Last night, Nick and I went to see the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.
A short background to my fandom of this franchise: a few years ago, I worked on the series of books for the new TMNT TV show which is on Nickelodeon. I remember watching and liking Teenage Mutant HERO Turtles when I was little (ah, the censorship of the early 90s), but I can't remember this series in detail, particularly any detail relating to the mythology.
When I started writing the books for the new series however, I fell in love – it's such a great TV show. Testament to its greatness lies with the simple fact that Nick agreed to watch this with me as I immersed myself in the brand for the books, something he has not done when I needed to watch the new series of Power Rangers Megaforce or Woolly and Tig for the same reason. In fact, we've been watching the second series over the last week or so, a move entirely driven by him. If you look at my twitter feed, you'll see that I've been quoting my favourite lines from the show, entirely from Mikey who is my favourite turtle.
I was nervous about seeing the movie; the other movies were terrible, I've never seen a film Michael bay has been involved with that I've enjoyed, and also Megan Fox has such a perfect sense of smouldering and seemingly dangerous sexuality that it puts me on edge. My worse fear for this film: what if I didn't like Mikey?
Off we went, with Nick wearing a red t-shirt, because his favourite turtle is Raph; his favourite turtle was chosen during childhood based on the fact that his favourite colour is red.
I encapsulated my reaction to this film in a tweet:
I'll start with the only positive from the film, which seems obvious when written in black and the white. The turtles were the only good part of this film, the CGI is cool, their action sequences are awesome and, in the rare occasions its glimpsed, they are funny and the brotherly argumentative dynamic is really great. So, if the best part of the film is the turtles, then this should have been a fantastic film, right?
Wrong. Despite being the eponymous heroes of a beloved franchise, I think the turtles get the least screen time. The screen time is given instead to April O'Neil, to an extent that I feel they should retitle the film 'April O'Neil and a few Mutant Turtles', because calling it 'TMNT' is a flagrant misrepresentation of the film.
The film is dedicated to April O'Neil, but it might be more accurate to say it's dedicated to Megan Fox. The plot entirely centres around her, her emotions, her struggles, her actions in a way that is infuriating and bizarre for a film meant to be about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I think there are two possible explanations for why this might be:
1) Someone thought 'Megan Fox is hot. How can we give her more screen time?' 'Perhaps we write out the turtles part of the film?' 'Excellent. Cinematic genius.'
2) The budget for the CGI was low (unlikely), so they had to concentrate that budget on the action scenes, rather than building a plot or storyline for the turtles. Shooting live action scene with an actress must be cheaper than expensive CGI rendering and hey, it means Megan Fox gets more screen time. Awesome.
I mentioned this theory to Nick after the film, who pointed out that unlike in Transformers where Megan Fox 'bends over a lot wearing tight clothes', she actually doesn't do this during TMNT (score one for feminism...) but it does highlight just how awful an actress she is in this film. In the parts where her explanations of how she'd seen ninja turtles were meant to be comic, they just weren't. When she was meant to be afraid or scared or determined, it was just unconvincing.
The story centred around her saving the turtles and Splinter from a fire at her dad's lab. They were her pets, apparently. A fact in her life that she's forgotten, despite probably being about 10 or so according to the film (but then again her Dad died in the fire so it could be attributed to trauma), she is reminded of this story by Splinter in the layer and all of a sudden, appears the brother/sister bond between her and the turtles. Immediately.
Oh, and that's another thing. Instead of being a well trained ninja of years of experience who steps into the mutagen with rat DNA on him to become a rat/human hybrid, the Splinter of the film is a mutated super rat, who decides to teach himself ninjutsu after finding a book in the sewer, so his sons could defend themselves in the outside world. Which means that in the short space of 16 years, a mutated rat taught himself the complex, lifelong discipline of ninjutsu and then was good enough to teach it to the turtles . . . outrageous.
The explanation of why Splinter raised the turtles as his sons, was not because his DNA was spliced with theirs in the mutagen, but because of the care and love April O'Neil showed them in the lab, he knew he had to love these turtles. *eye roll*
When Splinter and Shredder meet for their battle in the film, their set up as an exchange between two mortal enemies, which they aren't because they've never met previously. This is yet another flaw with the plot of the film, it assumes that the audience are bringing along a wealth of knowledge of the franchise with them. Which, of course they do, but if you expect this of your audience, you shouldn't them try to offer a 'different story' and create a slightly altered world mythology from what is known from the canon.
When the plot of this film was first announced, the turtles weren't going to be mutants, they were going to be aliens from outer space. I'm not sure if the fan backlash to this was why the film was rewritten, but suppose it was, the end result is a TMNT film which has nothing to do with aliens, as the mutagen in this film is made in a lab. This change would of course be fine, if you weren't expecting fans to bring with them the knowledge of the franchise with them, but the fact that the plot spent so little time developing the characters of the turtles and the relationship between them seems as though they expected the fans to already know this.
This was highlighted in three moments in the film.
1) When the turtles are begin drained of their blood for the mutagen it contains, April asks Donnie 'What should I do?' to free them and he tells her to press the adrenaline button. At this late point in the film, apart from the hi-tech glasses Donnie wears, it's not really been established that he's the genius of the turtles. Or if you argue it has been (albeit loosely), it's not been established the April knows this with enough certainty to know he is the turtle to ask.
2) The classic tension between Leo and Raph over who is the leader is alluded to; Leo's leadership is briefly confirmed in an exchange early on in the film. (Paraphrasing) Raph: Who made you the boss? Leo: You know who did. So when the big moment when Raph says, "Let's do what Leo says." that should have been a defining moment in the relationship between the two brothers, but it just isn't in the context of the film plot (where Raph is the turtle who gets the most screen time and who goes the other turtle's rescue) and only is with a knowledge of Raph and Leo's relationship in the wider franchise.
3) Raph's big speech at the end as the Turtles are falling from the tower, when he tells the other turtles he's sorry that he's pushed them, that he only did so because he believed in them so much and that he only threatened to walk away because he was afraid he wasn't good enough to be alongside them, surely is the speech of a leader. It also comes out of nowhere, as these internal struggles and the group dynamic is not explored enough in the plot for this to make any sense. It only makes sense when you know Raph as a wider character from the franchise.
All in all, as you might have gathered from my rant, I did not enjoy this film in the slightest, just as I feared. But at least, I still liked Mikey.
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