Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I'm not even quite sure where to begin with this movie. I mean, I had decent hopes for it. Leading up to it, so many people seemed to be taking it way to seriously. I mean, come on. Its about giant talking turtles who fight crime. Its not supposed to be that serious. Hoo, boy.

I guess I'll just start by saying this (spoilers ahead), the changes they made to the origin story don't make any goddamn sense, both in terms of simple logic and quality narrative structure. They completely removed any connection between Splinter and the Shredder, so say goodbye to any emotional connection or tension that that would have brought. And this version Splinter wasn't the ninja master, Hamato Yoshi or even a pet/student of Yoshi. In fact, Yoshi seems to have been omitted completely. So, how does Splinter become a ninja master himself? He reads a book. I'm not even joking. After both he and the turtles mutate he finds a book and teaches himself. And it wasn't even at the very beginning. I mean when Splinter begin teaching himself, the turtles are already walking and talking. He not only learned all of ninjitsu but also somehow mastered it, without any instruction or sparring, in less than ten years? AND he taught it to the turtles? BULLSHIT.

The turtles themselves are one of the few not-terrible parts of the movie. All of there individual personalities are right where they should be but we are also kind of short-changed on the amount of interaction they have with each other. A bunch of brothers together, getting up to shenanigans? What a great, natural way to have conflict! But no, the movie follows April way too much.

All of that is indicative of a larger problem with the writing. Both of the villains are BORING. The pacing is uneven and a lot of the dialogue is forced and ham-handed, Michelangelo was the worse in that respect. And believe me, I get it. Mikey is the loud mouth, party turtle. But is is possible (kind of necessary) that if a main character is annoying, to also be likable. Yes, it possible. Severus Snape. Perry Cox. Deadpool. These are all characters that are bad or annoying people but still likable as characters. After a few minutes of listening to Michelangelo, I just wanted him to shut the hell up.

It doesn't get any better with the villains. I don't remember the last time I watched a movie with such boring villains. Instead of just sticking with one main villain, the Shredder, we now have two...for some reason. WE have Eric Sachs, who is a rich scientist/industrialist and the Shredder, an evil ninja master with no personality. Eric Sachs is working for the Shredder for money? But isn't he already like a billionaire with a castle on a mountain and his own skyscraper?Doe he need more money? What the hell for? Shredder is the most shallow and one-dimensional out of this whole damn movie. We're not really told anything of his back story or shown any of his motivation for anything. The foot clan is also no longer a group of ninja warriors, they're...guys with guns. Completely useless guys with guns (that'll be relevant later).

They also unnecessarily tie April, Sachs and April's dad into the turtles' back story...for some reason. We don't even really meet April's father. And April is the one who saved them from the lab fire that killed her father...or wait, was it Eric who killed her father? The movie seems to confused on that point. And instead of keeping the baby turtles (like any little girl who likes animals would do) she...dumps them in the sewer? What the hell? The who thing is convoluted and doesn't make any damn sense.

April O'Neil is uninteresting and stupid. Seriously, I mean she is unintelligent. She is supposedly an educated journalist but spends so much time trying to convince he boss of a "story" of talking, crime- fighting turtles without one single goddamn lick of evidence. Vernon Fenway is apparently supposed to be the comic relief but none of his jokes are funny and his sole role in the film seems to be driving April around. And why the hell is Whoopi Goldberg in this? She had like six lines. Why is she here?

The camera-work was clichéd and chaotic. There were times when the camera was moving around too much for you to easily follow the action. There is also a serious lack of cool martial arts fights for a NINJA Turtles movie, which is not surprising when you turn their main antagonists from ninja into guys with guns. I also couldn't even begin to take the Shredder serious in the action scenes. Are those giant swiss army knives on his hands? What the hell?

Finally, the one thing, in my opinion, that sort of breaks the movie the most is that they made the turtles too damn powerful. Yes, the turtles are kind of superheroes. But wasn't being a bunch of kick-ass ninjas enough? No? You gotta give them super strength too? AND MAKE THEM BULLET PROOF!? Remember the previously said bit about the foot being a bunch of guys with guns? Yeah...you might see where I am going with this. It was bad enough to see the turtles throwing cars around and shattering concrete with punches. On some level, the audience needs to believe on some sort of fundamental level that the heroes are danger, that the threats that they face have meaning. Without that, there is no tension, no real conflict and with that...no excitement. No story.

This movie nuked the fridge.

