Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016)

Director: Dave Green

Cast: Megan Fox,  Will Arnett, Stephen Amell, Laura Linney, Tyler Perry, Brian Tee, Stephen Farrelly, Gary Anthony Williams

Back when I was an 80’s kid being brought up on a steady diet of cartoons, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon that aired circa 1987 was required viewing. There was an excitement to that intro song; it still rings in my head every time I talk about the turtles. When I first caught a glimpse of how the turtles were going to look on Steve Barron's Teenage Mutnat Ninja Turtles (1990), I couldn’t believe they had actually brought the turtles to life! The talented individuals at Jim Henson Muppet Workshop helped make the first live action turtles film a huge success at the box office. The combination of animatronics and actors in suits worked like magic. It’s been more than 25 years since that first Turtles film and the way films are made have changed in a huge way. Thanks to the advent of computer generated images, any crazy idea conceived can come to cinematic life, even pulsating alien brains from dimension X! Want a half warthog half human creature to terrorize your heroes? No problem! Anything goes if you can think it up! And this is something that the filmmakers behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows take full advantage of.

This time around the Turtles have to fight Shredder, the foot clan, mutants and evil aliens who are hell bent on conquering earth! They also have to decide if they want to stay turtles or turn into human beings. Will they choose to turn into humans, or will they fight evil as their true selves?

One of the few problems this new film has is that it isn’t all that original. The idea of the mutants turning into “regular human beings” has been played out in the X-Men films. Dimensional portals opening up in the middle of New York City was the blue print for Marvel’s The Avengers (2012), in fact, if we’re going to get right down to it, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016) plays with similar themes already seen in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991). So this one doesn’t get any extra points in the originality department. One original element the film does have is that it plays with the notion of the Turtles leaving their anonymity behind and emerging into the real world, letting everyone know exactly who they are, but I think that’s about as original as we get here. What it does excel in are the action sequences and the special effects which are top notch in my book. The film is designed to keep you entertained for every single second screen time, one cool moment pops up right after the next. There’s this cool chase sequence down a highway, in which the Turtles are trying to stop Shredders escape which is just awesome. The turtle wagon is freaking sweet. There’s a scene with the turtles riding on a plane that’s about to crash on the Amazon, which was spectacular!  I can guarantee you won’t be bored for a second, which is probably a good thing if you have that six year old kid with ya. This one is none stop action, thrills and jokes. Trust me, the kiddies will be entertained.

The turtles themselves are a huge part of what makes the whole thing work because the combination of voice acting and cgi animation works like magic, there’s some good computer animation here, I have hand it to these guys, the turtles look alive. Computer graphics can make or break a film, and more so in an effects heavy film like this one. So on that regard you can rest easy, these turtles breathe and shine!  

In terms of pleasing those die hard Turtle fans out there, I think this one did good. I mean, here we get Casey Jones, the turtles human side kick, we get the introduction of Beebop and Rocksteady and the pulsating brain/robot from Dimension X known as ‘Krang’; the films major villain. They even included the cartoon intro song in the end credits which had me singing all throughout the end credits. Yet not all is perfect in Turtle Land. Shredder, the turtles greates villain plays second fiddle to Krang and thus, Shredder comes off as absolutely useless this time around. He really doesn’t do much, I kept wondering why they even bothered to bring him back. I also had an issue with the films climax, the whole thing with the dimensional rift opening up in the New York City skyline was too similar to The Avengers. I’m of the opinion that filmmakers should always strive to do something different with their films. If you’re idea resembles some other film visually, then don’t do it. But you know Hollywood, if something worked on some other film they’ll try and duplicate it to death, and so the grand finale in The Avengers has been redone and redone to death. Last time I saw a dimensional gate way opening up in the sky was in an awful movie called R.I.P.D. (2013). It had me rolling my eyes then and it made me roll my eyes in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016). But then again, if we get down to it, right from the get go, Ninja Turtles has always been about other dimensions, Krang comes from Dimension X! Whatever, I guess we can chalk it up to the filmmakers knowing the are going up against Marvel movies, so they want to give us something equally spectacular. All I'm saying is they could've gone with something visually different with regards to the whole dimensional rift thing. 

