Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

Today on Movie Russian Roulette, Alex witnesses a rape.

of childhoods

Overview: Desperate to steal more ideas from the past (never mind that this was done not that long ago), Hollywood returns to the story of the radical four turtles who fight a samurai guy. Meanwhile, a benevolent businessman hatches a sinister scheme. This time Michael Bay has a hand in things, so there are explosions! (More after the break.)




Four turtles and a rat turn into ninjas who protect New York City through the power of plot holes and barely explained pseudoscience. An evil guy, Shredder, does bad things, so they fight him. In a broad sense, that's all the movie is.

Notable moments/quotes: The movie expects us to buy the talentless Megan Fox, on a break from defending her belief in Bigfoot, as April O'Neil, the turtles' resident damsel-in-distress. The movie achieves this by occasionally putting a yellow jacket on her and having her be a reporter.

the resemblance is uncanny.

Poor April witnesses the turtles and tries to break the story, only to be rightly mocked by the news staff for not having any evidence. It doesn't help that Fox delivers most of her lines with the fervor of a conspiracy theorist with a crazy look in her eyes when she tries to convince others of the Turtles' existence. I'm just impressed Fox can summon an emotion beyond resting bitch face, personally.

Shredder, after the Turtles foil a Foot Clan operation: "Capture the vigilantes however you can. Use innocent people as bait."

The Turtles somehow have an elaborate, hi-tech system of surveillance cameras set up all over the city. How they achieve this when they don't go into the city is never really explained.

The Turtles repeatedly address each other as "brah." Even I died a little inside each time this happened.

April's roommate, on the phone after listening to April ramble about the existence of the TMNT: "Mom, I wanna move back home."

Michelangelo, after meeting April: "So guys, if it wasn't clear with that girl... dibs."

April, attempting to convince the head of her TV station of the TMNT's existence, opts to not show her the actual picture of the Turtles. Instead, she shows her a picture of a normal turtle and rambles like a crazy person. This results in her getting fired.

Splinter, at one point, needs to punish the turtles for sneaking out into the city for a little unauthorized crimefighting. There's the expected over-the-top training, but to cap it off, Splinter sets a 99-cheese pizza from Pizza Hut in the middle of the turtles. I wish I could say that was the most blatant instance of product placement in this turkey.

who needs a budget when you can suck corporate dick

In a flashback to their origins, Splinter somehow finds an intact book on the art of ninjitsu along with training equipment.

Raphiel, to a cameraman: "Yeah, I'm a talking turtle. And you're a human nerd."

Evil rich guy: "Time to take a bite outta the Big Apple."

Pointless character: "Three... four total turtles. One's fighting a robot samurai. Why not?"

Machines specifically built to drain the Turtles' blood for the bad guys' plan also have a function to inject them with adrenaline.

Donatello, who has borderline magical tech glasses, has all information instantly. Even when they're in the middle of a chase scene where he flips a truck with his wooden staff, he knows down to the second when the supertoxin is going to wipe out New York City. Must have one hell of a 4G connection.

The movie ends with one final explosion and a lame teamwork message about how the Turtles learned to believe in each other.

must make friends

My thoughts: I've said before that I'm not much of a comic book guy, and that disclaimer hold true here. The TMNT came from comic books originally, and while I never read them, I understand that they were more serious than the cartoon that most know. I may have watched the cartoon as a kid, but I don't remember much from it except for the timeless hero CASEY MOTHAFUGGIN' JONES. The movie wisely chooses to not try to portray this legend and inevitably ruin him. So I can't comment much on how closely this movie follows or doesn't follow the original or most popular depictions of the story and characters. I'm evaluating this as its own movie without (much) influence one way or another from nostalgia.

And this movie is awful. In so many ways, it's awful. Awful acting, awful writing, awful delivery, awful plot. Where do I even begin?

