The New TMNT movie

[Guardsman Bass]

Has anyone seen it yet? I haven't seen it, but I'm considering doing so. The critics have ravaged the movie for sucking, but I'm curious as to what board members' opinions are on it - I remember critics really hated The Green Lantern too, while I thought it was alright even if it was heavily flawed.

[amigocabal]

I enjoyed the movie; it well-portrayed the familial chemsitry between the turtles and between the turtles and Splinter which was always a staple for the franchise. It also focuses on the core characters, while leaving room for future installements. I have a few observations.


- This is the first live-action film appearance of Vernon Fenwick, Karai, and Baxter Stockman. Of the three, only Vernon gets significant characterization.


- Vernon asking April if the turtles are aliens is clearly a reference to the first draft, where the turtles were aliens.

Spoiler

In a video recording, April mentions that the mutagen is made from something that was not from Earth. This is clearly in reference to the fact that throughout the franchise, the mutagenic ooze is of alien origin. This also partially explains why Eric Sacks needed the turtles' blood, as their blood has the unearthly ingredient(s) needed to make the mutagen.

Spoiler

Apparently, the mutagen gave Splinter and the turtles human intelligence first, before causing them to grow. It also took at least a few weeks for it to take full effect.

Spoiler

Eric Sacks offers April a job as a lab tech after she comes to him with the story about the turtles. This is a shout out to her role in the Mirage comics.

Spoiler

Splinter learned ninjitsu from a book. Understandably, in a straight fight with the Shredder, he gets his ass handed to him. By contrast, the turtles did defeat Shredder, but not in a straight fight. They had been fighting more to distract Shredder than to brutally beat him down, and later on April possessed the mutagen canister, which gave Shrewdder a higher priority than beating down the turtles.

Spoiler

Neither Casey Jones, Hamato Yoshi, or the utroms appear. This was done to keep the story simple. We have four turtles and a rat to deal with, adding hockey-masked vigilantes and aliens would further complicate the story. (Although, as noted above, April implied that the mutagen was at least of partial alien origin.

Spoiler

In the end, the Shredder is lying in a crater on the street created by an impact from him falling from the top of a skyscraper. He touches the mutagen ooze with his fingertip, and the mutagen was implied to have regenerative properties...

[Vendetta]

I saw the trailer on Guardians of the Galaxy and nothing in it convinced me that the movie would be worth watching.

I have seen nothing to convince me otherwise.

[Havok]

How is Megan Fox?

[Crazedwraith]

It only just came out recently in the UK and I saw it with friends. It was surprisingly not-bad. It wasn't the greatest but still. It was very short for this kind of movie. 1 hr 40 minutes, I was expecting it to be a Transformers style over blown 2 hrs 20 which seemed to have become the standard for this kind of think. So the plot is quite simple and the Turtles all seem a little one note, but they're turtles so what do you expect. It's pretty comic in tone with funny moments quickly following any heavy drama, it didn't always get a laugh from me but it wasn't like offensive humour or anything.

For all Micheal Bay's connection to this movie has been bandied about it didn't really feel like one of his movies. Not bad boys or Transformers or anything.

Megan Fox was fine. There were only a couple of shots I recall that were making a big deal out of sexiness and one of those set up her plot of why she wanted to get out of what she was doing then and be accepted as proper reporter.

The Turtles looked a lot better in motion than they did in the still pictures everyone decried and their designs are kind of interesting but the fact they're like 7 or 8 feet tall and super strong and bullet proof on account of their mutations really spoils things a bit. It's like if they have all those powers being ninja's a bit redundant and it necessitates the shredder being a dude in power armour with ridiculous swiss army knife arms.

So short, it was short but fun and kind of silly so it's a brain off movie.

[LaCroix]

To me, Michael Bay movies are something like a day at Splash Mountain, only with the water replaced by raw sewage.

As long as you hold your nose on occasion, it's quite an enjoyable ride, but still, occasionaly, there comes a splash...

[Simon_Jester]

The Turtles looked a lot better in motion than they did in the still pictures everyone decried and their designs are kind of interesting but the fact they're like 7 or 8 feet tall and super strong and bullet proof on account of their mutations really spoils things a bit. It's like if they have all those powers being ninja's a bit redundant...

I have not yet seen the movie, this is a general observation about the franchise.

The Turtles' method of being 'ninjas' usually involves spending an inordinate amount of time being bright green. Also, wearing brightly colored bandanas and waving melee weapons around... in an environment where you'd really expect a lot of the bad guys to have firearms.

Honestly, whatever advanced ninja techniques they might possess, they probably aren't doing the Turtles a lot of good. They need all the help they can get.

[Kojiro]

It's terrible. Utterly terrible.
Spoiler

Shredder has been added as an afterthought, literally in post production. There is no connection between him and the turtles or Splinter, who inexplicably knows who he is and how he's connected. It'd be like when Vader confronts Obi-wan and it's was the first time we've seen him in the movie. The fight between Splinter and Shredder is also as comical as it is lacking depth.

The short version is they screwed with the origin without thinking of how that cascaded down. Making Splinter just a rat for example. It removes the animosity between Splinter and Shredder, removes Splinters skills and removes a driving force behind the training of the turtles, turns the Foot into mercenaries and makes the conflict impersonal. Instead we get 'illiterate rat find ninjitsu book = ninja turtles!'.

And yeah, the physicality of the turtles is absurd. Just ridiculous. You almost feel like Shredder needed power armour. Otherwise fighting 7ft, bullet proof, 'I rammed a Humvee and totalled it then walked away' creatures would just be crazy for a human. But more than that their strength seems to be their primary fighting ability rather than skill. They're just brutes.

[PainRack]

The movie was ok.......................... i switched off the purist mindset and it became a valid popcorn fantasy ...


Raphael however was handled horribly and the fight scenes and reasons for it was.............