Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a sacred thing for me and the moment I found out that Michael Bay was producing a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, I was dreading it because Bay is known for immense action scenes filled with guns and massive explosions and I personally thought that this would detract from the pure Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles elements that those that grew up on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles loved.  However, I was encouraged by my mother to go and see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because if I found it to be as bad as I was expecting it to be then it would bring some variety to my reviews as I have a tendency to pick books and films that I roughly know I will like and very rarely venture out of my comfort zone.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the 2014 science fiction action comedy based on the franchise of the same name directed by Jonathon Liebesman.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles stars Megan Fox (Transformers), Alan Ritchson (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire), Jeremy Howard (Mighty Med), Pete Ploszek (Parks and Recreation), Noel Fisher (The Twilight Saga - Breaking Dawn Part 2), Will Arnett (Arrested Development), Danny Woodburn (Bones), William Fichtner (Prison Break), Johnny Knoxville (Jackass), Tony Shalhoub (Cars), and Whoopi Goldberg (Sister Act).  A major selling point for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that they used for the marketing was Michael Bay acted as a producer which caused major panic across the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles loyalists.

Rating: 5

Recommended To: Bay fans - lots of visual bubblegum

Favourite Characters: Raphael - will always be my favourite

Favourite Part: Raphael: I just...uh, uh...if this is our last moment together, I just want you guys to know I'm sorry!  I'm sorry I was so hard on you!  Ugh.  Every time I pushed you, I...I threatened you, I yelled at you, I pushed you beyond your limits, it's because I believe in you!  I believe in each one of you!  I believe in you spirit and your intelligence and your potential!  And every time I talked about walking away it was because I was scared!  I just didn't think I was good enough to stand next to you and call you brothers, and say to you, I love you! I love you guys so much!

Good Points: The turtles; the introduction scenes; lots of action scenes

Bad Points: Too much focus on the human characters; Shredder; very little to the plot; NO CASEY JONES!!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles begins with April O'Neil (Fox) working as a reporter for Channel 6 who is stuck doing the fluff pieces but is trying to venture out into something more serious and is researching a gang called the Foot Clan who are terrorising New York.  When she is at the docks one night following interviewing a dock worker about the Foot Clan, she witnesses them at work, unloading chemicals from a ship; as she is spying on them using her phone, a shadowy figure, who turns out to be Raphael (Ritchson) out of the sewers against Splinter's (Woodburn as motion capture and Shalhoub as voice) wishes, takes out all of the Foot Clan.  When she returns to work the next day, her boss (Goldberg) and her co-workers (one of whom is Arnett) don't believe her.  Meanwhile the Foot Clan attack a subway station in order to lure out their attacker from the previous night, April runs to the station to gather evidence on both the Foot Clan and the vigilante but is taken hostage as well.  When the vigilantes turn up and defeat the Foot Clan, taking out the lights as well so no one sees them, they disappear again but April follows them and photographs them; in doing so, she finds out that the vigilantes are in fact mutant turtles, Raphael, Leonardo (Ploszek as motion capture and Knoxville as voice), Donatello (Howard), and Michelangelo (Fisher).  Though they delete the photo from her phone when she faints, she snaps another when they leave, hearing their names as they return to the sewer.  And so, adventure ensues as April digs up all she can on the Turtles and the Foot Clan.

The Turtles were a wonderful design in my opinion because it brought a sense of reality to them as adding the odd bit of clothing to these giant turtles brought a bit more to each character, making them more identifiable instantly without looking at the colour of their mask and brought their personality to the surface as well.  The designs were true to character in opinion; Raph - big, burly brute with the scars and nicks in his shell to prove he is the first to jump into the fray; Donnie - the techy-geek with the gadgets and a leaner frame in comparison to his brothers because he leans slightly more towards his gadgets than training; Leo - the dedicated traditionalist who shows respect to the craft through meditation as well as physical training; and Mikey - donning surfer/skateboarder type clothing which highlights his youth and also implies that he tends to be more of a slacker in comparison to his brothers, wanting to skateboard around the sewers rather than train.  It expressed their individual personalities better in my opinion and implied that a lot of thought went into these designs rather than designing one turtle then changing the mask colour.

The Turtles of this film kept true to the Turtles' characters I grew up with which I was pleased about even if their origin was tweaked because it showed some respect to the franchise at least and the fans that follow it.  All of the scenes with the Turtles were my favourite parts because they brought the humour and all the normal TMNT themes (family, loyalty) to the film that the human characters didn't bring in my opinion who were much more prominent.

If you're looking for something with a lot of action sequences and visual bubblegum to keep you entertained then like any Michael Bay film, this is right up your street as once it gets going after it's introduced a number of characters, the fighting, chases, and explosions rarely stop.  Like I said, it's visual bubblegum so my brain wasn't overexerted and I could watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles without being overloaded with a complex plot.  However, this did detract from the plot of the film and if these were sequences weren't present then it would not be a very long film at all and there would be very little to the plot.

