Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Grading & Discussion

[Christopher]

what was the splinter backstory in this movie? It changes throughout the previous comics/TV shows/movies. Sometimes he's Hamato Yoshi's rat - sometimes he IS a mutated Hamato Yoshi.

As far as I know, the "mutated Hamato Yoshi" origin was created by the 1990s animated series and has only ever been used there and in the current CGI series.

And really, it never made sense to me in the original cartoon. The premise there was that the mutagen transformed anything into a hybrid of its original species and whatever it had most recently touched. So the turtles, touched by Hamato, turned into humanoid turtles. But then, that also means that Hamato was touching turtles, not rats, at the time of his mutagen exposure -- so why didn't he turn into another turtle-humanoid instead of a rat-humanoid? It doesn't add up.

Although I agree that the comics/movie origin of Splinter just being an ordinary rat that learned ninjutsu by observation was kind of weird.

And I know it may not be a commercial success, but I want to see the DARK story of the turtles like the original comics. Not so kid friendly at all.

You mean the one where they were mutated by the same canister of radioactive waste that blinded Matt Murdock?

 

[CorporalClegg]

And really, it never made sense to me in the original cartoon. The premise there was that the mutagen transformed anything into a hybrid of its original species and whatever it had most recently touched. So the turtles, touched by Hamato, turned into humanoid turtles. But then, that also means that Hamato was touching turtles, not rats, at the time of his mutagen exposure -- so why didn't he turn into another turtle-humanoid instead of a rat-humanoid? It doesn't add up.

I think that's just a matter of how the animation had been edited, probably for budgetary reasons. When he's telling the story to April, he does specifically say "Hamato Yoshi had most recently been with his rats," even if that's not what the visuals show.

And I think it makes more sense than a rat learning karate from his cage. (As much sense as mutagen can make.)

 

[Mr Light]

After all the horrible reviews, I was pleasant surprised with this movie. It wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible either. Sure the Turtles look monstrous and ugly, but the action scenes looked really good and the humor (when it was there) was well done.

And THANK GOD William Fichtner wasn't the Shredder. I read that months ago and hated it. That was a HUGE relief.

Complaints:
--Splinter, who is literally just a mutated rat, becomes a ninja master from a picture book he found in the sewer?!
--So, a few miles outside of New York City, there's this impossible tall snow capped mountain it takes fifteen minutes to shoot down at high speed?
--So, Little April raised Splinter and the Turtles when they were babies, and saved them from the fire that mutated them, let them into the sewers... and then fifteen years later she just HAPPENS to be the first human to lay eyes on them?! What a coincidence!
--How come tranq darts are the bane of the Turtles' existence, yet they're bullet proof? Correct me if I'm wrong but when they show Ralph popping bullets off of him, aren't they coming from his bare skin in addition to his belly-shell?

 

[Trekker4747]

On the topic of the mutagen.

How it works in the cartoon never made sense to me either, even as a kid, for exactly the reasons Christopher said. I just assumed that maybe Splinter had a rat in his pocket or something for it to make sense and add up in my fragile mind wanting to nitpick a TV series to death and not yet having discovered Star Trek or my inner nerd.

And the learning of ninjitsu inside 15 years makes more sense here than a ordinary rat learning it in his cage from his master.

Spoilers for the current IDW comic book series, though this story line is over a year old.

This movie had some origin elements from the current comic book in it, which I liked and wish they had adopted more of it. In the comic April is an intern in Stockman Labs (being operated covertly by the Foot Clan/The Shredder) and the lab is testing the mutagen (IIRC a product from aliens in Dimension-X) on various animals, including a rat and four turtles. At some point the lab is attacked/destroyed and the animals escape. The rat and three of the turtles in one direction and one of the turtles in another (the lone turtle ends up being Raph.) April named the turtles after Renaissance artists as, IIRC, she's minoring in art. It also further turns out Splinter and the turtles are reincarnations of Hamato Yoshi and his four sons from ancient times where Orko Saki murdered Yoshi, his wife, and sons. I may have muddied some details but I think that is more or less the gist of it.

So this movie had that, in part, with young April being involved with mutagen project in some manner.

The snow-mountain part as fun as it was, was probably the most over-the-top action sequence in the movie because it was just ridiculous. Fun. But ridiculous. Especially considering how many times April and Vernon should have died.

Still with all of the flaws in this movie, I still came out quite enjoying it.

I could also ask how Raphael didn't notice he had landed during his monologuing at the end there. I'd think the impact with the ground while carrying the massive spire would have been noticed.

