Golden Axe Interview: Liam McIntyre on Adaptations — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Oh, I just did magic. Yeah. Why for magic? Don't love that. Why for magic? Earth magic. We're flipped around. Okay, now jumping. Okay, now we got it. We're good. Okay. Okay. Oh, I'm already bad at it. Oh, hello there. Hi, Tom Jorgensen from IGN here.

[00:13] I'm hanging out with Liam McIntyre, Axe Battler himself from Golden Axe. Boy, you're here. How you doing, Liam? I'm doing very well. Well, it depends if you mean about the game or not. Like, as a person, doing great. In the game, Nick reviews. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're getting our feet under us.

[00:26] We are playing a little classic Golden Axe while we talk about the new Golden Axe, which is so much fun. Liam, first of all, the show is out there now at this point. Yes. What is the reception to Golden Axe?

[00:38] It's been great. We've had great reviews. People have found it very funny. Oh, here we go. Get the magic. Sorry, this is probably my favorite character. That and the backwards pinball. Yes.

[00:50] Here we go. Oh, yes. Okay. All right. We'll do a little magic. A little magic. Oh, I've got your rideable base. That's all right. I'm sure Gilius wouldn't mind. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't. He would definitely.

[01:02] We love that dude. Oh, I know. I've never been so moved by an animated weird creature. Obviously, reviews have been really great. The show is hilarious. Thank you.

[01:14] As we sit here playing this, as I sit next to somebody holding a controller and playing a side-scrolling crawler, it is a really good time, and it makes me think, here goes my magic again. I just love it. I just love the way it works.

[01:26] Oh, here we go. I got my house. Okay, you're busy. Here we go. What I was going to ask is, like, what is your relationship to, like, couch co-op or multiplayer games? Like, how important have those been to you?

[01:38] I mean, I guess, to put it one way, I remember playing this game with my best friend. He was closer to our school, so when school was finished and his mom was working or something like that,

[01:50] he had the, in Australia we called him a Megadrive, I guess the Genesis game? Yeah, yeah. the Genesis the Sega Genesis the Sega Mega Drive as we mispronounce it oh cool here we go our king

[02:02] our magic we love it our guys our people no no come get some get some get it my brother loves that stuff my dad took us to Disney World so obviously the expectation

[02:14] is to be excited to go to the amazing Disney World you've heard about everywhere in Australia and then the hotel or motel I think that we were in had a had a Ninja Turtles games and I'd never

[02:26] held quarters before all the terms felt very exotic and so you had to change for like American quarters yeah that was fun but it was more like dad was like alright the bus for Disneyland is coming

[02:38] and I was like but I'm playing Turtle and he's like but who cares he's like you know I'm like but this is all I want to do and so I was like my dad was probably like what why are you getting all these

[02:50] tickets to Disneyland you don't even want to go I was like I just want to play the game and like that was a whole season of side-scrollers like final final fight yeah and then there was

[03:02] I played a lot of The Simpsons yeah a classic there a classic X side yeah of course that awesome I actually I would have forgot about that I actually played it maybe two months ago Yeah so I mean they had a little bit of everything

[03:16] but it just works. Like, it's great. So, yeah, look, in terms of the Golden Axe and all, I mean, it's crazy to me that Axe Battler was my main. You know, he was the guy

[03:28] I was like, oh, this is cool, Conan, dude. Yeah, yeah. You know, so, to be like, here I am, like, this is your guy 30 years no more years later an upsetting amount

[03:41] of years later being being this this badass um and in such a fun show with so many amazing I this is really amazing did you set the on fire

[03:53] I might have and I apologize for that earth magic this feels appropriate there you go fix it I know you have an incredible like Lisa Gilroy Danny Cooney Carl Tarr the list goes on and of course Matthew Reed

[04:05] who's still counting his Emmys from last year I know I thought he was counting down that high I definitely don't we did like a press day and I hadn't met Matt before and I also was like

[04:17] I don't know if I know your work and I do obviously if I wasn't thinking about it I was like so you know what are you up to right now Matthew Reed he's like oh you know a little bit busy got some Emmys to like go for

[04:29] like oh good luck with that I hope whatever it is you've done is good and I was like oh you could be the most successful actor of all time I guess that's one of the things that's one of the options available. But yeah, he's so good in this. He's hilarious. Why don't you go first?

[04:45] Have a trip on the first try! Have you got a chance to see many episodes yet? I've seen the premiere, which is so incredible, and I really love what it's setting up. One of the things that I asked Matt Reece,

[04:57] if he could have his buddy Conan O'Brien playing any character in the show, he gave me a great answer, which is he thinks that Conan should play Gilius' father, which I think that sort of bickering energy would be perfect.

[05:09] I want a second season for a lot of reasons, but I now want it specifically for that reason. It's pretty far up my list of reasons why I want a second season as well. But now I've got to throw that to you. If you could choose any actor to play your character that acts as Dad, who would you choose?

[05:27] Billy Crystal. Billy Crystal? Okay, great. I don't know no it's fine you don't need this who cares Billy Crystal that's a perfect I don't have access to him so if anyone if Joe Chan was like oh sweet you can get Billy Crystal

[05:39] I can't I can't you gotta hook up with that I was like I don't know but he's very funny and I think having having a man like Billy Crystal be X Badlands dad would be hilarious that is definitely

[05:52] a different way than I would have gone what do you think my two well my two I was trying to keep it in the world of action heroes with some sort of connection to you or this character. So the Wolverine of it all

[06:05] is like a Hugh Jackman playing the dad might be kind of sick. I want him to be the better brother. The better... Oh, that would be pretty hilarious. Ash is like, I'm a really famous hero in Yuria. And he's like,

[06:17] but you not this guy And it like Oh man this guy again A little close And then the other one you know again with keeping it in the fantasy sort of legacy like, I think Dolph Lundgren.

