Oh, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Where do we start with you? We actually got a reboot of the beloved franchise after more than two decades, but it completely fell flat on its face under the weight of CGI and Megan Fox’s so-called "acting." Now, as if to kick an enemy in the stomach when he’s down, a new installment of the Honest Trailers series has arrived to drive the final nail into the coffin.
Screen Junkies’ latest video takes the words right out of our mouths when it proclaims:
From the producer hellbent on taking all the fun out of your childhood toys [that’s Michael Bay] comes the reboot that somehow gets the spirit of the four heroes right but absolutely nothing else."
When Michael Bay was announced as a producer on the TMNT reboot way back when, so many people predicted it would bomb. And they were right! Well, it depends on who you ask, really. After all, it earned enough at the box office to warrant a green light for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2. It was a kids movie at the end of the day, and kids seemed to like it, so...mission accomplished? Just because these heroes in a half shell were a major comic book and toy franchise, though, doesn’t mean Hollywood can just put whatever they want up on the screen and call it a blockbuster.
While most of the cinema sins mentioned in the trailer are valid, one of the film’s biggest grievances with which we take major issue is the overly complicated plot. Remember that whole rumor about the Turtles being aliens instead of mutating from the ooze? Sometimes it seems that would’ve been better than this version. Yes, the ooze dripping down the sewer train and transforming the heroes into their mutant selves has been done many times before, but it’s a classic. Leaving this out was just one more reason for the property’s diehard fan base to not get aboard this train. The fact that these versions of the Turtles look like CGI nightmares also didn’t help their cause.
Though, in the movie’s defense, can anyone really get the Turtles right? Most of us loved the original movies from directors Steve Baron (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and Michael Pressman (Secret Of The Ooze), and thought the cartoons were pure genius. But as the Honest Trailer’s childlike voice of reason says, they weren’t all that great either with their cheesy lines and the actors’ puppetized costumes.
The upcoming TMNT sequel, scheduled to be released on June 3, 2016, has the opportunity to at least remedy some of these problems, but we’re not holding our breath. For the love of god, though, can we please get a TMNT villain who’s not Shredder? Gotta love the guy -- though maybe not this version, which looked like Silver Samurai from The Wolverine -- but he’s an obvious choice. Give us Krang, Armaggon, Bebop and Rocksteady, and/or The Rat King any day.
