My Thoughts on "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" 🐢🥷
I just watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 🐢🥷, the animated Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷 movie that was released earlier this year in August, and was produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and directed by Jeff Rowe, and what did I think of it? I thought it was pretty good. Now, I want to say up front that I'm not a Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷 fan. I've never watched any of the cartoons, or read any of the comic books, or played any of the video games, or watched any of the movies that were made before this. It was just never my thing, and I could never really get into it.
I did know of Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷, like I knew some of the characters, like I knew the turtles 🐢 them, Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo, I knew their rat master and father figure 🐀, Splinter, I knew April O'Neil, I knew the Shredder, I knew the Foot Clan 🥷, I knew Bebop and Rocksteady, I knew Krang, I knew the Technodrome, I knew Baxter Stockman, and I knew the ooze. And I only reason I knew any of those things is that a lot of the movie reviewers and film essayists I've watched on YouTube over the years were fans of Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷, and kept mentioning it in their videos.
Mostly the 80s cartoons and the three live action movies from the 90s, since a lot of them are earlier Gen Xers or Millennials. All of those 80s kids forcing their nostalgia down on their unsuspecting and impressionable Gen Z audience. But, you know, I sort of do the same thing but with my own nostalgic things. Us aughts kids, we're starting to take over, and reshape the narrative.
But, despite how much I knew about this franchise from hearing about it second hand from all of these YouTubers and Internet personalities, I never actually got into Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷. I just accepted it as this thing that wasn't my cup of tea ☕️, and I just leave it at that. So, it's pretty surprising to me that I ended up liking this as much as I did. When I saw the first trailer awhile back, I wrote about it, and I sort of voiced my concerns about whether or not people who aren't fans of Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷 would be able to like it, or if it was something that only fans could enjoy. But, I am happy to report that this is something that a non-fan or casual movie goer could enjoy because I'm one of them. If I had seen this movie in theaters like I originally wanted, I think I would've enjoyed myself.
But, because I'm a non-fan, there are things in this movie that I don't fully grasp, or things that I missed. Like, this movie has a lot of references, and easter eggs, and I'll get to that because the references were one of my issues with the movie, but there were some references and easter eggs to the Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷 that likely went over my head. I also don't know how accurate this movie is to the Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷 lore because Seth Rogen did say that they sort of changed the lore a bit for this movie to craft their own mythology. So, if you're a Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷 fan, and if you know a lot about the lore and the characters, please let me know in the comments how accurate this film was, and how much of it they changed. Like, they portray Leonardo as the leader of the group. Has he always been the leader? Or is that something they just made up for this movie?
Now, the fact that they've taken the Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷 franchise, probably changed a lot of things, and just did their own thing with it is not a bad thing. When you've had a franchise that's lasted for this long, and has had so many different iterations, you kind of have to do your own thing with it to stand out, and make sure it doesn't become stale and boring. A lot of movies this year took that same approach to their own source material.
You know, you had Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 🕸️, you had Barbie 🙄, and you had Godzilla: Minus One 😤, none of which I've seen, but I have heard mostly great things about, even if I have no interest in watching them. Especially, Barbie and Godzilla: Minus One, I never had any interest in watching them in the first place, and I have even less interest watching them now because how much praise they've gotten. Maybe, it's just the contrarian in me, but it seems like those two movies in particular were just way overhyped, and they probably don't even live to their hype.
And that's a shame because I'm a Godzilla fan, I've watched almost every Godzilla movie up until recently. The only ones I haven't seen are the Monster Planet films and Minus One, and those were the ones I've been the most hesitant to watch. Now, with the Monster Planet trilogy, it makes sense because that trilogy received a lot of mixed reviews, and is deeply polarizing within the fanbase, arguably more than Shin Godzilla or Godzilla: Final Wars. Some people really like them, while others really hate them. I mean, that was more so for the first film. By the third film, the reception was mostly negative since the trilogy failed to live up to any of the potential that it had.