No matter how the name Michael Bay is attached to a fantasy adaptation, people will complain anything about the project. But as a producer, does it affect much to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Surprisingly yes. As the same as the public response about the Transformers franchise, people turned out to be ranting at the wrong stuff. At the post-viewing, maybe we can accept the heavy reliance to cartoony CGI, or the large amount of explosions, or the really poor plot. The real sin of these movies is its lack of interest to its main heroes and instead focuses on the human characters. Which is a shame, because it somewhat gets it right with the turtles, their stories are more interesting than the one we ended up seeing. The film does have some rewarding moments, but it just keeps hindering us to the less interesting parts which makes it disappointing.

It is clear that if follows the same screen writing rules of the last Bay franchise. Instead of being about the Ninja Turtles, it rather centers on April O'Neil. Instead of fearing the Foot Clan, the threat would rather focus in some evil corporal manager. Any larger-than-life characters from the source material have only left out as the secondary need of the journey: the turtles are now plot devices and the Shredder is, for some reason, a henchman. I bet the fact that Casey Jones wears a mask is the reason why we can't have him in this film. For the story of April, it might only work as a subplot. There isn't enough theme or intrigue to accomplish unlike the one from its actual heroes. There is some talk about Raphael mistreating his brothers, which is a theme that was already done better in the past TMNT movies, and Master Splinter's backstory as the turtles' father, which is only presented for expository need. They don't get the development they deserve, which makes the drama in the end feels so forced and less than effective.

April's arc would have been tolerable if it gives her more moments to actually connect with the turtles, but the only information it could provide is that they're her childhood pets, she's only using those beloved characters to her job, teasing us the much interesting world beneath the sewers. The palpable respect we may give to this film is the humor. It may not be fantastic and all, but it's not bad either, at least it defines one of its personalities. The action is obviously large and destructive, well at least we get to see more ninja action. The acting is predictable: Megan Fox's humanless expressions make her April O'Neil difficult to root for. The voice and motion-capture actors worked better for having a sense of fun in their enthusiasm.

The single greatest scene of the film is when the turtles are making a tune out of an elevator sound. That is one of the reasons why we love these characters anyway. Newcomers will still convince the fans to give up nostalgia and move on to the changes, but that doesn't mean it has to diminish it as a generic/bland action blockbuster. The film just won at the box office, so definitely there will be a sequel. The only advice we could wholeheartedly give is to have more love to the heroes. We did saw that occasionally, but we hope to have more of their sewer life with their pop cultural obsession and mass consumption of pizza, plus have interesting villains, some real and not forced familial themes, and at least a solid plot since these Ninja Turtles movies hardly ever had one. The fights were the only parts that weren't tamed from them, because apparently that is what the filmmakers are mostly interested at. It just isn't enough, and as a fan, they should have focused on rebuilding its already richer world than this.

Now before I begin this review let me clear the fact that this MOVIE is aiming for the new younger audience. This movie is not focusing on aiming for the fans of the past generation. So lets look at it this way.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is directed by Jonathan Liebsman and Produced by Michael Bay. It stars Megan Fox as April O'Neil, and 4 turtles who don't look that good with the CGI. With this kind of set up, its already predictable that this would be a disaster.

As I watched this movie in a theater packed with a tremendous amount of children. I guess I could say, this movie was entertaining for me. The stars of the movie are, hands down the Turtles especially Mikey. They stole the movie in every scene they were in, and I would watch a 1 hour movie with just all of them goofing around and making jokes. However, in fact the movie often negates the fact that the turtles are the main subject in this movie, it circles it's story mostly around April O'Neil. As for her character, I found her annoying at many times. And because Michael Bay has something to do with this movie, Megan Fox had to do scenes for the "benefit' of Bay as usual. Going back to the turtles, I think that they had nailed them and captured everything that we loved about them, the movie is worth watching because of them. The Villains are one of the weak points of this film. Shredder is a very dull, boring and predictable villain. He is only there for what I believe is fan service. Other than that, his motives are unclear and the reason he is in this movie is for the battle scenes.

As for the story, it is filled with unbelievable amounts of cliché. Because of this, I had no choice but to be irritated at times or sometimes these scenes gave no effect to me whatsoever even if the main intention of the scene was entirely different. The evil plot of the villain, was downright cringe worthy, plot holes were circling from there and there. . Clichés and plot holes aside, the story is what I would imagine for children and all of us were to look it that way, then I guess I could say the plot was alright I guess. The action sequences were just OK, there were some that were interesting and some that was incredibly DIFFICULT to watch. I know Michael Bay didn't direct this, but My God. Every Michael Bay action-cliché is in this movie. The Slow Motion, Explosions, Attractive Women and the incredibly shaky camera. I almost felt dizzy watching some of the action sequences.