To begin with, the Turtles look... weird. Far from their friendly yet awesome appearance in the old cartoons, these Turtles almost look like weird thugs. Almost... mutants, if you will. I mean, sure, this may be more realistic to what a humanoid turtle would look like, but is this really necessary?

It doesn't get better when the movie zooms in.

fugedaboutit

The movie also takes itself painfully seriously. There's a lot of emphasis placed on heroism and the grave nature of the threat posed by Shredder... and then the Turtles will engage in awkward sexual humor or make a fart joke. It's an odd dichotomy that never really finds its footing, and the movie suffers for it.

For me, one of the movie's few bright spots was the casting of the unstoppable William Fichter as Eric Sacks, rich industrialist who's secretly working with Shredder to bring ruin to New York. He's doing all he possibly can with the material, and he brings his trademark casual creepiness to the role with such gusto that I couldn't help but applaud. I don't know how much money they threw at him to tarnish his career with this role, but it wasn't enough. Then again, he was also in Drive Angry, so there's that.

However, on that note, this movie has two villains: the ominous Shredder, and the more obvious Sacks. Their plan is to spread toxins all over New York, sickening everyone. Meanwhile, Sack's company will make a massive profit selling the cure that's somehow derived from the TMNTs' blood while Shredder and his Foot Clan gain power in the confusion. There's an old piece of writing advice I received once about a story where I had a protagonist confronting disaster in her life and a friend who would occasionally chime in and offer encouragement. The friend didn't add much, so I was advised to combine the characters. I did, and the story improved leaps and bounds from having one fewer character to deal with. I feel the filmmakers could have improved the story massively by doing just this, and having Shredder and Sacks be the same person. Not only would it give the movie more time for character development beyond "Shredder is a bad guy who lived in Japan" and "Sacks is a bad guy who pretends to be a good guy and also Shredder's student," Fichter would have made an amazing Shredder. His talents are, quite bluntly, wasted playing second banana to a bad guy who does little besides hide in the shadows until the last ten minutes or so of the movie.

And boy, does this movie suffer by not having Shredder in it much. Most of the fight scenes with random henchman or the one ninja girl with a dyed streak in her hair rely on shaky cam and odd angles to obscure that the fight choreography is groan-worthy at most and downright lazy at best. When Shredder appears in the field with his men and actually fights Splinter, it's actually pretty damn cool. The movie gets clever, having Splinter use his long rat tail for additional strikes and trip attack attempts, which gives us a nice respite from the Turtles' usual tactic of "charge in with our weapons". All Splinter needs to beat your ass is a stick and his cunning.

the movie's color palette helps, making the CGI characters fit a bit better too

Of course, the movie ruins this by taking Splinter out of action around the midway point and having the final fight against Shredder be a pretty by-the-numbers, lame action video game affair. Although it is nice that April actually deals the final blow after spending the entire movie doing almost nothing of consequence.

Now, I'm sure this has been hashed over thousands of times since its release, but the movie adds in an odd piece to its story: April had the Turtles and Splinter as pets when before they mutated. Splinter somehow remembers this while the Turtles don't. All I have to say about it is this: it's pointless and adds nothing to the story. The Turtles clearly care for April underneath their initial play at being threatening, so it's not as though the story needed a reason for the TMNT to want to protect her. All it serves to do is add another weird

and add some hint of "destiny" to the story. To me, it came across as hokey and the sort of thing that stretches suspension of disbelief until it snaps.

In the end, this movie is pretty forgettable. All the Turtles have the same basic personality with little to differentiate them beyond a few differing props like their weapons and mask colors. While this film probably entertained little kids well enough, anything colorful and zippy enough entertains the little brats, which I'm sure was the thought of the filmmakers as they made this. I look forward to seeing this one become gone and forgotten as we move on to bigger and better things.

FUCK!

Well, thanks picture guy, now I'm just depressed. In conclusion, I give this movie a Nic Cage Cheats Death Through Vaguely Scientologist Bullshit out of five. Come cheer me up on Facebook or by throwing dollars at me on Patreon.