But, with Godzilla: Minus One, it doesn't really make sense why I have no interest in watching it. People really like it. It's received almost nothing but positive review from both critics and fans, it's the most financially successful Japanese Godzilla film 🇯🇵 released in North America, and it's being touted as an example of what studios should be doing with their IP movies. Like, all of these stupid anti-SJW right-wing YouTubers are parading this movie as a glowing example of an IP movie done right, and saying with a straight face that it's "not woke." Like, imagine parading a Godzilla movie of all things, and saying that it isn't "woke."
Maybe, that's the reason why I've been so turned off by that movie. All of these stupid right-wing film YouTubers have co-opted that movie, and have been using it to push their culture war bullshit to prove that Marvel and Disney more broadly suck and are failing because they're "woke." But, even before Minus One came out, and became this huge financial and critical success, I still couldn't muster any interest or hype for it. Like, this was the first time that a Godzilla movie came out, and I just couldn't care less.
It's not that I'm losing interest in Godzilla or anything. I'm still interested in watching Monarch: Legacy of the Monsters, even though I can't watch it because it's on Apple TV+ and I don't have Apple TV+, and I'm pretty hyped for Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire next year, especially after watching the trailer. It looks totally bonkers, and I'm all for it 🤩. Like one of those "gonzo blockbusters" that Patrick H. Willems made an entire video about. So, I guess you could say that I'm a MonsterVerse guy all the way, and I'm not so into the current Toho stuff.
What can I say? The Toho stuff lately has been hit or miss. More misses than hits in all honesty. I mean, say what you want about the Millennium series, but at least the quality was more consistent between the six films. The quality between the current Reiwa series is way less consistent, and varies between the individual films, film trilogies, and ONAs because Godzilla: Singular Point is technically an ONA (original net animation). Shin Godzilla was good, I haven't seen the Monster Planet trilogy, but I've heard mixed-to-negative things about it, Godzilla: Singular Point was absolutely horrendous and I never want to watch it ever again, and while I've heard nothing but great things about Godzilla: Minus One, I have actual interest in watching it, and the ridiculous hype it has gotten and the universal praise it's been getting has made me want to watch it even less, like I refuse to watch it now.
Sorry, I went off on a long tangent, I just had to rant about Godzilla: Minus One. The current film critique or film analysis landscape on the Internet is an absolute cesspool, and it kind of takes the fun out of watching and talking about movies. The hype machine utterly ruins movies. Like, watch, in a few months, in a few years, there's going to be a bunch of people saying that Godzilla: Minus One isn't actually that great, and it was way overhyped, and that's going to become the new dominant opinion about that movie. I'm sure the same thing will probably happen to Barbie as well, and if it didn't, I'd be pretty surprised.
There's been a whole bunch of movies that people liked at first when they came out, but years later, they walk back on it and start hating on it. A few examples that I can think of right now are Prometheus, Avatar, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Godzilla (2014), The Incredibles 2, Star Trek (2009), Jurassic World, Green Book, and The Dark Knight Rises. There's a lot more than that, but those were the ones I could think of off the top of my head. The same has happened to Napoleon, Ridley Scott's Napoleon. Most of the reviews of that movie were positive, but barely a few weeks later, more negative reviews for the movie (mostly from historians or history buffs) started trickling in, and eventually the main consensus was mostly negative.
In almost no time at all, Napoleon went from a fairly positively received movie to a negatively received movie. That's how quickly the perception of certain movies can change. All it takes is for some contrarian asshole (like me) to come along, say he or she doesn't like a certain movie that's really popular and well loved, and by doing so, they cause this ripple effect throughout pop culture until eventually, everyone starts hating that movie too, even if they themselves once liked it.
But anyway, the point I'm trying to make by bringing up those three movies, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 🕸️, Barbie, and Godzilla: Minus One is that people seem to like them because while they were IP movies, and were part of established franchises or were based on a pre-existing brands, they did new and unique things with them. They didn't just play it safe and do the same thing that's been done before a bunch of times, they tried new things, they took bold chances, and they brought a new perspective. And that's what Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 🐢🥷 did.
