{"id":15069,"date":"2014-08-11T18:39:49","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T18:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=15069"},"modified":"2016-06-03T11:41:25","modified_gmt":"2016-06-03T15:41:25","slug":"teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/11\/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"856118c8610e45827078b86cbe164263\"<\/a>It\u2019s pretty sad to see \u201cGuardians of the Galaxy,\u201d which understands the idea of dysfunctional warriors coming together for a common purpose and becoming heroes, while \u201cTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u201d gets it so wrong. Speaking as a fan of the TMNT franchise, \u201cTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u201d not only gets it all wrong, but it accomplishes what not even the worst adaptations could in the past. It turns the Ninja Turtles in to generic heroes with almost no personality. Beyond Michelangelo, no one in the film has an actual unique personality I could think of. Director Jonathan Liebesman and Platinum Dumbs take the \u201cTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u201d in to a whole new arena of bland, lifeless, nonsense. What\u2019s pretty much always been a franchise meant to sell merchandise for decades, becomes even more<\/p>\n

Director Jonathan Liebesman and Platinum Dumbs take the \u201cTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u201d in to a whole new arena of bland, lifeless, nonsense. What\u2019s pretty much always been a franchise meant to sell merchandise for decades, becomes even more soulless than ever. In this unnecessary rehashing, April is a fluff news reporter anxious to be taken seriously, so she begins investigating the foot clan and their reign of crime. During an investigation, she\u2019s taken hostage, and witnesses the Ninja Turtles bring down a troop of the Foot Clan.<\/p>\n

Despite being ninjas, April is able to follow them and sneak up on them, prompting her discovery of the four anthropomorphic turtles, all of whom are committed to fighting crime. After meeting them and their master Splinter, an anthropomorphic rat with knowledge of martial arts, the turtles are kidnapped. Apparently the turtles have magic blood, and the Foot want to spread a lethal plague across New York, synthesize the turtles\u2019 mutagen blood as a cure, and sell it to the US government for big profits.<\/p>\n

If you can believe it, Shredder is awkwardly shoe horned in to the movie, never really doing much but confronting and taunting the turtles, and donning robotic armor that looks like the Foot strip mined a Decepticon and used its parts for a suit. The Shreddertron 3000 is also turned in to a generic foe; it\u2019s quite obvious the script was hastily retooled to turn Shredder and Sacks (William Fichtner) in to separate characters. \u201cTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u201d completely re-writes the entire mythos for the sake of propping up future installments, and selling toys, never actually touching on what\u2019s so much fun about these characters.<\/p>\n

Splinter now becomes a martial arts master because he read a book, the turtles were once pets of April, and for some reason the turtles now look like dinosaurs. With the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, there\u2019s always been that thin line that separates them from being moronic creations, and fun underdog superheroes, and Liebesman seems to want to embrace both sides of the coin. He mocks the characters for the adult audience, while giving them their own moments of martial arts bad assery for the sake of the kids. He also throws in a fart joke, and an honest to goodness erection joke. Shredder is barely the villain of this piece, the foot clan is generic soldiers, and (for the sole reason of Megan Fox\u2019s sex appeal) April O\u2019Neill is now the main character. Not to mention the entire reasoning for the turtles existing. It\u2019s disheartening that a movie about \u201cTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u201d takes almost twenty minutes until we see the foursome. Even then they\u2019re really just nothing but plot devices for April confronting her tortured past, and becoming an actual news reporter.<\/p>\n

Not to mention the entire reasoning for the turtles existing. It\u2019s disheartening that a movie about \u201cTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u201d takes almost twenty minutes until we see the foursome. Even then they\u2019re really just nothing but plot devices for April confronting her tortured past, and becoming an actual news reporter. The movie relies on Megan Fox reacting and interacting with the turtles, and that\u2019s a travesty considering Fox\u2019s performance is god awful. It\u2019s cringe inducing how she can barely deliver a worthwhile line of dialogue convincingly, and never seems at all lifelike in the role. April should be a foil, and unofficial part of the team, and yet she\u2019s really just this pouty cardboard cut out who barely has any kind of chemistry with the computer animated mutants.<\/p>\n

April should be a foil, and unofficial part of the team, and yet she\u2019s really just this pouty cardboard cut out who barely has any kind of chemistry with the computer animated mutants. April should be a foil, and unofficial part of the team, and yet she\u2019s really just this pouty cardboard cut out who barely has any kind of chemistry with the computer animated mutants. There are glimmers of fun moments between the team which include an impromptu beat box session in an elevator, and Raphael\u2019s conflict with Leonardo. I wanted so much more of that. Instead all we get is another loud, obnoxious, ninety minute commercial with no grasp on what makes the source material it\u2019s adapting so appealing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s pretty sad to see \u201cGuardians of the Galaxy,\u201d which understands the idea of dysfunctional warriors coming together for a common purpose and becoming heroes, while \u201cTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u201d gets it so wrong. Speaking as a fan of the TMNT franchise, \u201cTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u201d not only gets it all wrong, but it accomplishes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[58,64,71,219,240,349,391,631,701,733,829,865,906,1020,1035,1087,1102],"class_list":["post-15069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-adaptation","tag-adventure","tag-comedy","tag-crime","tag-fantasy","tag-gangster","tag-martial-arts","tag-mutants","tag-ninjas","tag-reboot","tag-robots","tag-science-fiction","tag-t","tag-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles","tag-thriller","tag-tmnt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15069"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20905,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15069\/revisions\/20905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}