But whatever, I was having a blast with the movie and as you guys already know, that’s all I really care about when it comes to Summer Blockbusters. If it wows and entertains then your job as a summer film is done. And in those terms I’d say this one is a success. It’s bigger and more expensive than the first film. It’s louder, and more action packed and it’s more cartoonish, closer to the kind of plotlines we’d get on the cartoon show. Its target audience is nostalgic fans who grew up watching the cartoons and the new generations of younglings who are just getting to know them. If I was a 12 year old kid, I’d be happy as hell with this here movie, hell, I ain’t no teenager and I loved it.  So as far as I’m concerned, mission accomplished turtles; let’s hope you make a profit at the box office so we’ll see a third outing.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

I grew up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon show; yes I’m one of those dudes who can sing the opening credits song by heart. The cartoon show was silly to the max, but my preteen heart loved it. I think we all love silly things when we are kids and the turtles cartoon show was one of the many silly things I loved. Later, I discovered the original Turtle comics done by Eastman and Laird, the original turtle creators. Now those were cool comics! Action packed sci-fi fantasy with awesome artwork, in these comics, which were the seed of what we now know as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, we were presented with a decidedly less silly (though no less fun) version of the turtles. The turtles in these Eastman and Lair comics were the true turtles. Sometimes I wish the movies would embrace that sci-fi fantasy side of the comic book a little more, but alas, the films still haven’t gotten entirely there yet. In those comics the turtles would travel to other dimensions, drive flying cars, you name it. Eastman and Lairs comics where really out there. 

I remember back in 1990, when they announced that a live action turtles film would start production, the first question that popped in my head was how they hell are they going to pull that off? The idea of talking mutant turtles seemed impossible to translate to live action in my mind. Remember, this was way back in 1990 when movies had little to no computer animation, so my doubts were valid. But surely enough they pulled it off. I remember that first time I saw the turtles on the cover of Comic Scene magazine…I was flabbergasted! They actually pulled it off! They brought the turtles to freaking life! Jim Henson and his creature shop worked their magic, and suddenly there before me, on the cover of this magazine were the four turtles, looking more alive than life itself. It was magic. And that first film still holds a magic to it for me. It’s a simple film, it only cost 10 million to make (can you believe it?) and it had this charm to it. The turtles had charisma, they had personalities. They felt real, tangible. They were there. How do these new Turtles compare to the old ones?

Well, for starters, these new turtles are entirely computer generated images, so not an ounce of what you see on screen is real, which sucks for me because to be honest, what I liked about the originals was that they looked “real”. But whatever, there’s no stopping computer generated images, they’ve completely taken over films, so I’m not gonna fight it anymore. The way they are making movies now is entire sequences are computer generated, and this new TMNT movie is the best example of that, there’s entire sequences that are computer generated! I mean, literally, entire scenes that go on and on and on without a single tangible thing on screen, it’s crazy. It doesn’t stop shocking me how much this happens in todays cinema. In my opinion computer generated images are taking away something from the art of filmmaking which used to be all about shooting something with a freaking camera. Now a huge chunk of a film is never filmed, which is a contradiction if you ask me! But when it’s well made it works, and on this film for the most part the computer animation is pretty spot on and good. So once you get past the idea that you’re not seeing actors playing the turtles, but instead computer generated images, well, I kinda got used to it. My main preoccupation was that they wouldn’t be able to transmit the turtle’s personalities and that we’d end up with a bunch of generic characters ala the Transformers films. Well, I’m happy to inform they did. Still, I felt I got more personality from the portrayal of the characters in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990).

