“You supposedly find yourself trapped in nostalgic childhood memories for 1.5 hours. But what you get is your favorite half-shell mutant heroes are limited with other less-mutant, less-personality characters ala Transformers-style. Classic Bay.”
Cowabunga...! It’s been seven years since the last computer-generated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was released back in 2007, and the team behind them opted to reboot the franchise with… Michael Bay’s producing. To be honest, the first time I heard that Bay and his producing company, Platinum Dunes, would take over the franchise for Nickelodeon, I was thinking, “This Michael Bay guy’s definitely hit the spot to be hated 1980s-1990s kids. He has already ruined good or least to say, ‘fine’ franchises like Transformers / Nightmare on the Elm Street with unnecessary sequels and reboot; and now he would ruin another childhood memories…!” And even worse, much worse, he told fans back in 2012’s Nickelodeon Upfront that the turtles we loved are from another planet, needless to say, a f*cking alien…! Say whaaa...t.
Once knowing this unfortunate news on the internet, I have zero expectation for this movie. Really, I didn’t care a bit for it and let fans speculations / rumours / possible spoilers just keep coming on a daily basis. I care nothing and hoped the movie will just bomb and another studio with different filmmaker will pick the franchise, then starts over again. Later on, things can’t be much better when the first official stills were floating on the web to reveal how the turtles supposedly looked. And you know what, it depressed me even more; it’s because the turtles look like a freaky humanoid Shrek from hell. THAT’S NOT EVEN A TURTLE AT ALL...! My day was ruined. It couldn’t be helped anymore. Have no appetite for the whole day *hyperbole idiom HA!
But then, the first trailer landed on YouTube. Lots of buzz filling the timeline of my twitter and Facebook and most of them were surprisingly positive about it. So at the time I was tempted, then immediately checked the trailer for myself. And you know what, I was wrong. After seeing the trailer, I was glad on what I had seen. It surely calmed some of my nerves down; and it looked quite catchy and good………………………… so far.
SO, finally on August 14th I went watching this film with my friends. It’s the Judgement Day. Sitting for almost only one and a half hour, then came out from the cinema with mixed feelings. No, I was not ranting about how bad the movie was, or how thin the plot was, or how annoying Will Arnett’s character was. No. First of all, no such extreme "Bayhem" trademarks in this film (thank God...!) and I was glad that Jonathan Liebesman, the director, really served his new vision for the turtles straightforwardly. The plot is not so great; but yeah, it’s quite standard although some people will find it unpleasant and awful.
But my main point is: we need the turtles more than those human characters. Really. I always found that Will Arnett’s cracking jokes on screen are corny; sometimes almost feels annoying. If they want to introduce us to the human characters, make them having more important roles (or even a bit twist) and give them some personalities rather than making them a one dimensional character serves as complementary aspects to the film. Megan Fox is just screaming as loud as she could hysterically and struggling with her best acting skill she could do. Will Arnett supposedly giving us fresh jokes and acts as a comic relief but what we get is dull one-liners. They even wasted William Fichtner’s good acting talent..! We don’t really care much actually for the human characters in this movie. Like I said before, they’re just there to be the complements; the ornaments of a christmas tree.
One of the main reasons why Transformers movies are generally suck is because they didn’t give both of the Autobots and the Decepticons such deep personalities that we knew from the cartoon show, or at least that we can relate to. They instead spent more time focusing on those unnecessary human characters rather than the Transformers, themselves.
But this is the turtles. You know, they already have strong trademark personalities that we already get familiar with since we were kids. And I think what Liebesman and crews had done to the turtles is mostly fine. Certain scenes really call my nostalgic childhood memories back to life. And as a child of the 90s, watching those turtles fighting the Foot Clan while talking and yelling non-sense as usual, makes it pretty fun to watch. Oh, and also there’s that elevator scene, by the way. The best.
The last point I want to speak out is its visual aspect. As most of summer blockbusters, TMNT’s heavy using of CGI is definitely unevitable. The special effects in this movie are good. They even put additional attributes to the turtles which represent each turtle’s characteristics (like NYC pin for Leo, nerd glasses for Donatello, etc etc you name it). And even more interesting is that they didn’t actually make these four turtles identical to each other like the old cartoon show, but instead they really pay attention to the turtles’ different physical appearances and anatomies which haven’t been done by anyone so far. So... I don’t know if that one is necessary, but I’ll tip my hat for that.
In conclusion, the TMNT franchise that they try to build with this very first installment, pretty much I’d say it was not pretty bad after all. It’s just fine, but they just need to be more focused on the character developments, no more plot holes / boring side plot and especially no more corny jokes by unnecessary human characters. I did enjoy some moments and scenes, but mostly the turtles have been done “right”. It has a potential to be developed into a bigger universe that could fulfill fans wildest fantasies. Don’t be afraid to make the movie hits two hours of duration as long as the story is solid and well written.
2.5 out of 5 points. I want to get my turtle soup.
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