TMNT (2014) movie review

If you are reading this then you probably know that the 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action reboot produced by Michael Bay had an uphill battle, what with the original script leaking and the ideas of the Turtles being aliens. So, for this review, I’m not going to talk about any of that.

Let’s start off with what I didn’t like. I felt like the movie moved too quickly and the story itself was just…too quick. There wasn’t enough to it. But one thing that wasn’t slow? All the CGI and all the flashy lights shined in my face! Ow!

The movie gives us all these plot points, namely connecting April O’ Neil directly to the creation of the Turtles and Splinter, so bloody quick, I mean, we all know there’s only so much you can do in two hours, but the original TMNT feature film with the Henson animatronics was able to build up the relationships between the Turtles, April and Casey, why wasn’t this film? It’s not to say it wasn’t an neat idea to tie April directly into the Turtles’ origin, I just felt like it couldn’t have been written better. I enjoyed the banter between the Turtles and Splinter, although Michelangelo got under my skin really quick. The designs of the TMNT in this film were pretty neat in my opinion, being much bigger than previous incarnations,

When I first heard about this movie’s ‘changes’ to the TMNT mythology, the thing I raged more over than the TMNT being aliens was that they were going to make the Shredder someone over than Oroku Saki. The Internet changed this through its collective rage, but considering Hamato Yoshi’s role was changed to a damn book Splinter found on the floor, maybe having Shredder become a white rich businessman wasn’t such a bad idea afterall!!! The changes to the story were shoehorned in last minute, and as such it’s almost as if there’s two movies playing. There were some really nice action scenes, especially the fight going down the snowy mountain hill, and I give the movie credit for not making April a complete damsel in distress and even giving Raphael a nice little character arc, but in terms of story and entertainment, there’s much better entries in the Turtles’ history. Stupid villains, next-to-useless side characters and just too much CGI porn,

That being said, I am curious as to how the next film will treat Casey, Krang, Bebop and especially Rocksteady, considering he’ll be played by WWE wrestler Sheamus. I wonder if Rocksteady will pull out a Brogue Kick or two, though, the designs I’ve seen of the two bumbling mutants kind of look like Zoanoids in my opinion. Heh.