Bet they have to go to the same shoe store as the Rescue Heroes.
All of the controversy surrounding Michael Bay, a director not known for his martial arts work, being given the Ninja Turtles license, may or may not turn out justified. I’m not sure why Nickelodeon went with a co-producer who, as a director, adultified his last kids property (Transformers) when they’ve brought the show back to a younger audience. Above is the kids network’s version of the heroes in a half shell. Yes, the comic was and is intended for older audiences but that’s not where Nickelodeon took the show.
Still, does that mean it will be bad? Or will it be decent but a terrible translation of the franchise? The teaser below may not answer that, but it does give us some ideas.
As soon as that tower broke I knew this was a Michael Bay movie, even if he didn’t direct this one. That’s his kind of destruction.
Well, on the plus side we’ve dropped the “space aliens” angle, at least for the Turtles. Is the white guy supposed to be Hamato Yoshi? Will anyone complain as loudly as they defended the new Human Torch? (And why does he sound like he’s being ADRed even when he’s on camera?) Multiversal continuity is all over the place. April (Megan Fox) appears to be wearing something similar to the yellow jumpsuit from the original cartoon but her dad is now a scientist, possibly with TCRI in line with the recent reveal in the IDW continuity. What she actually does and how she gets involved will be in the movie. Or spoiled by a full trailer because marketers are terrible storytellers.
The CG on the Turtles isn’t horrible or at least as bad as I expected. It might still be better served with something out of the Jim Henson Creature Shop like the first two live-action movies (just avoid whoever made the third movie costumes) but Hollywood seems to have a problem with costumes, make-up, and animatronics because CG is supposedly cheaper. It also means they, in theory, can get as bizarre as they want. The Turtles seem a bit TOO built, becoming dangerously close to Liefeld proportions but these guys looks like their skeletons could support them. (Depending on how their skeletal structures mutated.) Michelangelo’s bit with the mask and April’s standard fainting was somewhat amusing.
The less said about who I assume was the Shredder’s outfit the better.
I’m wondering about this bit about the origin, though; that they were created to become crimefighters. It already bugged me that the IDW origin had the mutations planned but at least things still went wrong so accidents were still somewhat part of their origin. Instead someone actually said “You know what would make a great way to defend the city from these ninjas? If we mutated four turtles instead of actually training some guys to fight the Foot.” and it worked. Also, only Leonardo and Michelangelo have appeared. Where are Raph and Donnie? One of the “related article” links below claims that’s Raphael going shell-first into the hummer but with the lighting I can’t tell. This may be worse telling who’s who in fight scenes than the Transformers trilogy.
I can’t really say that this waylaid any fears about the upcoming movie. On the plus side, it didn’t make anything worse. I guess that’s a victory. Right?
Related articles
BW Media Spotlight 