The upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem features a number of hallmark and beloved elements of the franchise, from the titular characters’ signature weapons to their insatiable hunger for pizza, but one iconic part of the fictional world is notably missing: the villainous Shredder. Instead of featuring the canon’s most well-known antagonist and his loyal army of Foot Clan ninjas, the film is instead pitting the heroes against a criminal scourge named Superfly and his gang of mutants. This is something that may cause some head-scratching among die-hards, but there is a specific reason as to why the filmmakers made that choice.
Earlier this week, I interviewed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem director Jeff Rowe at San Diego Comic-Con, and it was early in our conversation that the subject of Shredder came up. My opening question was about how different the final cut of the movie is compared to the first draft of the screenplay, and Rowe explained that it was a completely different story than what audiences are going to see next month. And notably, it featured Shredder as an antagonist alongside Baxter Stockman. Said the filmmaker,
[The first draft was] completely different. Could not be more different. We've thrown away... we've made like eight versions of the movie to get to this version of the movie, and they're all radically different from each other. But the first version of the movie, they were in high school by like page 20, Shredder was a villain, Baxter Stockman was a villain. It was so different from what's there now. And it was just a long process of honing in on what we actually cared about as filmmakers.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem ended up developing as more of a coming-of-age adventure for its main characters, keeping them young and isolated from the human world - which made a battle with fellow mutants who are rejecting society an exciting and interesting conflict for the plot. Jeff Rowe explained that there wasn’t any kind of impulse to stay away from Shredder because he’s been featured so many times on the big screen; instead, the decision to move away from featuring him in the film was purely in the interest of telling the best story:
The first version we were like, 'That's it! Obviously it's gonna be a Shredder and Foot clan movie.' And then, as we got into the emotional story of the turtles and their longing for acceptance, it made sense for the villain to be a mutant like them and be able to relate to them and have a similar backstory to them – all of which precluded Shredder. And then it became a real opportunity because we could then focus on introducing the world to this version of these characters and then make an amazing Shredder movie afterwards!
We’re still waiting on news about a potential sequel to this new vision for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it’s fun to know that the blossoming canon has a lot of exciting stuff in its back pocket for the future.
Not wanting to put the cart before the horse, however, we’re still counting down the days until the release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which is now just days away and aiming to be one of the biggest films of the summer. Featuring a stellar voice cast that includes Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Brady Noon, Nicolas Cantu, Jackie Chan, Ice Cube, Ayo Edebiri, Giancarlo Esposito, Seth Rogen, and John Cena, the exciting new animated release will be in theaters on August 2, and be sure to stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more from my interview with Jeff Rowe.