 

[Christopher]

I think that's just a matter of how the animation had been edited, probably for budgetary reasons. When he's telling the story to April, he does specifically say "Hamato Yoshi had most recently been with his rats," even if that's not what the visuals show.

No, but that's just it -- the rats weren't his most recent contact. The turtles themselves were. If they were touching him at the time, then he was touching them at the time. You can't have one without the other. He touched the rats just before exposure to the mutagen, but he touched the turtles during exposure. So it's not the editing that's at fault, it's the core concept. The script asked us to believe that somehow the turtles could touch Hamato without Hamato touching the turtles, and that's impossible.

(By the way, another thing the original animated series got wrong was misunderstanding Japanese name order; they used "Yoshi" as his surname and "Saki" as Shredder's surname, when those were actually their given names. I think the subsequent two animated series have gotten it right.)

It made marginally more sense the way it was done in the comics, the movies, and the second animated series: That the mutagen turns any animal into a more intelligent, more humanlike form. At least that way it's consistent. Although Splinter's origin in that context would've worked better if he'd been mutated before learning from Hamato.

 

[Aldo]

- Did April get her job back?

In at least one incarnation of the movie she did, at least before it got edited to pieces for whatever reasons.

There's b-roll footage on youtube that shows them filming a scene of her reporting on the Turtles, which appears to be one of the "end of the movie" wrap up type reports April did in the second movie. In fact, here you go:

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COSrQstorlg[/yt]

It's around eleven minutes long, and has a pretty nifty tour (of sorts) of the Turtles sewer den.

 

[Agent Richard07]

^ That's what I thought. Thanks.

 

[The Wormhole]

I went in wanting to hate this movie, mainly because most of the stuff I has heard about it on-line made it sound like a complete disaster waiting to happen. But I actually enjoyed it. Oh, it's not The Best Movie Ever, and I wasn't really blown away by it, but it is a decent, entertaining movie which made for a fine afternoon at the theatre. I actually left feeling satisfied and had absolutely no regrets about seeing it, possibly only the fourth such movie I've seen in theatres this year.

The trailers are really doing this film a disservice. They make it look like Transformers with turtles instead of robots. But while the Transformers movies are just incoherent action scenes and cringe worthy attempts at humour, this actually does have an engaging story with humour which while never hilarious did cause me to genuinely smile. Hell, this is probably the first time I thought Megan Fox did a half-decent performance. Sure, she isn't going to win an Oscar, but she seemed to put more effort into the role than she did in Transformers or Jonah Hex, but then I suppose that isn't saying much.

I do have a bad feeling about this movie's box office performance. The theatre I saw it in had less than 20 people in it. Also, it seems to be marketed as a family movie, and indeed, most of the trailers shown before it were for movies either meant for families, or directly at children. And yet, I think I was the youngest one there (I'm 29).

 

[Mr Light]

It blew past studio projections of 40mil and it's now on track for a 64mil opening.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3888&p=.htm

My theater was packed. Oddly, with small children... since this is a PG-13 revival of a 1980s franchise...

 

[Trekker4747]

I went to a 9:30 Friday night 3D showing, it was in one of the smaller theater rooms and I'd say it was nearly sold-out.

And, as has been said, this movie really isn't too bad. Certainly many places it could have be improved (the chemistry between the turtles and April didn't feel quite right) but I did have some genuine laughs in it and really did come out enjoying it.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

And really, it never made sense to me in the original cartoon. The premise there was that the mutagen transformed anything into a hybrid of its original species and whatever it had most recently touched. So the turtles, touched by Hamato, turned into humanoid turtles. But then, that also means that Hamato was touching turtles, not rats, at the time of his mutagen exposure -- so why didn't he turn into another turtle-humanoid instead of a rat-humanoid? It doesn't add up.

My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I thought it mutated you based on what you had spent your most time with, not touched most recently. Although, either way, if it's recent contact before you come into contact with the mutagen, it is possible for him to touch the turtles, the turtles touch the ooze, he touches a rat, he touches the ooze. Their interactions don't have to be binary and it's easier to believe a human could move around more easily to interact with others compared to baby turtles who would likely stick with themselves.

ETA: You're right about the effect. However, he steps in the mutagen before he touches the turtles, so I think it still works:

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmXGQq46hLc[/yt]

Anyway, I liked this review.

The highest praise I can pay the new reboot of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”? It isn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.