[06:29] Oh, man, yeah. Dolph Lundgren was kind of fun as well. You better not be another mini-bot. You better be the final one. What is the most amount of time that you have spent playing a video game in one minute? I don't know if I want to answer that.

[06:41] Oh, now you have to. You're on IGN right now, man. You're not going to embarrass yourself. I have played Civilization from before it was set up to Dust where I was

[06:53] definitely like good oh dear I might have a problem I also what else did I do I have also played Ultima 7 possibly for days and

[07:06] I mean I just finished Wolverine and that was I invested in that very heavily yeah I was like because I've got this film I'm going to go to tomorrow and I was like if I don't finish it now, I'll never finish it.

[07:18] You rolled credits. I pretty much just powered through it. Yeah. And I was, but yeah, I would say, I think, I think Civ, because just one more turn there. Yeah. Yeah, that was a,

[07:30] was probably not a healthy amount of gaming. So, back to Gold Massaloon here. So, one thing that I love as somebody that's both a fan of video games and you're,

[07:42] you're going to get through the credits. I know it. I just know it. One of the things that I enjoy most as both a fan of movies and of video games is the fact that over the last few years, we've really seen game adaptations sort of find their footing

[07:56] and more intelligently adapt these games into a different medium. As a fan yourself, do you see these adaptations doing anything specific that seems to be making them better as a whole?

[08:08] I think with Fallout and Resident Evil and this, and lots of us. Every time I'd watch a video adaptation after a certain period of time,

[08:20] I was like, I was this. Now you're showing it to me. I already did it. I was the one that saved the day. You're now showing me a perfectly fine version of the thing I did.

[08:33] And it just didn't feel like... I wasn't sure who it was for. If you don't know anything about the game, you probably don't get it. It wasn't done in a way that was like, hey, enjoy this. it was done for fans of the game but those people

[08:45] had already played the game so they were already done this and so they'd kind of already seen it in a way that was maybe more compelling was like you know even though like you're like Last of Us incredible game one of the best games ever and but they still

[08:58] freshened it up like there was still stuff inside the show where I was like wait oh but it wasn't like for the sake of it it was still really interesting so hey production value telling a good story getting the creators involved

[09:10] Fallout is a great format because you can tell, you know, it's that vault, you know, it's that side of the story, or it's that part of America, or whatever it might be, and you know, there's a lot of those Resident Evils sort of doing its own, you know, it's doing its own thing, so they've

[09:25] worked out how to a better way of telling using the IP I guess is probably what it is And Golden Ash does that very smartly as well because it like it building on a mythology that maybe isn super

[09:37] super deep, but it's there and it gives you a jumping off point that you guys do so well. Yeah, I think that's why, what I think is the charm of this is it is, it's like, it's such a fun world,

[09:49] but it is, you know, it's all that's time, you know, it's a crazy world that just gives you enough, which is a really great way to tell a story when the world is interesting

[10:02] but not super canon-wise fleshed out. You have a lot of fun. I think for us, it was great. Well, Michael Murns, Joe Chandler, and all those guys, A, they're hilarious, but they love...

[10:14] They're nerds. We're trying to organize a game night, like a board game night. There's a real deal. And so they respect it. All of us at Outrageous have gone through before Nerdy was cool, before that the MCU was a thing.

[10:27] We know the cost of being in herds, so we respect the people that have made these shows and done these things. So I like that our show doesn't make fun of Golden Axe. It doesn't mock it. It doesn't do it in bad faith.

[10:39] It loves it, but it knows how to enjoy it. They know that it's fun. I think if I remember correctly, at the end of the game, don't you come out of the arcade as these characters? Don't they get out of the actual game

[10:51] and then come into the real world? Maybe. I don't know if in the original or in a later one. I feel like the last shot of the whole game, if you finish it, is them walking down a city street.

[11:03] Check that out, everybody. The Barbarian. His mother was killed by death at a... And yet, tragic end. And all that, it's in the show. Even these little tidbits of these little...

[11:15] That's the most simple tragic origin for a hero. But it's in there, and they honor it, but they have a great time. is like an episode that's basically about that. Yeah. About who has the most trauma to be the death warrior. Yeah. You know, so it's a fun and funny, like, way to tell a story,

[11:31] but it still respects the subject matter. And I think, so if you like the game, you know, I wouldn't have wanted to come to this and be like, oh, you're just using this as like a, like to step on, do something funny.

[11:44] It's very, it's very well represented. Yeah, it goes, we love this. If you loved it, you'll love this too. And it's really fun. but it is like what's cool about it is it's filled with action and it's filled with like really like the animation

[11:56] is cool as hell and it's like you know there's wild set pieces and stuff like that so it's still it still does fantasy action it's not just like sit around a campfire making jokes kind of stuff it's got something

[12:08] for everybody well Liam that's our time that is our time there's Gillywood there he goes I love how everyone someone's they've all been killed by someone someone's relative has been killed by death it's a classic It's a classic inspiration.

[12:21] Liam, thank you so much for coming in. Golden Axe is streaming on Paramount+. Now, we have plenty more fanfests coming up. Don't go anywhere. Pretty good. Yeah, we're going to be bleeding out of our eyes until the sun comes down. Yes. Until it goes down.

[12:33] Until it comes down, until it goes down. I don't know. However the sun works. Yes, however the sun works. Let us know in the comments how the sun works.