I can feel it, the tension in the air. Those of you reading this who know me are sitting there waiting for it with trepidation. The moment I break down into a frothing rage. Slamming my fists against the keyboard like an angry cyborg gorilla with bees in his brain as every other word becomes some variation of 'FUCK' until my rambling trails off into an incoherent garble of gibberish.
Well, the thing is, I'm actually not that mad about the new movie. Just... disappointed.
Lemme tell a little story, this is happy I promise. No really, I swear this is a happy story!
When I was little, there was two other boys who lived only a short bike ride away. Max and West. Max was an athlete, West was religious, and I was a geek. But we all had one thing in common... we all loved the Ninja Turtles.
Max had posters and calendars, West had a TMNT themed birthday, I had the old beatem-up Nintendo game that we all spent way too much time playing. We all had toys and when we played pretend we argued over who got to be Casey Jones, cause he got April.
The Turtles helped bridge the gaps between us. I dunno if we would have been as close without them. For that reason alone they will always hold a special place in my heart.
Now awhile back I admittedly had some trepidation and nerdrage over this film but that was quelled thanks in part to my friends... and maybe a little credit is owed to my anti-depressant...
So anyway when I went to see this movie, I was willing to refuse to allow the monster called 'Nostalgia' to wall off my heart like a fortress and stand on the palisades's screaming at the top of it's lungs that this movie had no place. Something I think a lot of fanboys couldn't do if Rottentomatos.com reviews are any indication.
I sat down with only the hope to have fun with a new imagining of my favorite heroes in a halfshell. And surprisingly, I did enjoy it more than I thought I would.
But sadly not as much as I would have liked. There was some obvious problems with this film that keep it from being great and largely render it forgettable. I'm getting ahead of myself though, let's look at this in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly style shall we?
Spoilers ahead, you've been warned!
The Good #1: It feels like a Ninja Turtle movie! ...Occasionally.
There are some great jokes and awesome scenes when the camera is focused on the brothers. You get a good feel for the turtles, and Mikey has some pretty funny lines, they also wisely decided not to make Leo and Raph's struggle for dominance a big deal, you know like every other turtle movie ever. All four get a little time to shine. At one point when the turtles are sneaking back into the sewer lair we get one of the most hilarious moments of the movie as Splinter puts each of his boys in their place as they try to escape and his punishment is just great. The scenes like this was what made seeing this movie worth it. Though the turtles are dwarfed by...
The Good #2: The Shredder!
Remember when I called the new Shredder a discount Micheal Bay Megatron with ginsu knife launcher? Yeah, I was wrong... way wrong. He actually comes across as powerful and intimidating in the scenes hes in, in and out of the armor. He speaks with purpose in a dark sinister voice and while his words are few, and one line is really cheesey fan-service, they have weight and menace. His fight scenes are nothing to scoff at, you get a feel for his strength as he easily takes on all four turtles at the films climax and never once does he feel like a push over. I was genuinely surprised at how threatening the Shredder was, almost as surprised that..
The Good #3: Tony Shalhoub does a good Splinter.
This honestly caught me off guard. I know like most people I would have preferred an Asian actor but this can be forgiven based on the origin story, well get to that later... In all honesty Tony does a great job lending his voice and giving Splinter life. He has the right mix of tired and old with the tones of a father when he speaks. His battle with the Shredder is easilly a highlight of the film and it is his few lines of dialogue in the combat that give the battle some real weight. I just wish it was enough to offset whats coming as we address...
The Bad#1 & 2: The two 500lb gorillas in the room...
There's no way around this, no nice way to say it, Megan Fox can't act. Before anyone replies "Hur dur she doesn't have too, she's purdy." Stick your dick in a desk drawer and slam it shut a few times so you stop thinking with it... You done? Alright so, Gamora and Black Widow are also eye-candy but the difference is they are played by women with some damn acting chops. Fox in comparison cant shut her mouth for most scenes, seriously, most of the movie she stares at the camera with her mouth hanging open giving a 'durr' look. She has zero imagination and it shows in her poor performance, you feel like shes infront of a greenscreen or talking to a tennis ball as she goes through the motions of earning another paycheck. The running joke 'Aprils hot' also wears out incredibly fast, same for the 'Oh haha Aprils crazy' bit. Whoopi Goldberg gives a very tired and bored performance of two measly scenes ,before she realized she has better things to do with her time and her character fires O'niel, that play on this joke and they both fall flat and come across as more mean spirited than anything.
The movie could have seriously benefited from someone who at least gives half a fuck, as it stands. Fox has no fucks to give.