At the end of the day, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a great movie to watch if you want bonding times with your kids or if you're totally high or craving for some pizza. In my opinion, it won't ruin your childhood, in fact it might even remind and bring back old memories of your childhood, with the many references being made in this movie. The kids will love this movie and I recommend everyone to bring pizza while watching it.

A dull and boring villain, a mediocre plot filled with a massive amount of clichés and Michael Bay style action sequences. without the Turtles, this movie would be pure trash.

Verdict: 6.5/10

Micheal Bay produced the TMNT franchise with updated CGI and a more Transformers like action sequences with a heavy dose of cheesiness.

Reporter April O'Neil (Megan Fox) discovers the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were her childhood pets that had been injected with a mutagent by a corporation run by her late father and his partner Eric Sacks (William Fichtner.) Her cameraman Vern Fenwick (Will Arnett) tries to help her out while everyone thinks she is crazy about her rantings of vigilante turtles. Meanwhile a criminal gang led by Shredder plan to unleash a virus throughout the city.

The film is entertaining for kids and is undemanding fun. There are explosions, dramatic and over the top action sequences, plenty of quips, a comedy sidekick in Will Arnett. The film avoids the flabbiness that marred the Transformer sequels and like a McDonalds cheeseburger, it fills you up in the short term and would soon be quickly forgotten. Still nothing wrong with a bit of mindless diet of junk every now and then.

Here we go…

So Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the reboot to the ever so popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Directed by Jonathan Liebesman for some reason and produced by Michael Bay, also for some reason.. You all know the story by now. 4 mutated turtles grow up in the sewer raised by a giant rat who knows martial arts and trains them so they can protect the city from Shredder. No difference in this movie.

So the movie opens up in sort of a graphic novel type animation telling the story of the turtles which I'll admit was a nice nod to the original source material from which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came from. From there we meet April (Megan Fox) who's trying to get a story about the evil foot clan that have been terrorizing the city. She then witnesses the turtles stop them and follows them to get evidence of their existence. The turtles stop her and return to their master who says they need April's help. I won't spoil why. From there they must work together and stop Shredder from releasing a toxin on the city.

I wanted simply one thing from this movie after all the crap I've seen from it over the last few years. I want the turtles to be the turtles. I want them to reflect how they were in the 2003 cartoon preferably. A darker take but still humorous and likable. I grew up on that and the 80's cartoon and 1990's movies. Thank the lord I got that. The turtles are the best part of this movie. They deliver some funny lines although not everyone of them hit. Like you can feel that the jokes were modeled for kids which the whole movie is basically. It's like a big toy commercial. Or a Crush soda commercial. Or a Samsung phone and tablet commercial. Yeeeeah lot of product placement in this movie. Very obvious at that. Anyways as for the other characters we have April O'Neil played by Megan Fox who was alright. I really wish they worked on her dramatic screams though because those were just awful. We also have Will Arnett as her camera man who I guess is supposed to be the comic relief in this movie but literally does not have one funny joke in the whole thing even though you can feel you're supposed to be laughing but I didn't even smirk. It was like watching a stand up comic bomb his performance. Splinter was an enjoyable character. You could really see how he tied this family together.

Now if there's one thing I like in a movie it's a good villain. Did I get this? No. No I did not. Shredder has no character to him at all. In the 2003 version of him he got all this character development and I learned the motivation behind why he did what he did. In this he's literally just a guy who wants to make money. Or at least help Eric Sacks (William Fichtner) make money which is a very stupid motivation in my book. Usually villains steal money for the purpose of something bigger but in this.. they just want money. Which Eric already has because he lives in a freakin castle on top of a mountain! How much more money does he need?! Sigh.. Shredder was just so one dimensional and uninteresting. I was so let down by this.

Well what about the effects? They're actually pretty good. They did make the turtles sweat a lot though. Like A LOT. But it looked nice so I was happy about that. One downside is the CGI went down a little when interacting with humans. Like in Transformers 4. Not much to say other than those two things because I didn't focus on it much.

One last thing and I know every reviewer is saying this but it can't be said enough. The climax of this movie literally is the end of The Amazing Spider-Man only in the day time. Seriously watch The Amazing Spider-Man before you see this and see how similar it is. It's crazy.

Going in if you know this director and producer you're not expecting anything amazing. I went in with extremely low expectations and they surpassed them but only very very slightly.

I give it a 5.5/10.

The theater had a bunch of 10 year olds who thought the movie was amazing so at least they hit their target audience. But as a long time Ninja Turtles fan I left disappointed and wanting a little more. If it earns back the money maybe a sequel will be better. It won't but a guy can dream.