Hulu’s new action comedy, “Miguel Wants to Fight,” is being sold with the same artsy gusto as Edgar Wright’s similarly inventive “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,” another film that splits the distance between slice-of-life melodrama and fantastical fight choreography. But the former’s movie-referencing, self-aware sheen betrays a heartfelt core that makes it an instant classic about the travails of youth.
The film follows Miguel (Tyler Dean Flores), a high school student who makes TikToks and short films with his friends David (Christian Vunipola), a former boxing student, Cass (Imani Lewis), a current boxer, and Srini (Suraj Partha), a combat sports enthusiast who has the motormouth of a young Quentin Tarantino. Together, the four use cosplay and choreography to recreate battles from their favorite movies and anime. But their love of fictionalized violence is tethered to their unfortunate reality. They live in a poor neighborhood where actual physical altercations are largely unavoidable. But as a unit, the four friends always have one another’s back whenever skirmishes arise.
Except for Miguel. He’s never jumped in for any of the group’s many battles. At first, this revelation stuns his friends, but their shock is only good-natured ribbing. Ultimately, they know Miguel loves them and has their back. But their reactions shake him, as does the subtle sense his father, Alberto (Raul Castillo), a boxing trainer, might be disappointed in him for this fact.
When Alberto informs Miguel their family is going to move away because his mother got a new, better-paying job, he doesn’t hear that this is a beautiful opportunity for them but sees the change as punishment. He thinks they must move to a safer neighborhood because he can’t defend himself. So, rather than telling his friends the truth, he becomes obsessed with getting into a fight, a quest the group encourages, sans David, who repeatedly insists Miguel doesn’t need to do this. Through a series of crucial rules — Miguel can’t throw the first punch and has to have a valid, justice-related reason to assault whoever the opponent is — Miguel becomes too boxed in to find a proper sparring partner. In the search, he faces troubling truths about himself while alienating those who care for him most.
“Miguel Wants to Fight” possesses both a timely authenticity and a timeless relatability. As Gen Z and Gen Alpha continue to usurp their forebears as the most coveted media demographics, we see an exciting evolution of the teen movie.
“Miguel Wants to Fight” possesses both a timely authenticity and a timeless relatability. As Gen Z and Gen Alpha continue to usurp their forebears as the most coveted media demographics, we see an exciting evolution of the teen movie.
For instance, in 1990, when New Line Cinema produced the first big screen adaptation of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” comic and former teen idol Corey Feldman (who voiced the purple-masked Donatello) was the only real young person bringing those hip anthropomorphic crime fighters to life. While humorous and memorable, their dialogue felt like a cartoonish approximation of how teens of the time might interact.
But the latest film in that storied franchise, the animated “Mutant Mayhem” from elder millennial statesman Seth Rogen and his collaborators, hews much closer to what we know to be the modern young person’s experience. That film blends references to cultural totems relevant to the audience it’s aimed at, along with nostalgic needle drops of the music from Rogen’s youth.
A trio of other millennial elders have also helped Miguel’s story to the big screen. Veterans of “The Ringer” and popular Twitter users Shea Serrano and Jason Concepcion penned the screenplay, and it was directed by Oz Rodriguez (Netflix’s “Vampires vs. the Bronx”), himself a veteran of “Saturday Night Live’s” Digital Shorts. These Very Online creators have a believable tether to the current generation that Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers may have struggled with when making popular media about the kids that came after them. Or the younger generations document themselves endlessly and have their entire beings inexorably bound to the popular culture they consume.
The film dramatizes Miguel’s journey with loving homages and interludes inspired by “One Punch Man,” “The Matrix,” and the movies of martial artist Bruce Lee. But Rodriguez and company are using the grammar of the action films they loved in the past as a bridge between their own upbringings and those of the next generation of kids. They find a commonality in their connection to these big screen fights: how Rogen grafted 1990s bops from Blackstreet and M.O.P. to Ninja Turtles using smartphones and talking about K-Pop.
“Miguel Wants to Fight,” though making a much smaller cultural footprint than “TMNT,” is still worthy of a look. It’s funny and thrilling, but most importantly, it feels honest, raw and warm. Common ground between the old and the young may have some of us who remember Pepsi Blue and a VH1 that predates “Love and Hip Hop” should a war between the generations ever break out.
“Miguel Wants to Fight” is streaming now exclusively on Hulu.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, “Miguel Wants to Fight” wouldn’t exist.