Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

            In 1984, Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman released the mirage comic, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” It told the story of four baby turtles who fell into the sewers and were exposed to a canister of toxic ooze. Along with their master, Splinter, the turtles grew in size and were taught by their sensei the art of ninjutsu, and take a stance protecting the city of New York from the Shredder and the Foot Clan. It sounds ridiculous, but the comic was meant to be a parody on comic book characters and storylines to begin with. But much to everyone’s surprise, the comic caught like wildfire. With the success catching on, Laird and Eastman eventually signed the rights over to allow it to become a toy franchise, cartoons, and eventually, motion pictures.

            The original “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie was released in 1990, during the height of the Ninja Turtles popularity, courtesy of the cartoon series that was airing at the time. While it does borrow elements of the cartoon, with the different color headbands, the pizza, and the personalities, the movie focused more on the darker elements from the comic, and for the most part it works. Surprisingly enough, almost everything about this film was done independently, as the people who worked on it couldn’t find a studio to help fund it, until New Line Cinema came in to help distribute the film in theaters. To this day, it still remains the best film based on the “Ninja Turtles.”

            In 1991, the public was given “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.” After the parents complaints about the last film having too much cursing and violence, the tone was drastically different from the last film. The turtles don’t use their weapons as much, the dialogue got a bit corny, and of course, there’s the infamous dance scene with Vanilla Ice. It’s not that good of a movie, but I still find enjoyment in its goofy nature.

            The third film, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in Time,” was released in 1993, and was a complete and utter farce of itself. The dialogue was worse, the costumes looked awful, the story was idiotic, and it was the least action packed out of all of them. The less said about it, the better.

            Many years after the original cartoon ended and a new animated series produced by 4Kids Entertainment brought the heroes in a half shell back into mainstream popularity, we saw the release of a new CGI animated film in 2007, simply titled “TMNT.”  Written and directed by Kevin Munroe, the new film told a new kind of story, involving the turtles going up against the Foot Clan (led by Shredder’s daughter, Karai), an army of monsters from thousands of years ago, and their immortal leader. While it never really caught on like it should have, the film has gained a massive cult following and stands as my second favorite “Ninja Turtles” film. But because the film wasn’t as big of a success as it should have been, any plans of a sequel were canned.

            Once again, as the 4Kids series wrapped up, the rights to the “Ninja Turtles” were sold to Nickelodeon, in hopes of starting up another new series, as well as a brand new film franchise…there was just one big problem: Platinum Dunes. Yes, the new film series was going to be in the hands of Platinum Dunes, the company run by Michael Bay, that’s best known for working on the “Transformers” film franchise and remakes of classic horror films that have been…we’ll say, “less than stellar.” The production of this series has led to some questionable halts, such as the decision to make the Turtles aliens instead of mutants, production of the film being shut down at one point, an early draft of the script getting leaked online, the release date getting pushed back constantly, and of course, the casting controversies.

