Why ‘The Toxic Avenger’ Has Kept Our Attention For Over 40 Years

This is an article from our newsletter “Science Goes To The Movies.” To get a story about the science of popular movies and TV in your inbox every month, subscribe here.

In the mid-1980s, “The Toxic Avenger” was a low-budget Z-movie-turned-cult classic, playing at midnight screenings to audiences eager for filth, blood, and gore.

Made by Troma Entertainment, the story takes place in the fictional town of Tromaville, in New Jersey, the state with the highest number of superfund sites in real life. “Toxie,” our titular hero—a scrawny nerd who falls into a vat of toxic waste and gains superhuman strength—uses his newfound powers and grotesque form to “clean up” the town’s bullies, drug dealers, and corruption.

Four decades later, a remake following a similar trajectory gets its release today. This time, it’s boosted by more money; star power from Peter Dinklage (“Game of Thrones”), Elijah Wood (“Lord of the Rings”), and Kevin Bacon (“Footloose”); and a slightly cleaner version of the original’s offensive humor.

Even after all this time, Toxie is still finding new audiences, with a new comic book series and video game in addition to the film remake. Why does this particular story still have radioactive legs? Behind all the blood-splattering gore Troma fans adore is a timeless message, the artists contend.

A “David And Goliath” Story

At San Diego Comic-Con in 2023, Matt Bors, founder of the political cartoon site The Nib, approached Lloyd Kaufman, a co-founder of Troma Entertainment, with an idea for a comic: an updated version of Tromaville, where town residents are dealing with a toxic waste spill from a train accident.

“It was based off the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio,” Bors says. “I come from political cartoons and the world of extreme topicality and I just thought, ‘God, that would be that would be a good origin for the Toxic Avenger of today.’”

The new Toxic Avenger comic touches on familiar topics, like quarantine, water contamination, and cleanup mismanagement—it also has aliens, which is awesome—while the new film introduces corporate villains that are also recognizable to audiences today. These include a pharmaceutical company that releases faulty products and pollution, causing Toxie’s fateful transformation, and a health insurance company that denies his claim for lifesaving medical treatment.

“It’s David and Goliath. He’s gotta stand up against a very powerful institution that is just looking to keep its boot on his neck,” says Macon Blair, the film’s director. “I think that’s relatable now, it’s relatable 10 years ago, it’s relatable a hundred years [ago]. It’s kind of universal, unfortunately.”

Comics And Comedy Tackle Environmental Stories

In every version of Toxie’s story, the devastation that creates the world our hero inhabits is what gives him the power to change it. The story feels timeless in part because it references (and perhaps pokes fun at) the long legacy of superhero stories that offer agency in the face of environmental crises as well as ways to imagine different climate futures.

Aquaman, for example, brought environmentalism into commercial superhero comics throughout the 1950s and 60s, and by the 1980s and 90s, eco-heroes, like Captain Planet, were cleaning up fictitious worlds alongside antiheroes, like Swamp Thing and Namor, and eco-villains, like Batman’s Poison Ivy.

Today, some researchers and educators turn to comics when explaining abstract climate concepts like global warming and sea-level rise. One reason is that comics and cartoons can be powerful tools for visualizing change over time and imagined futures. And humor has made its way into climate activism, with comedians showing how jokes and levity can help audiences confront and process overwhelming existential crises.

For Blair and Bors, the fun of “The Toxic Avenger”—not its tragic core—is the secret to its longevity. Bors calls the original film “the lowest brow you can go,” which might just be the perfect foundation for helping generation after generation of audiences face heightening environmental challenges.

“We’re having a fun time while we agree that something is broken and needs to be fixed,” Blair says. “I feel like you can get more distance out of that if people are chuckling along the way.”

Worth The Watch?

I’m not sure. This remake made me laugh, and Elijah Wood never phones in a performance, but it fails to take risks the way the 1984 film does. Maybe that’s a good thing, but an imitation of trash that isn’t, well, trash, gets tiring quickly.

“The Toxic Avenger” is in theaters now. Bors’ “Toxic Crusaders” comic hits stores on September 10.