The second Gorilla sitting in the corner is Will Arnett. Arnett can be a really funny guy. Go watch the Lego Movie and tell me hes not the best batman ever. If all the batmans in all the dimensions were forced to fight, Arnett is the one I would want to highlander them all. That said, in this movie hes just... cringeworthy. His character Vernon Fenwick is a throwback to the old cartoon which is cool but hes gone from being an antagonist to the creepy guy who thinks if he hits on a girl long enough shell break down and go out with him. Sure he has a joke or two that made me chuckle but most of his scenes are just skin crawlingly bad. It doesn't help Arnett looks old enough to be Foxs dad.
It really feels like Arnett wasn't allowed to be himself, he seems restrained and stuck in the roll of creepy weirdo as the director seems to think if they keep forcing this bad joke on the audience it'll be funny. One scene April calls him to tell him to meet her with his van somewhere as he makes a sammich while answering the phone... I'm not kidding, a scene that could have been summed up in a simple line of dialogue like "So what was so important I had to come down here..." drags across the screen for no other reason than Arnett needed to be filmed making a sammich.
But hey at least they get some character development compared too...
The Bad#3: Did you know this is Karai?
Because I never did. All I knew is she was a kunoichi in the footclan. They never mention her by name, or give her some backstory, or anything really. She's just treated as some minor sub-boss who spends her very few scenes: Running from the turtles, being scared of the Shredder, or standing around looking intimidating. That's it, this is what we call a wasted opportunity. A strong female villain could have had a lot of potential, and some good laughs if she went toe to toe with the turtles and beat them up.
Instead we get an incompetent lackey who's role could have been filled by any anonymous foot soldier. Hooray for strong female characters! But hey at least she looks better than...
The Ugly# 1: The Footclan soldiers.
Yeah, get a good look, let that design sink in. I understand they wanted to go for a para-military look but come on, really? Did you ever wear plastic a halloween mask, you know the really cheap ones that smelled like glue and despair and had razor sharp edges that rested on your face? Did you ever get smacked in the face while wearing it? Something tells me all it takes is one punch and these guys are screaming about so much blood in their eyes.
The worst of it is they look so generic. If you saw this picture out of context you could easily mistake these guys for any other goonsquad, or a band of surly dogcatchers that are determined to take back the streets, one stray at a time. There is nothing about them that screams 'Ninja!', they never wield katanas or use throwing stars, granted yes guns make more sense but come on that's no where near as fun! At least one or two could have used swords or maybe recurve bows, the possibilities are only as limited as the writers lack of imagination.
Gah seriously this leaves such a bad taste in my mouth, here, have a pallet cleanser before we move on.
Ah, much better! Though I guess I shouldn't be too hard on the foot, I mean after all...
The Ugly #2: Their evil scheme seems like it was dreamed up by these half-wits.
William Fichtner does a good job chewing the scenery whenever he's on screen but he can only fit so much in his mouth before he starts choking on the stupidity of the bad guys plan. I'll break it down for you, they experimented on a mutagen to make a cure for a toxin that kills humans and their going to release said toxin in New York from atop Fichtners privately owned research lab tower and then wait a month and release the mutagen cure to the public to make a ton of money and somehow the footclan would gain control of the city.
I would like to cite rule number twelve of being an evil overlord and I quote.
Rule #12: One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
Any five year old can see why this is a dumb plan, let alone an adult. Authorities can easily trace the toxins release back to Fichtner's lab, as the device to release it is on the roof and the toxin is airborn. For a split second as we get a 'Bomb's stopped at the last second' cliche we can visibly see the toxin release as a red mist just a moment before. It's not going to take a genius to figure out the epicenter of the toxins release.
It's also a toxin, not a virus. This means eventually it will just be washed away by rain, carried off by wind, or cleaned up by a hazmat team. The toxin is also displayed to be incredibly lethal, they use a henchman as a demonstration and he dies in mere moments of exposure. How are you supposed to sell a cure to something that kills you in a meer minute?
Finally, how would this grant the footclan dominion over New York? It's not going to turn it into a wasteland, which they then wouldn't want, and people aren't exactly going to be clamoring to be protected from toxic air by ninjas. Maybe they'll just buy the city with all that cure money? You know from the dead people.
This is really the films weakest link. The plan makes no sense what so ever. The Footclan would have made far more sense as a criminal underground network, vying for control of the cities underworld and not caring who gets hurt in the process and the turtles just happen to get into the Shredders way. But this is honestly not the most annoying part of the film, no that award goes to...
The ugly# 3: The Baconing.
Everything in this god damn trainwreck of a plot is related. Remember how I mentioned that I'd get around to the problem with the turtles new origin? So the mutagen being designed for the super lethal toxin was used in an experiment on four turtles and a rat. I dunno, maybe the rat was the control?