Mind you, it isn’t good. It isn’t even “so bad it’s good.” It’s just there. I wish it was better. Or worse.

 

[Christopher]

ETA: You're right about the effect. However, he steps in the mutagen before he touches the turtles, so I think it still works:

Hmm, I suppose so. He does step into the ooze barefoot a second or two before he touches the turtles, so I guess that means he'd already had a rat mutation triggered before he touched them and triggered a human mutation. Although he changes after them, so that's a little inconsistent. But then, they were much smaller, so maybe it took effect faster.

Still, that just leaves me wondering why the turtles didn't turn into some kind of turtle-human-rat hybrid...

 

[Trekker4747]

Well, the turtles would have been more recently in contact with Yoshi, him having handled them in care/play so their humanoid mutation would have taken effect as soon as they contacted the ooze.

The idea that Yoshi had more recently contacted a rat and his mutation was triggered before he touched the turtles while in the ooze actually makes sense. His rat transformation being triggered before contacting the turtles.

Still, a pretty specific acting mixture of toxic waste/alien chemicals (don't recall its origins in the cartoon.)

So, I like the idea from the comics that it simply turned animals into humanoids. Though, in the cartoon Splinter being Yoshi made the conflict between him and Splinter that much more compelling and personal rather than when Splinter was a mutated rat.

Sort of along those lines, in the original movie we're told splinter, as a rat, bit and clawed and Saki/Shredder in vengeance for the death of Yoshi. Shredder then tosses Splinter off him and swipes at him with his katana, slicing off part of Splinter's ear and then apparently leaves. Ummmm... Why didn't Saki just simply KILL Splinter? I mean, he's a worthless rat and I'd assume Saki is a adept enough with sword to be able to hit a whole rat rather than a tiny part of it (the ear.) He just killed two people (Yoshi and his wife/the woman he and Yoshi were both fighting over) and he basically spares the life of a rat?

 

[darkshadow0001]

I went in wanting to hate this movie, mainly because most of the stuff I has heard about it on-line made it sound like a complete disaster waiting to happen. But I actually enjoyed it. Oh, it's not The Best Movie Ever, and I wasn't really blown away by it, but it is a decent, entertaining movie which made for a fine afternoon at the theatre. I actually left feeling satisfied and had absolutely no regrets about seeing it, possibly only the fourth such movie I've seen in theatres this year.

That's why no one should base a movie on what others review. They should see it for themselves, and then judge it. A lot of times for me, I tend to like movies that don't get good reviews but despise the ones that do (not all of them). I dunno, I guess it's just me I'm just glad they didn't play Ice Ice Baby in this one. haha

One other thing... where was Casey in this film?

 

[Mr Light]

I would assume the rat ran away before Shredder could do so

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Yeah, rats are pretty good at sneaking away. Also, why bother to kill a rat? In 99.99% of situations, that's not going to come back to haunt you. You don't expect the rat to mutate into a humanoid and train a bunch of humanoid turtles to be ninjas who get back at him.

 

[Christopher]

Still, a pretty specific acting mixture of toxic waste/alien chemicals (don't recall its origins in the cartoon.)

According to Wikipedia, "It becomes clear early in the series that the mutagen that transformed the Turtles and Splinter into their new forms was dumped into the sewer by Shredder in an effort to murder Yoshi. Shredder, not knowing the full effect of mutagen at the time, thought he had concocted a deadly poison."

Sort of along those lines, in the original movie we're told splinter, as a rat, bit and clawed and Saki/Shredder in vengeance for the death of Yoshi. Shredder then tosses Splinter off him and swipes at him with his katana, slicing off part of Splinter's ear and then apparently leaves. Ummmm... Why didn't Saki just simply KILL Splinter? I mean, he's a worthless rat and I'd assume Saki is a adept enough with sword to be able to hit a whole rat rather than a tiny part of it (the ear.) He just killed two people (Yoshi and his wife/the woman he and Yoshi were both fighting over) and he basically spares the life of a rat?

Why bother killing a mere animal? It was just a nuisance as far as Oroku knew. (Again, remember Japanese name order. Their family names are Oroku and Hamato. Saki and Yoshi are their given names.)

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Preliminary poll results are all over the place. Yikes!

 

[Agent Richard07]

A sequel has been set for June 3, 2016.

 

[Agent Richard07]

Apparently Baxter Stockman appears briefly in the film. He was played by K. Todd Freeman. If they use him as a major villain in a future movie, will they recast and get a bigger name?