If it's not a good game or catholic...who do you call?... why Pokematic "hi."
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS CRUCIAL SPOILERS TO THE MOVIE! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Before I review this movie, I need to establish a little back story. First, I'm a fan of the TMNT franchise. I love the 80s cartoon, I liked the 2000s 4kids cartoon, up until they got weird in season 3, I love the new 2013 version on Nickelodeon, I loved those live action puppet Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, etc. I'm a fan. So naturally, I'm well aware of the TMNT multi-verse and how every series is it's own parallel universe and all universes are separate as explained in Turtles Forever.
I'd also like to point out that I'm rather familiar with how Bay, ehhem "rapes" beloved Saturday morning cartoons as seen by the Transformers movies. I was never a big fan of Transformers and aren't really today. I've seen a couple episodes here and there and had a couple of the toys as a kid, but they never really connected with me. I've also only really seen Bays first Transformers movie. I've seen some of the second one, but never fully through. However, I do know this, Bay did a rather terrible job with the Transformers movies since they focused more on LeBuff than they did the Transformers. Also, I'm pretty sure Bay screwed up their origin story. Don't quote me, but I'm pretty sure he did. With that in mind though, Transformers has always been the same origin story to my knowledge, so if you change their origin, it's not faithful.
However, as I pointed out with the whole Turtles Multi-verse thing, you technically can make change the origin story of the turtles while still being a faithful TMNT adaptation. Of the 4 versions of TMNT that I'm familiar with, 2 of them had Splinter being the pet rat of Hamato Yoshi (puppet movies and 2000s) and the other 2 had Splinter actually be Hamato Yoshi (80s and 2013-Nick), all of which are cannon to their own universe. Also, how each character is portrayed and the tone of the series is drastically different between universes. For reasons such as these, I will generally excuse any deviation from an established TMNT universe and just call this one "the Michael Bay universe," because this really is just another parallel universe in the mythos of TMNT. So long as they Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Rafael, they trained under Master Splinter, they are turtles that mutated into human-turtle hybrids and know martial arts. Luckily someone stopped Bay from making them aliens. That would have been bad. Now for the full review.
So what can I say about Bay's TMNT, well, it's definitely not the worst incarnation of the turtles I've seen. I mean, there's been some really BAD incarnations; Next Mutation and Fast Forward anyone? Yeah I saw half an episode of Next Mutation and said done. 4Kids was already loosing me with the whole "intergalactic war between the triceriton and something else," and Fast Forward where they go into the future just was like "no." So what do I mean by "it's not the worst incarnation"? Well I'll explain that in the following.
But first, a quick synopsis of the turtles and villains back stories so that there is no confusion. So April O'Neil's father and this other guy worked on a project to recreate this cure-all mutagen that cures any disease, and they were testing it on 4 turtles and a rat. The project was called "Project Renaissance," because back in the dark ages there was an evil Japanese dictator that poisoned the water supply, and an alchemist created a cure all that saved Japan and lead into the renaissance. This is likely why the turtles they were testing on were named after renaissance artists and scientists. Turns out the other scientist was working with The Shredder to create this cure-all so that they could poison the world and sell the cure-all and rule the world. Since April's dad was a chief scientist on the project, April was allowed in to see the project as a little girl. April's dad found out about the evil plot and tried to destroy all the work by fire. April saved the turtles and rat and dropped them down a storm drain into a sewer. Now that the turtles are found to still exist, the scientist wants to take the turtles blood and extract the mutagen so he and Shredder can carry out their evil plan. All caught up, good, now lets delve into the review.
First I'll talk about what I liked about it. First and foremost, the humor. Oh man, is this movie hilarious. It's not like other movies where they try to be funny but kind of fail and it's worth a chuckle. No, this is really funny. Mikey is the source of much of the humor, as he should be, with Don providing some back-up humor. There's also some in jokes as well. Most notably, when the other reporter guy says "so they're heroes in a half shell," my brother and I unanimously said "turtle power" in reference to the 80s theme song. "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, heroes in a half shell, turtle power." There's also a scene where the turtles have to go up to the top of a skyscraper and they take the elevator, so to pass the time they start beetbox free styling. That was quite funny.
Second, this movie has some serious tension and action. It's Michael Bay, he likes action and destruction as much as Quentin Tarantino likes blood and gore. There's some big budget action here. Also, there's some serious tension going on. The foot isn't an army of ninja that are lead by the Shredder and want to take over the world by force, they want to poison the world and sell the antidote to the people. That's some pretty serious tension right there. I haven't seen tension like that since Turtles Forever when Shredder wanted to destroy Turtles Prime and all subsequent TMNT universes after it. There are some pretty high stakes here.
Another thing I really liked is that they did a rather good job of balancing the serious and the funny. The thing I like most about 2013-Nick turtles is that is strikes this perfect blend of serious and silly. While Bay's didn't really strike the same "perfect blend," it got a rather nice blend. Don't get me wrong, I like the silly 80s turtles where Shredder and Crang are incompetent and everything is fun and games, and I like the 2000s turtles where everything is all serious except for some comic relief by Mikey, but it's the balance that makes 2013-Nick and Bay's work.
It's got some really good things going for it, unfortunately, it also has some rather bad things as well. Now I mentioned that I won't nit-pick all the differences between this universe and all the others, but there are some glaring discontinuities that are present. First off, there is no Hamato Yoshi. Yeah, Hamato Yoshi, the martial arts master that either trained the turtles or who's pet rat that learned from watching him is nowhere to be scene. In this universe, the rat that was just a lab rat. When the turtles and rat escape to the sewer, they mutate into their human-turtle/rat creatures, and splinter wonders how he will keep his sons safe. Well, he stumbles upon a book on ninjutsu and teaches himself ninjutsu and later his sons. Well, it's really difficult to teach yourself ANYTHING from books alone, especially martial arts. You need a master. In all the other versions, there's a master teaching the turtles, but here they're taught by an amateur from a book. It just doesn't meld well. It all worked out, but it's missed.
