Let's start with the good! This movie shows the turtles in a very good light. They are their true selves from the original cartoons and their personalities and personas really shine through in this movie. Raff is super mean and wants to be the leader and is always yelling at the guys. Donatello is really nerdy and even knows computer code. Michelangelo rides some kind of electronic hover board and is super in your face with catch phrases and trying to be cool and funny. And Leonardo is the fearless leader, leading the team through tough battles, although his personality didn't quite show as much as the other turtles.
The action scenes in this movie are great. This is the stuff we've come to expect from Michael Bay, king of explosions! His Transformers movies are so bad in terms of plot but when it comes to the action he's the man. There were so many action scenes in this movie. You could say that this entire movie was one big action scene with very little plot and uninteresting dialogue. My favorite part of the movie was when Master Splinter fought against the Shredder. It was a sick fight! Splinter even used a katana sword against him. At first they looked super even but in the end the Shredder overpowers Splinter and at one point I thought he was going to die. But then I remembered that this made with Nickelodeon too and that they can't have anybody actually die. In some ways it would've been a more serious movie if Splinter died, and it would've given the turtles more insensitive to take down the Shredder and Sachs (the other baddie of this film).
Now for the bad. When I first saw the turtles in this movie I was thinking,"What the hell man?" They look like 6 foot tall giant colossal monsters, not like turtles. They look like armored tanks. Like the Hulk or something. They definitely shouldn't have looked that big and buff. They looked really silly. It threw me off but I accepted it because I was enjoying the movie. But they looked stupid.
The turtles weren't the only ones who looked stupid. The entire Footclan looked like a bunch of bad Call of Duty or Counter Strike team. All black and these dumb masks. None of them actually fought with martial arts, instead relying on guns to try to take down the turtles, which was dumb because the turtles can take any bullets thrown at them because of their tough exterior. I just thought that they could've made the Footclan look more interesting. In the original cartoon they wore these purple ninja outfits, that looked a lot better than this militarized swat team army thing they had going on.
The plot in this movie wasn't anything interesting. Basically the Shredder and this rich guy Sachs were going to use the mutagen from the turtles' blood they collected and create some kind airbourne disease on the whole city. And then Sachs was suppose to use the mutagen as the cure for everyone, thus saving the city and making him rich. But wasn't he already rich? He was already living in a mansion and was super famous in the city. So his plan was for him and the Shredder to run the city? It doesn't exactly add up.
The Shredder's daughter is shown in this film as a young woman leading the Footclan but we see her get easily taken out by the turtles. In the cartoon and comic she's suppose to be a bad-ass but in this movie they make her look like a little bitch. I wanted to see some bad-ass kung fu from her, some great moves that she learned from her old man. It turned out to be a disappointment. Why did they even include her in the movie? It made no sense to have her.
And now for the nerdy! If you're a true fan of the Ninja Turtles then all the short comings of this movie won't matter to you because they were super true to the cartoon and lore. I felt like a kid again watching this movie. I used to love watching the Ninja Turtles cartoon, playing the games, and reading the comics. They're just one of the all time great franchises in nerd culture, right up there with famous cartoons like Pokemon and Teen Titans. April O'Neal was just like the April from the cartoon. I just wished this movie had Jason. It would have been exhilarating seeing Jason in his hockey outfit and stick beating up on the Footclan and the Shredder with the turtles. I really enjoyed the fighting scenes in this movie, it was just a blast. Super fun movie. The turtles were always into pop culture and in one scene while they're in an elevator waiting to beat up on the Shredder they start beat-boxing and rapping a bit. It was pretty funny. This is probably my favorite Michael Bay movie I've seen. The turtles were always saying something entertaining and they were always 'on' as actors.
Lastly, in terms of pure action this movie is better than the old Ninja Turtles films. It was super fun to watch. Kawabunga!
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