They animated it, yes, but they did it a different way than has been done before. Mutant Mayhem of course was not the first animated Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷 movie that was made, and was released in theaters. The first one was actually TMNT 🐢🥷 from 2007. I remember seeing trailers and TV spots for that movie back in the day. But, that movie was fully CG animated, whereas this movie, Mutant Mayhem tries to blend CG animation with hand-drawn animation. Like, the movie itself is entirely CG animated, it's mostly 3D, but they sort of try to make it look 2D.
In that way, it is sort of like Spider-Verse movies, and they were what I mainly compared the animation to when the first trailer came out, and I wrote my thoughts on it. I said that it felt like Nickelodeon and Paramount's attempt at making their own Spider-Verse movie, but with their own superhero property, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷. That's the closest thing to have a superhero property that they have, ever since losing Marvel to Disney. After watching the movie itself, I will say that it isn't exactly Spider-Verse-style. The animation in Mutant Mayhem does have its own look and feel that sets it apart from either of the two Spider-Verse films.
Like, they sort of cel-shaded everything, they added all these squiggly lines to everything, they added these dancing outlines like in Ed, Edd n' Eddy. Everything in the movie just has very sketchy and messy look to it. It sort of looks a crude doodle in a notebook brought to life, and that was fully intentional. As the filmmakers themselves said it, it's meant to look like a teenager drew it. And you know, that could've looked really bad.
Like, there is a scenario in-which they could've tried to make it look like a teenager drew it, and it just looked bad, like it looked off putting and gross, and it was just way too hideous to look out for an hour and a half. But no, they didn't do that. They managed to avoid that, and it actually looks great. This is probably the most stylish animated films I've seen in a long time, and again, this is coming from someone who's never watched either of the two Spider-Verse movies. Instead, I'm watched a movie that tried to copy it, and actually sort of succeed at it? The animation will be the first thing that sticks out to people when they watch this.
Speaking of things looking like they were made by teenagers, that brings me to the main point of this movie. This whole movie was meant to put the "teen" in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷, and for the most part, I would say that it succeeded. For the first time ever, the turtles 🐢 actually act like teenagers. I really liked what they did with them with them here. They managed to make them likable, and not annoying. It's pretty easy to make teen characters in fiction annoying, but this movie managed to avoid that. The voice actors they chose to voice were actual teenagers, and they did a great job voicing them.
Jackie Chan voices Splinter. When I found out that he was voicing Splinter in this movie, I got to say I was a bit skeptical. I questioned the decision to cast him when the character is supposed to be Japanese 🇯🇵 or Japanese adjacent 🇯🇵, and ninjas 🥷 are Japanese 🇯🇵, so why cast a Chinese actor from Hong Kong 🇭🇰 in that role? It just seemed to me that they only casted him because he's Asian, and they figured that as long as they had an Asian actor in that role, it didn't matter if they were Chinese or Japanese. They're all the same right? This is an issue that has plagued Hollywood for years. Often times, you'll have a Chinese actor being cast in Japanese role, or a Japanese actor being cast in a Chinese role, or a Korean actor being cast in a Chinese or Japanese role, and vis versa.
They're hardly ever cast in roles that are authentic to their nationality or their ethnicity. Like, Michelle Yeoh was cast as Aung San Suu Kyi in a movie, and she's a Chinese woman ♀︎ from Malaysia 🇲🇾 while Aung San Suu Kyi, the real one, is an ethnic Bamar woman ♀︎ from Burma 🇲🇲. It doesn't make a lot of sense at all, and the only reason she was cast in that role from what I can assume is that she's Asian and she kind of sort of resembles the real woman ♀︎. Another example would be Lee Byung-hun, a Korean pop star turned actor 🇰🇷 being cast as Storm Shadow, a Japanese character 🇯🇵, in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and G.I. Joe: Retaliation. John Cho is another good example of this. He's a Korean-American 🇰🇷🇺🇸 who was cast as Hikaru Sulu, a famously Japanese character 🇯🇵 with a very Japanese name 🇯🇵 who was originally played by a Japanese-American actor 🇯🇵🇺🇸 (George Takei), in the Kelvin Timeline Star Trek movies.And there's a whole bunch of other examples in film history of this sort of practice of casting Asian actors in roles that don't at all match their nationality or ethnicity.
