Hopefully you got a chance to Meet the MECH-X4 cast, or maybe you wanted some behind the scenes fun facts first. Either way, I’m loaded with MECH-X4 Fun Facts after interviews with creator of MECH-X4, Steve Marmel, and Executive Producer Anupam Nigam!
We hope that people come away from it thinking it’s a show about family, it’s a show about friendship, and it’s a show about teamwork. – Steve Marmel (left)
Before I jump into those MECH-X4 Fun Facts, I wanted to share how MECH-X4 came about. Steve Marmel thought it would be fun do a show about four kids, who happen to end up working together with a giant monster fighting robot. Pair that with Anupam Nigam’s world of serialized storytelling and director Zach Lipovsky’s passion for the nostalgic vie, and you have an amazing collaboration unfolding.
Every step of the way through development, it sort of evolved. Like, wouldn’t it be fun to actually have great special effects? Wouldn’t it be great to do it single camera and make it look like a movie? And then wouldn’t it be great, in this day and age, where storytelling is binge and serialized, wouldn’t it be cool if we could do a long story over a season? So it started with an idea, Disney went for it, and then all of a sudden, this great team started coming together and bringing everything to it. – Steve Marmel
MECH-X4 Fun Facts
- There’s a little ET. There’s a little Goonies. – Steve Marmel
We love giant robots – we both love giant robots. So obviously, were ‘yay, we get to play with a giant robot.” like that’s, that’s both of us as kids. – Steve Marmel
- Godzilla was a big influence.
I love on Transformers. I grew up on Omega Supreme, and for me it was also Godzilla. It was a big influence. In fact there are several Godzilla movies where he fights a giant robot. I made Marmel watch them. – Anupam Nigam Nigam
- When discussing episodes, they tend to “reference Lukeskywalker and Ultimate Spider-man when he was a teenage superhoer.” said Anupam Nigam Nigam
- When it comes to a male team without any girls, Steve Marmel said “We’re a serialized show. That’s the sort of engine of the show. The two brothers and the friendship, but keep watching…” They didn’t want to give too much away, but noted that it wasn’t a conscious effort to do or not. Marmel added that “As much as we know where the season is going to go, and we know who the characters are, and the universe widens. It is inclusive.”
- They do “Kung-Foo” takes, as director Zach Lipovsky calls them, in which “Once we get everything that’s written, once we get the intention down, then there’s usually a thing where the kids get to do whatever they want, and the camera rolls.” said Steve Marmel. Doing that, allowing the MECH-X4 cast to do whatever they want, in every episode “somebody does something funny, or poignant, or weird, or interesting that’s an extension of what was written” said Marmel and it is because they know the character and are free to have fun with it.
- Anupam Nigam majored in biology and bio-chemisty which has helped during the show. With Ryan have Tenopathy, they sometimes have to explain what is going on his brain. Plus, he gets injured when the robot gets injured so there is medical stuff involved. The do make up a fair amount of pseudo-science, and “have a separate set that’s just a med bay, where it has all kinds of cool scanners and medical stuff, to sort of check out Ryan, and make sure he’s okay.” said Nigam.
- The show is shot in Vancouver and the Vancouver Metropolitan area. The production schedule of MECH-X4 is shooting two half-hour episodes at once, every night, over nine days. Then, there are four to five months of special effects, like CGI and drone shots.
We’re in the Robot set three to four days, and then we’re just out in Vancouver, doing movie stuff for five days – whether it’s sunny or rainy, or, whatever it is. There’s a crew up there that just deals with it, and makes it great day in; day out, episode after episode. – Steve Marmel
- There is a method to the madness on the monster combinations on MECH-X4. With a specific mission to accomplish, each monster needs certain traits and capabilities so “we just sort of geek out and try to come up with the coolest version of what that purpose would be.” said Steve Marmel. Anupam Nigam said they have “amazing concept artists in Vancouver because sometimes we just say, well, what does an octopus and an anaconda look like together?” and they create versions of it.
- There is a very good possibility the MECH-X4 toys are on their way! Steve Marmel said “I’m pretty sure that they might wanna sell some toys on the show. I would say that if a person is focusing in on, he or she will be very happy.”
- If you are wonder if there will be a villainous MECH, Anupam Nigam said “you have to watch.”
- There are occasional references to “Game of Thrones” on MECH-X4, because it is so serialized, and this is one of Disney’s first serialized, action shows.
I do think if we reference stuff, you’ll usually find us referencing comic books, movies, action adventure stuff, or the stuff that we love; that’s what we’re passionate about. That’s what we’ll sort of talk about, and then we’ll try to infuse that into becoming a character story that turns into an action story. – Steve Marmel
- The things that powers the show is “the relationships between the kids; between the brothers and between the friends.” said Steve Marmel. There is always a mission, and that mission is to fight monsters, but MECH-X4 is more than that. “It’s sort of like how they evolve as heroes,” said Marmel. So you can count on seeing more than just robot and monster as you see the kids evolve, hopefully, into heroes themselves.
- When it came to designing the inside of MECH-X4, it was a combination of, he has a job to do and “what would a club house feel like if it was in a giant monster fighting robot,” said Steve Marmel. Over the course of the season we will see all the rooms inside, besides the ones shown in the premiere. I mean, we haven’t even seen the med bay yet! 😀
- There are several mysteries happening on MECH-X4, that give us action and storylines outside of the robot. “In season one there’s why is this person emanating monsters; how did Ryan get his powers; why did this crazy person on a monitor make this,” said Anupam Nigam.
It was a lot of fun gathering these MECH-X4 Fun Facts while chatting with Steve Marmel, who owns an impressive 27,000 comic book collection, and Anupam Nigam, who never missed an episode of Gargoyles. If you haven’t yet, check out our Interviews with the Cast of MECH-X4, and catch the one-hour premiere on November 11th, at 8:30 PM ET on Disney Channel!
I came from the one-hour world; this is my first time on a half-hour comedy. It’s my first time on a show that targets families instead of adults, so I had a little trepidation. I’d seen some of the footage… the show looked amazing, and in the third episode – which will air Saturday, November 12th – the director sent me this one quick clip of Ryan, and there’s an explosion in the head of the robot. He just goes flying across the thing, and it looked amazing. It looked like any kind of action movie you would see in the theaters, and I remember asking him ‘how did you hide the wires; how did you higher the rigs?,’ and he said there were no wires; there were no rigs. Nathaniel just did that; he was able to jump and make it look like he was being thrown across the robot. I was like, okay, this show is gonna be amazing. – Anupam Nigam
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