,I like being in dialogue with other creators who have designed for certain characters. It’s not easy because there’s a lot of things to solve logistically and creatively. You need to pay homage and be aware of the history, but believe in yourself enough to say “I have a creative voice to add to this.”
The most difficult part of all is that there’s a baked-in audience expectation.Twisted Metalis interesting becauseDaredevilandJessica Jonesare different in a lot of ways but one way that’s maybe not so apparent is that people have been able to participate in those stories.Jessica Jonesas a comic has been continuing.Daredevilhad a ton of movies in the 2000s.Twisted Metalwas very nostalgic for its fan base. It’s beenover a decade since there’s been anything newwith the franchise. You’re coming into people’s childhoods. There’s expectation and a lot of unknown there, but I really do like working on characters and stories that have prior lives.
GR: What’s next for you? Would you like to continue working on projects with a pre-existing art form?
Liz: First and foremost, I just want to say thatI 100% support WGA and SAG. So, I don’t know what’s next because we’re in this real moment of reckoning. I 100% support those fighting for their rights in the industry. It would be amazing ifTwisted Metalcame back for more seasons, I think the finale really set up an exciting jumping-off point for the next chapter of the story.
I was just thinking, one of the things about working on projects thathave a baked-in cultural currency:Daredevil, Katy Keene, Jessica Jones, Twisted Metal,you’re kind of participating in something that feels like it has some import to certain groups of people, which is exciting to be part of. Whether it’s working on projects in the future that are similar to bringing to life something that has a pre-existing form or creating costumes for projects that are brand-new stories and characters, I hope that I’m always part of something that feels interesting to engage with and be part of that conversation from an audience perspective as well as a creative one.
