Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

All of this just works. ― Todd Howard

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"Why is it that twenty-four years later we got a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie that was more Juvenile and has less substance then the one made in 1990?"

— Phelous in his review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

Heroes in a half shell, bad film!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a Live-Action, CGI Animated, Action, Comedy Film directed by Jonathan Liebesman and written by Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec, and Evan Daugherty. It's based on TMNT comic, was released in 2014 and is the first/penultimate instrumental of the Live-Action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film Duology.

Plot

April O'Neil, a local reporter for Channel 6 Eyewitness News in New York City, investigates a crime wave by a group of criminals called the Foot Clan. At a dock at night, she sees the Foot raiding cargo containers. After an unseen vigilante attacks the thieves, April notices a symbol left behind. April's supervisor Bernadette Thompson and her coworkers are oblivious to her story. Later while covering a charity event thrown by Sacks Industries, April expresses gratitude to the company's CEO Eric Sacks, who was her late father's lab partner.

Frustrated by the vigilante, the Foot Clan's leader Shredder has the Foot Soldiers take hostages at subway station in order to draw him out. April, at the scene, becomes a hostage herself. Four mysterious figures arrive, take out the Clan, and free the hostages. April follows them to a rooftop and is shocked to see that the vigilantes are anthropomorphic mutant turtles, causing her to pass out. When she regains consciousness, they advise her not to tell anyone of them. As they leave, April hears Raphael and Leonardo's names.

April returns to her apartment and remembers "Project Renaissance", her father's science experiment, which involved four turtles named Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, and a mutated rat called Splinter. Unable to convince Bernadette of the Turtles' existence, April is dismissed. Her coworker Vern Fenwick drives her to Sacks' estate where she confides in him about her discovery. Sacks believes her and reveals that he and April's father had been experimenting on a mutagen created to cure disease, which was thought lost in the fire that killed her dad.

At Splinter's behest, the Turtles bring April to their sewer lair. Splinter explains April had saved them all from the fire and free them into the sewer. The mutagen caused the five of them to grow and develop humanoid attributes. Splinter took on the role of their father, using April's father as an example. After finding a book on Ninjutsu in a storm drain, he proceeded to teach himself, then the Turtles, the fighting style. When April reveals she told Sacks about her discovery of the Turtles, Splinter informs her that Sacks was practically raised by the Shredder and works with him.

Then, Shredder and the Foot Soldiers attack the lair, defeating Splinter and incapacitating Raphael while the other Turtles are captured. April comes out of hiding and she and Raphael plan to save the others. At Sacks' estate, he has the Turtles' blood drained in order to create an antidote to a deadly virus that Sacks hopes to flood New York with, believing he will become rich from people seeking his cure. Raphael, April, and Vern storm the estate and free the other Turtles. The group then escapes the compound in pursuit of Sacks.

On a radio tower in the city, Sacks and Shredder plant a device that will flood the city with the virus while Sacks is preparing to convert the mutagen into a healing serum. Sacks reveals to April that he killed her father. April and Vern subdue Sacks in the lab, while the Turtles are battling Shredder on the roof. During the fight, the tower's support beams collapse. As the turtles try to keep it from falling and infecting the city, April confronts Shredder with the mutagen. In the struggle, the tower collapses and the Turtles pull April onto it with them, while Shredder falls to the street and is captured by the police. Believing they are about to die, the Turtles confess their secrets, while Raphael gives an impassioned speech about his love for his brothers before they land harmlessly on the street. They vanish before the humans find them and return to the sewers, where they give Splinter the mutagen and he begins to recover.

Sometime later, April meets with Vern, who tries and fails to ask her on a date. The Turtles appear in a special modified "Turtle Van", and Michelangelo accidentally blows up Vern's new car with a rocket. As the police respond to the explosion, the Turtles leave, but not before Mikey tries to serenade April with "Happy Together" by the band The Turtles, much to his brothers' annoyance and April's amusement.