It's even happened outside of Hollywood, in other film industries like the British film industry 🇬🇧, the French film industry 🇫🇷, and even the Hong Kong film industry 🇭🇰. One of Jet Li's landmark films, Fist of Legend features Chinese Hong Kong actor and kickboxer 🇭🇰, Billy Chow playing an Imperial Japanese Army general 🇯🇵 who Jet Li fights at the end of the film, in that film's most famous fight scene.
I just figured that the casting of Jackie Chan as Splinter in this movie was just another example of that sort of thing. Plus, my opinion on Jackie Chan has sort of soured in recent years. I mean, I was never really the biggest fan of Jackie Chan. I was always more of a Jet Li fan. But, I still like some of Jackie Chan's movies, and I did like him as an actor and a martial artist. Again, not as much as Jet Li, but still.
But, after the Hong Kong protests 🇭🇰🪧, and Chan supported both the government and police in that struggle for democracy and autonomy, my opinion on him kind of soured. And it soured for many Hongkongers 🇭🇰 who saw him as a traitor and a sellout for not supporting the pro-democracy movement, and siding with the government and the police, and not calling them out on their brutal behavior in cracking down on the protests 🪧.
I talk more about this in my "Thoughts on" review of Transformers: Age of Extinction, but the fact that Chan has pretty much just become a propagandist for the Chinese government 🇨🇳 kind of sickens me, and makes me think lesser of him. At least, Jet Li stayed out of politics. Like, I have no idea what his political beliefs are, and I have no interest in knowing. As far as I know, he stayed silent during the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests 🇭🇰🪧, which was definitely the smart choice from a career and reputational aspect. But then again, Jet Li did pose for a photo with Mark Zuckerberg that one time...that wasn't a good look. It did not age particularly well.
I said in my first impressions on the trailer that I would've preferred if Hiroyuki Sanada had voiced Splinter instead of Jackie Chan. Like, he just seems like he'd fit the role much better than Jackie Chan, and give it the gravitas it needs from what I know about the character of Splinter. And while I do stand by that, credit where credit is due, Jackie Chan did a decent job. Hiroyuki Sanada probably would fit a more serious version of the character, instead of the more comedic version that Chan brought to life here. This version of Splinter is way goofier, and more like an old grandpa than previous versions, which does play to Chan's strengths because he's always been more of a funny guy than other martial arts action stars. Maybe, they're saving Sanada to voice Shredder in the sequel, I don't know. He'd probably great in that role too.
The other voice actors are all great. The voice actress who voiced April O'Neil in this, Aye Edebiri, did a pretty good job. Yes, they did race swap April, get over it. Of all the things to complain about in this movie, and trust me, there are, if April O'Neil being black is the biggest problem you have with this movie, then you need to take a long look at yourself, and rethink your world view because the problem might actually be you. Like, the turtles 🐢 themselves, this version of April is a teenager, she's in high school, but she still has a that investigative journalist spirit, and she wants to be a reporter when she grows up.
She's also a bit more awkward than previous versions of the character. Like, her character arc in this movie is that she threw up 🤮 on camera while trying to do a news broadcast for her school because she was so nervous, and she became a laughing stock at school because of it. And the whole movie is her trying to overcome her stage fright, and becoming the honest reporter with integrity that she aspires to be.
Other actors include Ice Cube, Paul Rudd, John Cena, Rose Byrne, and Natasia Demetriou, the only one of those actors I've never heard of before. Ice Cube was surprisingly good as the villain, Superfly 🪰. When I found that he was going to be in this movie, and he was going to be the main villain, I kind of rolled my eyes 🙄 a bit, like "Really? Ice Cube?" It seemed like a really odd choice, and I didn't have a lot of confidence that he could pull it off. But, he's surprisingly effective in this role. I mean, Superfly 🪰 is kind of your basic "I hate humanity, and I'm going to destroy the world to replace humans as the dominant species" type of bad guy.
