re: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RT Watch

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The TMNT lore has changed very little over the years. Four turtles come in contact with a man-made mutagen and grow up in the New York City sewer system obsessed with pizza (specifically for this film, it’s Pizza Hut — why hello there, rampant product placement) and pop culture. The turtles learn ninjutsu from their adoptive father Splinter, a mutated rat, and fight crime. The Bad Guy Organization du jour is the Foot Clan, led by a man known as The Shredder who really likes the idea of eating turtle soup. The comic was created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird 30 years ago, and intended to be a parody of comics at the time.

This movie hits all those points and more, while giving longstanding human companion April O'Neil a more important role in the turtles’ origin story. As O’Neil, Megan Fox gives a surprisingly decent performance given how over-the-top and expository most of her lines are. There are maybe a handful of other humans with speaking roles, all very one-dimensional: a snarky-and-lovelorn co-worker (Will Arnett), a take-no-bullshite boss (Whoopi Goldberg), and a duplicitous businessman working with the bad guys (William Fichtner).

The stars, of course, are the turtles themselves. There was a lot of outrage on the internet when the new, more human-like faces debuted. It’s certainly different but not jarringly so. Whereas the old quartet differed only by bandana color and choice of weapon, the new turtles have distinctive bodies and fashion choices that match their personality (Raphael the most muscular, Donatello the nerdiest) without being too exaggerated. Their voices, like the animation, work surprisingly well — the characters interact with the world in a natural way without any noticeable technical glitches.

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The astonishingly idiotic latest reboot of the deathless Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise proceeds along similarly contradictory and self-defeating lines. The filmmakers have apparently decided that the children who are the movie’s target demographic want a gritty, realistic take on the material, with the dour sensibility and world-building concerns of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies. They also apparently want something swarming with magical robot warriors, pizza farts, and gags alluding to the Turtles moonlighting as a novelty rap group.

At the center of the film’s incoherent sensibility lies an understandable confusion about the roles superheroes and comic books play in our culture. Are stories like those of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles important mythologies whose origins need to be respected and treated with stone-faced solemnity, or are they silly comic-book nonsense for dull-witted children, and adults with the interests of dull-witted children? TMNT mostly opts for the first approach, but it also indulges in the odd bit of misplaced levity to let audiences know that it doesn’t take itself too seriously, even though it does. Misplaced solemnity and totally awesome Pizza Hut product placement do not make a comfortable fit, and TMNT’s juxtaposition of the serious and the stupid is never as hilariously incongruous as it should be. It can’t even manage to be the right kind of terrible movie.

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let's be honest, even the originals suck

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dont care

still plan on nerding out with a couple buddies and watching this and Guardians back to back this weekend

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