I stated in my “Top 15 Worst Films of 2014” that I purposefully didn’t go see the movie when it came out in theaters. Not just because I was upset about what I just said, but because I was going through a period of depression, to where I didn’t want to go and make myself upset even more by seeing a film that I had low hopes for. I eventually got around to seeing the film online for free, about a year later, and…it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a terrible movie, easily the worst “Ninja Turtles” movie I’ve seen thus far, and if I did see this when it came out, it would have been on my list of worst films without hesitation. I’m saying there were some elements that I actually did find alright. For starters, I thought Megan Fox as April O’Neil was fine. She definitely tries to make this performance likable, being the eager journalist who wants to be taken seriously by her management, and they did give her more to do in this story, so I can give her credit for that. Even the actors playing the Turtles were good too. They got their personalities down and definitely do act like how they’re supposed to. I also thought it was a clever idea to make the Turtles April’s pets when she was a kid, furthering their bond with one another…that’s about all I can say that I liked about the film. Everything else, was pretty much how I’d expect it to be. First off, the Turtles are way too big; they look like the little kid version of Eric Bana’s Hulk. Seriously, how do they even move around with all that mass? I can understand Raph, but the rest of them makes it look weird. The action scenes are also very sloppy to look at, and half of the time you can’t even tell what’s going on, unless you’re at a distance. Will Arnett as Vernon Fenwick was annoying as hell and shouldn’t have been focused on as much. Splinter and Shredder’s backstory was completely prison-raped, by making Splinter also April’s pet and learning his teachings from a book about ninjutsu, so there’s no Hamato Yoshi or any real rivalry between the two. Originally, William Fichtner was casted as Shredder, but because of the backlash to this, they added scenes of some random evil looking Asian guy in the movie with him. Even if it wasn’t racially accurate, Fichtner’s character being the Shredder would have at least made sense and given us some kind of rivalry. But the biggest offender to me, was that the film is a complete rip-off of “The Amazing Spiderman” movies. BOTH OF THEM! Here’s what I mean: protagonist’s father worked for villain’s facility and was killed, main villain’s plan is to release a toxin over the city from a skyscraper, a final battle takes place where the tower falls down toward the city, and the villain wants to use the blood of our hero(es) for his own reasons! No denying it, it’s “The Amazing Spiderman,” only done completely half-assed and without any heart or respect.

Despite all the criticisms that people have made, the film was still successful at the box office, grossing almost half a billion dollars. Because of this, a sequel was put into production. As you could imagine, I wasn’t looking forward to it, because I figured it was going to be much of the same kind of bullshit as the first film. Hell, when they were going from the director of “Battle Los Angeles,” Jonathan Liebeman, to Dave Green, the director of “Earth to Echo,” my expectations were lowered significantly. But after a couple of trailers and seeing a glimpse of what the film was going to showcase, I decided to give the film a chance and be open-mined about it. So what did I think of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows?” Well, let’s look at the story.

A year after the events of the first film, April informs the Turtles that the Foot Clan and a scientist called Baxter Stockman are planning to break the Shredder out of custody. The Turtles take the call to stop them, but Shredder ends up getting away, and has a new plan to take over the world, with a new partnership and his own mutant henchmen.

Let’s start off with the things that DIDN’T work. For starters, there are some massive inconsistencies between films, such as the Foot Clan, for some reason, going from Black Ops to actual ninjas. Sure, that’s fine that they corrected that, but they don’t explain in the movie why that happened. Not even a line of exposition is given, or anything like that. Shedder’s new actor, Brian Tee, doesn’t really share any resemblance to the previous face of Shredder. In the previous film, the actor who portrayed Shredder had burnt scars over his face and was bald, whereas in this film, he’s got a few blade scars and hair. Was there something that happened in between that we missed? Same thing with Karai. What was the purpose of switching Minae Noji with Brittany Ishibashi? Hell, why even bother having Karai in these movies to begin with? She barely does anything in these two movies, she could have easily been written out of both of them and you’d have the same damn movies. And that’s the sad part, because Karai is such a great character, yet she’s reduced to being this stock henchwoman. If they had established that during Karai’s taking over of the Foot Clan, she gathered new recruits, and trained them to be ninjas, it would have been an easy problem to fix…but we don’t get that.

Then we have the new villains of the film, starting with Baxter Stockman. Now Tyler Perry’s performance, I’ll get to later, but I have to ask…why didn’t the Foot Clan use Eric Sachs from the last film? He had a stronger connection with them, he was involved in the events of the last film, and he was an established villain. They don’t even address what happened to him, or why the Foot chose Baxter Stockman instead. I don’t get it.

Now let's talk about Krang. I know a lot of people had an issue with Krang being revealed too soon in the trailers, but how the film reveals him is an even bigger problem. Krang is only in two scenes in the entire film, and his introduction scene, from the minute he started talking, felt rushed. Instead of having his appearance being built up and kept in mystery up until the climax, he shows up like we just had it not too long ago. No build up, no atmosphere, no shock, it’s just “BOOM! Look, it’s Krang! Ooh!” This is the first time that Krang is brought to film, and this is how it’s treated. And trust me when I say the scene is the WORST exposition dump that I have EVER seen in a movie. It’s just…ugh, I don’t even want to talk about it. That, and you know the robot that Krang had in the cartoon that was also teased in the trailers? Yeah, in the movie, it looks nothing like that. It just looks like some generic metallic robot armor that could have been from ANY movie. Are there any other scenes from the trailers that were cut from the actual movie you’d like to share with us, Michael Bay?