Like, his plan is to turn every animal in the world into mutants using the ooze, and then wipe out humanity, and replace them as the dominant species on the planet Earth 🌎. It's basically the Lizard 🦎's plan in The Amazing Spider-Man 🕸️ and Sebastian Shaw's plan in X-Men: First Class slammed together into one. Which is funny because the 2014 live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷 movie was accused of copying The Amazing Spider-Man 🕸️, but this movie does too, albeit in a slightly different way.
But, the way they executed Superfly 🪰 was quite unique. Like, he seems like a party animal, and a guy who just wants to bowl 🎳, play games, and eat pizza 🍕. But, he has this seething hatred of humans because of the way they killed his "father," Baxter Stockman, and the way they treated him and his mutant siblings when tried to come out and be accepted.
Humanity rejected him, and so he rejects them back, and decides to wipe them all out and replace them with mutants because he views that as the only way to keep him and his family safe. You might think it'd be a bit hard to juggle the fun-loving party guy aspect of the character with the genocidal maniac aspect, but they actually do make it work. And that's mostly thanks to the writing and the voice acting provided by Ice Cube.
I also liked the detail that they made Superfly 🪰 a big mutant fly 🪰 and Baxter Stockman his surrogate father. Like, Baxter Stockman is his creator, the Dr. Frankenstein to his Frankenstein's monster, and he's a mutant fly 🪰. And if you know anything about Baxter Stockman, you'll know that he eventually mutates into a fly/human hybrid 🪰 at some point, and becomes a recurring enemy of the Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷. So, that was a neat way to show the connection between those two character, the bridge between the new and the old.
I actually had no idea that Paul Rudd was in this movie until I watched the behind-the-scene featurettes. Like, you could barely recognize him in the role as Mondo Gecko, who I guess is a character that's existed within the Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷 mythos. Like, all of Superfly 🪰's mutant crew are preexisting characters who have existed within the Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷 canon and been apart of the toy lines, but have never been featured in a series or a feature film before, except for Superfly 🪰 himself. Superfly 🪰 is the only one who is a completely brand new character who they created specifically for this film. But, I did like Mondo Gecko, and Paul Rudd's performance as him was pretty good. The fact that I couldn't recognize is a testament to his skill.
John Cena voices Rocksteady, and I didn't recognize him either because they lowered the pitch of his voice and made his voice sound deeper, and Rocksteady barely speaks at all anyway. Cena really didn't need to voice the character. They could've found any muscle bound actor or actor with a deep voice to voice that character, and it wouldn't have made much of a difference. But, he's not bad in the role, so it's not that much of an issue. Seth Rogen voices Bebop, the second half to Rocksteady, because of course he does. He's the big producer man, and he's an actor, he's gotta have a voice role in this thing. He's fine in the role, but I never got the sense that it had to be him in the role. Like, they didn't cast him because he was perfect in the role as Bebop, they cast him because he wanted a role in the movie, and they chose that one.
Bebop and Rocksteady aren't really evil. None of the other mutants are. They're kind of dumb, naïve, and misguided, and they're being led astray by Superfly 🪰 to commit genocide. And by the end, they switch sides along with the other mutants to help the Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷 fight Superfly 🪰. This pretty much means that they won't be villains in any future installments if they ever make any. That might be disappointing for any fan who likes Bebop and Rocksteady as bad guys, but it works for this version of the universe I guess.
Rose Byrne voices Leatherhead, another classic Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷 villain who's existed before, and used to be a mutant alligator 🐊 from New Orleans with a Cajun accent, but they changed into a mutant crocodile 🐊 with an Australian accent 🇦🇺. She's a pretty fun character, and Rose Byrne did an awesome job voicing her. I almost wish they showed more of her than they did.