I guess the big difference between the 90’s film and this one is the budget. The filmmakers behind this new turtle’s film had many more millions at their disposal, and it shows. By comparison, the first film is a small film, yet what made the 90’s film work so well was the chemistry between the turtles themselves and the story, which was about brotherly love, respect…the first film wins in this respect. It has more warmth, more depth, more character. This new one is all about the action and the effects, sure we get some back story, but it’s missing the heart. It failed to connect with me in that way that the first one did. I mean, how about that scene in the original in which the four brothers are mourning Splinter and suddenly his spirit appears in front of them in the camp fire? The four turtles cry and laugh together knowing their master is alive…it’s such an awesome scene with so much heart. Where is the equivalent of that on this new film? There is one scene where the turtles are about to die and Raphael goes on an emotional burst and tells his turtle brothers how much he’s always loved them, but that’s about it. We needed more heart on this new film. And for that, you need a script that goes for the heart, so I guess we could blame the script for not having that warmth that the first film had in spades. It’s why you end up liking the turtles, because they love each other in spite of their differences.    

There’s a scene on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) in which the turtles are all in an elevator and suddenly begin to make music with their ninja weapons which was pretty cool; it reminded me of the silliness you’d find in the old Turtle movies, and in my opinion this new one needed more of that as well, it needed that goofing around from the old movies. In the old movies it seemed like the turtles never stopped goofing around, on this new one the goofiness is slightly muted. Something else I didn’t really like about the new one is the look of the foot clan. On the comics and the cartoons, the foot clan always looked like ninjas…on this new movie they simply look like soldiers with machine guns? Where’s the freaking ninjas? Ninjas were an essential part of the Turtles formula! Hello we’re talking about NINJA turtles? Why take away their ninja enemies? That was a big drawback in my opinion. Instead we get  soldiers with these weird masks…this was not the foot clan I grew up with; shame on whoever made that terrible choice. I wanted ninjas in purple and black suits, but alas, somebody decided to give them an upgrade and we get these crappy looking soldiers. Ugh. And where the hell is Casey Jones? I want my Casey Jones! He was an essential part of the Turtles! They better include him in the inevitable sequel or I’m calling the geek police.

In terms of story, I did like a few things, but despised others. For example, I thought it was very cool how they managed to mix April O’Neil into the turtles past. That was a golden move, now she’s not just a curious reporter; she was actually involved in the birth of the turtles and in their ultimate salvation. In the old ones she was just this nosy reporter who befriended the turtles. So that was cool. There’s these flashback sequences that were extremely similar to the flash black sequence in the 90’s film, where we see just how the turtles grew into who they are now, we get to see how Splinter helps them grow and become ninjas, teaching them the ways of Kung Fu. Unfortunately the whole plot about the big bad corporation trying to contaminate the city with a contagious toxin, just so they could sell them the antivirus and make gazillions felt old hat and warn; all too similar to the plot for The Amazing Spiderman (2012). Actually it’s almost exactly the same exact plot device! Even the whole ending of the film takes place on a rooftop trying to stop the virus from spreading, just like in The Amazing Spiderman (2012), hell,  on both films everything ends with a huge antenna falling down towards an unsuspecting crowd of New Yorkers! So don’t expect much in the way of originality because if you’ve seen the Amazing Spiderman, then you’ll feel like déjà vu with this new Turtles film in terms of story.

But overall, it’s an entertaining film. It’s got action, it’s got comedy, Splinter is a bit more kick ass and stern then the mellow guru one from the other films. Shredder is this giant cyber samurai…but I felt they didn’t flesh out Shredder enough. Again we fall into the classic modern filmmaking technique of not giving us a memorable villain. Sure he looks cool with all those blades and the shiny metal suit, but where’s the fire? Where’s the insanity? Nowhere to be seen, instead, Shredder feels more like a tool on this one, again, like in so many modern films (like for example the new Robocop) they take away the mad villain and replace him with a villainous corporate suit; which is so blah, so less fun. So, final words this is a satisfying Turtles film, I just wished more of it had actually been filmed. I prefer the puppet wizardry from the originals; I’m old school that way I guess. Still, it’s not a bad turtles movie, it entertains and it has exciting action sequences. It just needed a few things: the real foot clan ninjas, Casey Jones and some tangibility to it. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) Rating: 3 out of 5

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) Rating: 4 out of 5