Stephen Amell as Casey Jones, I had a few problems with. While he did okay, showing the vigilante views of Casey in some regard, as well as crack a few one lines, the way he acts is far from the Casey that we’ve known from other adaptations. Look at Elias Koteas in the first and third movies. When I see that guy on screen, I see Casey Jones, the hockey stick wielding vigilante that will feed lumber to any lawbreakers that cross his path. When I look at Stephen Amell in the film, I don’t see Casey Jones. All I think is “Oh hey, it’s B-Grade Chris O’Donnell's Robin.”

Also, a lot of the film’s story is loosely based on the first season of the original cartoon, especially with a plotline involving mutagen that can turn humans into mutants and vice versa. Why does this bother me so much? Because, if they had the "Splinter is Hamato Yoshi" origin from the cartoon, that could have added to the Turtles conflict of being accepted by society in the film! But we’ve already gave that bullshit origin from the first film, so we can’t go that route, and I’m just screaming in my head “Why?!!”

*deep breath*…okay…so with all that I’ve said so far, were there things I liked about the film? Yes, there was. Much like the last film, I did think Megan Fox did fine as April O’Neil, showing us the journalist that would do anything to get the full story on something, especially stuff that can be helpful to the Turtles. While I still would have preferred someone else to play a young April, like perhaps Mae Whitman (the current voice of April in the cartoon), I give credit to Fox for trying.

As for the Turtles, the actors portraying our four brothers were actually a lot better this time around. Not only are their sizes toned down a bit, as well as their color palette, but I did buy their bond as brothers, more so than the previous film. The dialogue that they share did have me invested in them, from their one-liners to their conversations about living in the sewers were very enjoyable. I loved how they went through that storyline of possibly becoming human and being accepted among society conflicts with who they are. Also, very proud of Pete Ploszek finally getting to do both the motion capture AND voice of Leo; no Johnny Knoxville to dub him this time.

Also, Will Arnett was actually more tolerable this time around. With him being asked to take credit for the Turtles’ actions, he takes on this Hercule Satan-esque persona that I found to be quite funny. That, and he does serve a significant amount of work in the film, helping the gang out in many different scenarios. Thank you for that, movie.

Going back to Baxter Stockman, Tyler Perry’s performance was pretty enjoyable. He seemed like he was having a lot of fun as this character. You can definitely see the glee in his eyes, like he was just soaking every moment he was on screen. And he wasn’t the only one. I am of course talking about the main thing that the trailers were pushing for: Bebop and Rocksteady. Gary Anthony Williams and Stephen “Sheamus” Farrelly were clearly having a blast with these roles, and I couldn’t help but have fun with it too. Sure, they were more over-the-top than they should have been, but with the kind of tone the film was giving us, I couldn’t help but have fun with these two whenever they showed up. Hell, the two of them, along with Baxter Stockman, felt more like villains than any of the other main baddies did.

I also got a big kick out of some of the action scenes, which this time around are much better than the ones in the last film. I felt the excitement that I was meant to have in the film, from the freeway chase, to the battle on the river, and the climax on the Technodrome were all fast paced and entertaining to watch.

So with all that I’ve said, both good and bad, where do I stand on this film? Part of me really wants to hate it for all the inconsistencies and missed opportunities, another part me wants to enjoy it for its popcorn blockbuster sense of fun, and I’m struggling to find a proper balance on what to conclude on. I’ve looked at many people’s different takes on the film, and some stick to one of either side. So I’ll say…it’s a mixed bag. A very, VERY, mixed bag. I’d say think about it, and whatever conclusion you come to is completely fine with me.

Rating: 5/10