There's another brand new character named Cynthia Utrom, who's voiced by Maya Rudolph, another actress who I've never heard of until now. She's the secondary villain of this movie, and she's basically an evil mad scientist type. You can tell because she has a stereotypical German accent 🇩🇪. Utrom really doesn't do that much in this movie. Like, they build her up at the beginning like she's going to be a significant character with a huge role. But, all she does in the movie is capture the turtles 🐢, and try to suck the ooze out of them, which every character refers to as "milking 🥛" for reason 🤷♂️. Then, after Splinter breaks into that lab, and saves the turtles 🐢 along with April, Utrom disappears and is never seen again until the obligatory mid-credit scene.
It seems like they're just saving her for the sequel, but even then, it still seems like she's going to be playing second fiddle to the real big bad, Shredder, who they tease at the end of this mid-credit scene, something that was no surprise to anyone. Like, of course Shredder's going to be the bad guy in the next movie. Why wouldn't they have him? He's their biggest villain. It's like having a Batman movie without Joker, or a Superman movie without Lex Luthor. Even if they aren't in the first movie, they'll definitely be in the sequels. At least, this movie has a mid-credit scene, and not an after-credit scene.
It seems like after-credit scenes are being fazed out, and more and more movies are opting for mid-credit scenes for their sequel teases. Maybe, they all finally realizes that no one wants to sit and wait through a bunch of credits just to watch a 1 minute clip teasing a sequel or spin-off. Just do it after the first initial around of credits, and then you can show the full credit roll with the huge walls of text, and names of animators and effect artists who are no doubt being mistreated and underpaid.
An interesting thing about this character is that her evil plan is pretty much the same as Superfly 🪰's. The only difference is that she wants to use the ooze to create mutants for military applications. Like, she wants to create mutants to be used as biological weapons for the US military 🇺🇸, or perhaps foreign militaries. Like, perhaps she's actually a traitor and an enemy of state who wants to create weapons to sell to Russia 🇷🇺, China 🇨🇳, Iran 🇮🇷, and North Korea 🇰🇵, you know all the countries that the US 🇺🇸 is against. That'd be an interesting angle to take that character, but I have a feeling that's not the direction they're going to go with her. I think they're probably going to go the more clichéd route, and have it be her trying to create mutants to sell as weapons to the US military 🇺🇸, and the US military 🇺🇸 being evil because they want to use mutants as weapons.
Also, Post Malone is in this movie. He voices a character named Ray Fillet, a mutant stingray I guess. He's alright. Nothing special, but alright. MrBeast is in this movie too, which is a casting decision that I absolutely do not approve. I hate MrBeast 😡, I'm opposed to everything he stands for and represents, and I hate that so many young people, so many kids, look up to him as a role model, or as something to aspire to. To me, he's had a net negative impact on YouTube and internet culture as a whole. YouTube is worse as platform for having MrBeast as one of its top creators. It's a bit disturbing when you consider how terrible of person MrBeast actually is, and how horrible it is to work for him. So many horror stories surrounding that guy.
Luckily, he doesn't voice an important character. He just voices an incidental background character; an extra basically. But, the fact that they cast him in this movie at all kind of says a lot about the people behind this movie. It just seems like they cast him in here because he's really hip with the kids, and they really want to make this movie cool and relatable to the tween demographic.
Speaking of which, that leads me into the problems that I had with this film. There are too references. All throughout this movie, they keep namedropping different things. Namedropping other movies, namedropping TV shows, namedropping products, namedropping celebrities, and namedropping apps. The most egregious was the namedropping of other Nickelodeon properties like that forced line mentioning Hey, Arnold. Like, there are so many pop culture references and so much product placement that it gets tiring after a while.
Some of the references felt like vein attempts to make the dialogue sound realistic or sound relatable to the teenage and tweenage audience. I mean, I understand that the voice actors who voiced the turtles 🐢 improvised their lines, and added a lot of those references themselves. But some of the lines just felt like a writer in his 30s or 40s trying to relate to teens, like that meme, "Hey, fellow kids" or whatever. Just because you mention a movie or TV show, or pop star, or product, or app that people recognize doesn't necessarily mean that it'll make it more relatable. There's this one scene where Mikey starts talking about Mark Ruffalo in Avengers: Endgame and how he apparently improved most of his lines in that movie, and Leonardo or one of them tells them to stop. That was me throughout significant parts of this movie.