Apart from the Turtles, my favourite bit in the film was the introduction which was a stylised piece of animation much like an interactive comic book.  I found it extremely simple but wonderfully effective and a tribute to the origins of these Turtles.  It also introduces the new Turtles and Splinter designs where you can instantly tell the difference between each turtle and that Splinter is an intimidating character even though his is their father and loves the Turtles.  It is one of my favourite pieces of animation now because of its stylised look and simplicity and may be one of many pieces I may use as reference while working on my own, albeit lame attempt, at animation.

I will always love Raph, that is a fact that has been true for as many years I have loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because I love his personality the most out of the four turtles as he's gruff, brave, ill-tempered on occasion, but loves his family and friends deeply; there's a squishy centre to this hard shell (wink, wink).  What I find most interesting about Raph is that love drives him and this is consistent in every incarnation; even when he falls out with his brothers, especially Leo, he will stand up for them and protect them to his last breath, being the first one to jump into the fight.  On top of the love that drives him, he is inherently sarcastic no matter the situation while two of his brothers tend to take the situation seriously and the other jokes around all of the time and I can identify with this because I am a weird amalgamation of Raphael and Michelangelo, as I have been informed by my friends and family.  Out of the four actors who did the motion capture for the Turtles, Alan Ritchson was the only one I knew of because of Smallville and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire where he portrayed Arthur Curry/Aquaman and Gloss respectively and he made each character interesting in their own ways.  It's not just loyalty to the franchise that drives my love for Raphael, Ritchson delivers a great performance as Raph in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and I wish he was in it more, along with the other Turtles.

I have many problems with this film, no matter how much I like it.  One problem is vital though, there was too much focus on the human characters - April, Vern, and even Eric Sacks - and not enough on the titular characters.  Vern is a bumbling buffoon which is funny but not the same as Mikey or Donnie goofing around together and annoying Raph.  I have to be completely honest and say it felt like it was basically The Megan Fox Show featuring some animated turtles and while I understand that she is a draw, the Turtles shouldn't have played second fiddle in their own film.

Maybe it's just me, though my mum did agree with me when I asked her, but I found the Shredder to be very Megatron-like with his voice and his final appearance in his armour which though loyal to the other incarnations of the Shredder, it was extra sharp while the classic Shredder just has a few spikes sticking out of the armour on his forearms, a bit like the Christian Bale Batman.  Though I enjoyed the fight between the Turtles and the Shredder but it still felt like a regurgitation of a Transformers fight with the Shredder looking like Megatron.  Maybe Michael Bay needs to step down from Transformers because it seems to rule his life.

Another problem I have is that there was a lot in this film that detracted from the plot, what little there was.  As I've said previously, if you were to take every single action sequence and explosion out of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to find the plot then you would find very little to watch which is a shame because as a franchise, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is rich with stories, varying from the mundane to the extraordinary.  While the action sequences were visual bubblegum, they eventually overloaded the film in my opinion.  On top of that, April and the Turtles as well as Splinter being linked before the latter two were even mutated; I found it to be very convenient for the plot and the film because it inevitably made the entire story revolve around April, further detracting from the plot and the titular characters.  Personally, I prefer the other origin stories from the franchise, Splinter being the pet rat of a ninjitsu master and finding the Turtles before they were mutated or even when Splinter was the ninjitsu master himself but obviously, this is just a personal preference, yet it could have given more focus to the Turtles and Splinter instead of April.

This may be a silly reason to have a problem with this film but Casey Jones wasn't even mentioned at all and other than Raph, he is my other favourite character and it just wasn't the same dynamic that I enjoy in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise.  I do hope they follow through on their plan to bring Casey into the sequel to this film because he would have brought some of the typical Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles humour that was missing.  Goongala!

Raphael: I just...uh, uh...if this is our last moment together, I just want you guys to know I'm sorry!  I'm sorry I was so hard on you!  Ugh.  Every time I pushed you, I...I threatened you, I yelled at you, I pushed you beyond your limits, it's because I believe in you!  I believe in each one of you!  I believe in you spirit and your intelligence and your potential!  And every time I talked about walking away it was because I was scared!  I just didn't think I was good enough to stand next to you and call you brothers, and say to you, I love you! I love you guys so much!

This is one of those moments I expect from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film when Raph has fallen out with his brothers and is something I love every time.  It is also one of the reasons that I love Raph because it illustrates my point that there is a soft centre to his hard character and that family is important to him.  Even if it means the others make fun of him, he's not afraid to say this, even if he's a bit embarrassed once it has all been said, because it is true that he loves his family and believes in them, something that draws me to each adaptation as I want to see how they show this part of Raph's personality, something they inevitably do.

This was an action-filled adaptation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles story and though the action detracted from the plot in places in standard Michael Bay fashion, it was enjoyable and a good burst of visual bubblegum to cause a distraction.  It would have been better for me if Casey was in it and there was more on the Turtles because they seem to play second fiddle to April; I found their design interesting and made them more realistic in comparison to previous incarnations and the introductory cartoon animation is now one of my favourite pieces of animation because it was simple yet wonderfully stylised like an interactive comic book.  If you want something with lots of action sequences and quirky then watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

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