Anyway, these turtles were the guinea pigs of Fichtner and wait for it, April O'niels dad! It turns out that April's dad caught on to the plan to use the toxin and started a fire in the lab to destroy everything where he burned to death, or was shot by Fichtner, it gets kinda muddy.
But guess who just happened to be at the lab that night? Why it was little April and she rescues our heroes in the halfshell... by taking them outside throwing them into the sewer? Well it turns out that this all started because Fichtner considers the Shredder his adoptive father, who's pulling the strings behind everything.
And despite the fact that Splinter explains he has no memory earlier than the night of the fire he totally knew this and that the Shredder was behind everything all along and would be coming after his sons once Fichtner learned they were still alive.
And at this point I just want to strangle the writers to death with barbed wire, but which writer because...
The Ugly# 4: The script was rewritten at least 4 times...
And it shows. There is a bizarre disconnect between pieces of the story. Some of it is set in downtown New York, some of it is set out in a mountain estate clearly during winter, no shot in New York looks like it's winter but the countryside is covered in snow.
April's dad goes from dieing in a fire to Fichtner announcing he shot him.
The mutagen at one point is referenced as being 'not of this world', clearly a left over from the 'Turtles are actually aliens' plot.
At one point the turtles are kidnapped and the mutagen, which is apperently still active in their bloodstream is drawn out and somehow the turtles know this is the only way to save Splinters life after his fight with the shredder. The end of the climatic battle with the Shredder see's the only vial of mutagen destroyed with the Shredder, but somehow the turtles get some to save their master, cause green goo designed to cure a toxin fixes broken ribs and busted organs?
And there are the parts that you can tell was written by someone who loved the turtles and wanted to do right by them. It's pretty jarring and you can tell the script suffered through a handful of rewrites but the worst thing of all is...
The Ugly# 5: You can feel Michael Bay's fingers on this.
Seriously, I imagine it's alot like being touched by that boss who doesn't understand personal space is a thing and constantly has to be grabbing your shoulders or something. No? Just me? I'm the only one who's had to deal with that?
Anyway, while yes technically it was directed by Jonathan Liebesman, Michael Bay still produced it and it has his signature fingerprints all over it.
Bay is terrified of making a movie about the actual subject matter of the movie. Pearl Harbor for example, limps along with a love story about two pilots and a nurse. Almost zero time is spent with the sailors, you know the guys who were actually attacked? When the Japanese do get around to bombing Pearl Harbor it's hard to manage any empathy with the sailors as we've had no time to get to know them. Their just bodies and explosions set to harrowing music.
Transformers is another great example. So much time is devoted to that sulking cesspit of an excuse for an actor and human being who will hence not be named, that the actual Transformers feel like backdrops when they should be full fledged characters. That was what we paid money to see, Transformers, not some creature in a skin-suit pretending he's a human being prance across the screen for two hours.
So the majority of the TMNT movie revolves around Megan Fox looking bored and Will Arnett being creepy. Yup totally what I paid to go see, some old dude hit on a chick out of his league, and age bracket, for a couple hours.
His taste for wanton destruction with no point also makes an appearance. During the final showdown when the toxins air dispersal is cancelled, Shredder begins simply knocking down the tower and the turtles try to hold it up. Donatello makes a big deal about keeping the tower from toppling cause if it does the canister holding the toxin will break and it will flood the city with toxin. The tower finally falls over all the way to the city street but nothing happens. They seriously expect you to forget why the tower falling is a bad thing in about five minutes and have it fall anyway.
To be fair it does give us some the funniest and a moving bit of dialogue as the turtles get stuck in the tower as it plummets to the ground but still, if all it was going to do was just thud off the concrete all along...
Which brings me to the sad truth of the matter.
The thing is, beneath all the problems there is a really good Ninja Turtles movie in there. When the movie isn't trying to shove a nonsense villain scheme down your throat, or trying to trick you into thinking Megan Fox is a legitimate actress, it can be really good.
The scenes with the turtles being themselves are just a joy. At one point they beatbox in an elevator and it doesn't feel forced, it feels like four teenage boys psyching themselves up for a fight. Mikey has charisma and great comedic moments. Raph's temper and nature make him still a favorite as he embodies wolverine in a shell, in a good way mind you! Leo feels like a boy trying to wrangle his brothers and be the leader, and Donny is adorkable.
And that's what makes this sad, it was so close to being great! I can feel it, deep down I can feel the potential it had to be something more than just another Bay film. But, I'll still love it for what it's worth. In the end, their still the Ninja Turtles and I still had fun.
Who knows, maybe in another ten years we'll get a better reboot that will capitalize on everything this one did right and forget everything it did wrong on the cutting room floor.