And can I ask, why are the turtles 🐢 still eating Pizza Hut 🍕? I mean, they were eating Pizza Hut 🍕 in those Michael Bay produced live action movies, but why are they still eating it here? I mean, I know why, it's for product placement. But, why Pizza Hut 🍕? If you wanted to do product placement for a fast food pizza place 🍕, why Domino's? Domino's is way better than Pizza Hut 🍕. Or, Papa John's? I know not everyone likes Papa John's but I like their pizza 🍕. Why not Little Caesar's? Little Caesar's is way more popular and affordable than any of those, and they have that "Hot n' Ready" gimmick. Why not Costco pizza 🍕? I don't know if they have Costcos in New York or not. Just anything would be better than Pizza Hut 🍕.
They also included live action footage in this movie. Like, there's a scene earlier on in the movie where the turtles 🐢 are watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off that's playing in an outdoor theater kind of set up from a nearby rooftop, and it's actual footage from the movie. They didn't animate or translate it into the style of movie, it's just straight footage exactly how it is in real-life. Then, there's another scene, where Splinter is giving this long exposition dump about how his and the turtles' 🐢 backstory, and they show real live action clips from YouTube videos, old karate training videos on VHS 📼, and even old kung fu movies, even one of which featured Jackie Chan. I think that was just an excuse for him to promote his own shit.
The use of live action footage in certain scenes is a bit jarring. Like, I remember everyone complaining that Chicken Little featured a clip from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and yet, no one bats an eye when this movie features clips from Ferris Bueller or from a bunch of random YouTube videos? Some cartoons can pull that sort of thing off, but this movie definitely could not. They would've been better off just having this whole be animated, with no live action footage whatsoever.
But besides, those minor nitpicks or minor issues, this movie is pretty good. It's a decent coming-of-age superhero origin story movie with stylish and unique animation, decent voicing acting, cool and creative action scenes, a pretty hopeful ending. The movie ends with the entire city of New York helping the turtles 🐢 defeat Superfly 🪰 who became this kind of mutant kaiju for lack of a better word comprised of different animals from a zoo he fell on top of. It's sort of reminiscent of the New Yorkers scene in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man 🕸️ movies and even first Amazing Spider-Man 🕸️ movie, where New Yorkers are portrayed as heroic and helpful people who always help someone in their time of need, and always contribute and do the right thing. It's the sort of post-9/11 portrayal of New Yorkers that we've gotten to used to seeing in film ever since.
It sends the messages that it's the ordinary people who have the greatest potential to be the greatest heroes of them all, and it's only with the help of ordinary people that these superheroes can save the day in the end. And then everyone gets a happy ending. The mutants get to live down in the sewers with Splinter and the turtles 🐢, Splinter gets a girlfriend or wife, the turtles 🐢 get to go to high school just like they're always wanted, and April O'Neil overcomes her fear and becomes the school's top reporter. The only one who doesn't get a happy ending is Superfly 🪰, who dies. Oh, and also Utrom is left roaming around to plot her next move against the Ninja Turtles 🐢, which mainly entails her hiring the Shredder and having him and the Foot Clan to do all the hard work.
They definitely leave a lot of room for a sequel, and it seems like they might actually get one because this movie did well at the box office. It grossed $180 million 💵 worldwide against a budget of $70 million 💵. So, it definitely turned a profit if you just look at those numbers. But then again, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts grossed $439 million 💵 against an estimated budget of $195 million-$200 million 💵, and that movie's considered a box office disappointment or a flop, so who knows? Box office results, and whether they're good or bad can be a bit confusing sometimes. If they do make a sequel, I'm on board, I'll definitely watch it. In theaters this time.
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