Speaking of lack of Hamato Yoshi, Bay kind of screwed up the Karai character. In every version of turtles that I'm familiar with that has Karai, she is the daughter of Hamato Yoshi but Shredder adopted her and she follows him. This adds a lot of depth to her nature vs nurture aspect. In this universe though, Karai is just a general. No Hamato Yoshi to be the biological father of this adopted daughter of the most evil person in the world. Shredder doesn't even refer to her as daughter. From her first scene, I knew she was Karai, but her name isn't even mentioned until over an hour into the film, and it's just kind of in passing. Karai is a really interesting character, and reducing her to just a general is a little insulting. Just use Hun, or make up your own high level general. No one will notice. My brother pointed out that it could be because of a possible sequel, but without Hamato Yoshi, there's really no way to bring the "biological father vs adoptive father" conflict into the movie.
One character that we're severely lacking in is Casey Jones. Granted, he's not the most important character in the series and you can tell a story without him, but Casey is awesome. He's basically the human Rafael and is a great companion for the turtles. Plus, in many incarnations, he's the love interest for April. While not a crucial aspect in most incarnations of the turtles since it's just a sub-plot in most cases, but since this is basically April's movie, that would have been rather important. I'll get to the "April's movie" aspect a little later. Actually, I'll do it right now since I've run out of characters to talk about.
So what do I mean by "this is April's movie"? Well, it starts out by focusing on April trying to uncover the secret of who the vigilantes that are stopping the foot clan are. Not uncommon, but after she finds out who the turtles are, there's a lot of time spent on her finding out what the turtles are and how it's kind of ruining her career, and little is given to the turtles in the mean time. Now we get back story delivered by the main villain of this movie, the other scientist, NOT SHREDDER. Yeah, the other scientist I argue is the real villain of this movie, not Shredder. I'll get to that later. But yeah, after we get the back story, even more screen time to April. April O'Neil gets more screen time and development than the turtles. It's not nearly as bad as Transformers focusing significantly more on Shia LaBeouf than it did on the Transformers, but April does get more screen time than the turtles. If you're going to do that, call the movie "April and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."
So with April as the main character, they can't make Shredder the main villain. In this movie, I'll argue that the other scientist is the main villain. He get's way more screen time than Shredder, way more lines than Shredder, and seems to be running the operation, not Shredder. The Shredder isn't even referred to as Oroku Saki, just "The Shredder." I guess it is only right that Shredder isn't the main villain if the turtles aren't the main characters, but it's annoying.
So what's the verdict? Well, it isn't the worst TMNT version I've ever scene. It's funny, the characters are entertaining, and the action and serious is good. It's better than next mutation and fast forward. Then again, it's not the best version of the turtles. It removes and dumbs down some rather crucial characters to the TMNT mythos and focuses to much on April for a movie called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Where do I rank it? I'll put it in the same general ranking of the live action puppet movies. It's worth checking out if you're a big fan of TMNT and want to see this universe. I'd say rent it.
Before I go, I have some things I'd like to talk about that I'm sure people will be complaining about.
First off, the character designs. Yes, the turtles don't have their somewhat iconic large snouts like in the 80s cartoon, live action puppet movies, or next mutation, but 2000s turtles and 2013 turtles don't really have the large snouts either. Plus in the original comics, their snouts were rather pointy, not round. Every turtle design is different, live with it. The only complaint I would have is with Splinter's design, but that's just because a somewhat realistic looking rat-man is creepy. I'm really not that upset with the character designs.
Another thing that might annoy people is the whole back story of the turtles, about how they were part of an experiment and weren't just normal turtles and rat/human that stumbled upon a broken canister of mutagen, and how April's dad was involved in their creation. Well, in the 2013 turtles, the mutagen comes from an alien race and April is the key to making retro-mutagen. Crazier things have happened in the TMNT mythos, get over it. The only thing to get angry over is "I learned ninjutsu from a book and now I'm a master." Everything else, it's just the universe that they live in, there's multiple different back stories and this is just one of them.
One last thing people might get angry over, and I'll admit that it did rub me the wrong way, is how the foot clan came to be and why they call themselves "The Foot." Yeah, in some they're an ancient Japanese gang that goes all the way back to Feudal Japan with the modern Foot lead by Oroku Saki aka The Shredder, and other times it's what Shredder calls his robot ninjas. Well in this one, they are "The Foot," and "they call themselves 'The Foot' because they'll 'stomp you out'" or something like that. While it isn't always explained why they call themselves "The Foot," "they'll stomp you out" or whatever they said isn't really that good of a reason, kind of stupid for how serious they are in this universe. This would be fine in 80s turtles, but it feels a little out of place in this universe. I'm not really complaining, that could just be what the reporter thought. Neither Shredder, Karai, or anyone from the Foot said that, but it still feels a little weird. Oh well, it's the universe.
There's some things to get legitimately angry over, other things, it's just the universe they live in. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
Can't get enough of TMNT reviews? Well check out review for Turtles Forever exclusively at bitlanders.
PS: Without this movie saying "so this guy [Shredder] is a robot Samurai," I don't know how long it would have taken me to connect the dots of "Shredder is a samurai, the turtles are ninjas, and ninjas and samurai are sworn enemies." I feel bad for not catching onto that sooner.
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