Bad Qualities

1. Elephant-In-The-Room: The designs for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have very ugly designs and somewhat don't resemble turtles, most of which look more like man-baby and having ugly design snouts.
   • Specking of which, the designs for the four main turtles comes across of mixed, while Leonardo and Raphael has the best designs, Michelangelo and Donatello has the worst designs, with Michelangelo's head looking like a poor man's version of Shrek from the Dreamworks Shrek series and Donatella having a design of a stereotypical nerd(more on that later).
   • Another problem however that the Turtles barely acts like ninjas, instead the act like a bunch of Superman wannabes.
2. The CGI animation, while incredible to look at and can look impressive at times(being the fact that the TMNT 2014 film was made by Michael Bay, also known as the creator of the seven Live-Action Transformers Movies), looks somewhat dated, even for 2014-standereds, most of which look like CGI animation out of a video game then a movie.
3. Terrible and mostly poor acting, even from actors such as Megan Fox.
4. A tiresome plot and convoluted storyline, which doesn't really seem to follow the franchise at all.
   • Speaking of said story, it severely plagiarizes The Amazing Spider-Man (with the same plot revolving around experiments, healing factors, cures, and viruses) and it shows.
5. Poor writing. The idea of having April and the Turtles having a connection since childhood is a decent and interesting addition, but everything else is pretty standard, cliched, and predictable, and unnecessarily changed Splinter's backstory (with him being a laboratory experiment than a sewer rat).
6. Some of the characters got flanderized in this film:
   1. April went from a kind, caring and responsible woman to a generic reporter with the personality of a typical Women-Of-The-Day that you normally see in previous media. What also doesn't help is that she was played by Megan Fox.
   2. Michelangelo has been made into child-like mentality character who rarely takes things serious and will often spear out funny quips for the sake of a joke, even in more intense situations.
      1. While Michelangelo has always been like this in previous Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles media (given the fact that he's the comic relive of most of the series), when there is a threat looming around he IS capable of switching to a serious side and never goofs around in more serious scenarios.
7. On the subject of the characters, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles also have really generic personalities:
   1. Leonardo is a generic Leader of his team.
   2. Donatello is a stereotypical Brains of the team who is also a nerd, heck they even shoehorn in this by having him have tech hanging off Donatello and even made him wear glasses.
   3. Ralphael is the basic Brawns who is angry all the time.
   4. Micheangelo is stupid.
8. Splinter has been really butchered in this film, in a addition to his voice being semi out-of-place(country of Tony Shalhoub), he's also really bland with little-to-no personality other then being the no-nonsense, very serious warrior that has already been done much better in previous media, while the original Splinter (as in both the comics, 1987, 1990s film trilogy and 2003 versions) was also like that, he was still the master/father figure to the Turtles that the fans can see, and even tho he had respect, Splinter still had a lighter/funny side to him.
   1. Heck, even the Splinter from the 2012 show(which came out two years earlier), who was more serious then previous Splinters, had more of a comic side.
9. Misleading Title: In both Box-Arts and DVD released, it shows the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, given off the impression that they would be the main characters, yet most of it is focuses on April, this also doesn't help by the fact that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles do not appear until 20 minutes into the film.
10. There are many plot-holes and errors though out the film:
    • In the final showdown with Shredder, Leonardo throws one of his katanas at Shredder, which falls to the ground with Shredder. However, throughout the rest of the scene, Leo still has two katanas on his back.
    • Why doesn't the Turtles tell Splinter that the reason they went up the the surface is because they were saving a few people and April?
    • Near the beginning when April interviews the fitness trainer and is jumping on the trampoline, she is wearing a pink shirt and a black coat. When she walks back to the news van she is wearing a gray shirt with a burgundy coat.
    • After April is contacted by the turtles and meets them on the rooftop, she is wearing a black shirt. When she is taken down to the sewers by the turtles, she is wearing a gray shirt.
    • At the start of the snow hill scene, when the semi-truck spins its wheels after being hit by a rocket, the truck only has one drive axle. In every other shot, the truck has two drive axles.
    • During the stasis scene, three of the turtles are in stasis chambers, having their blood removed for the mutagen, but four tubes are filling with blood flowing to the container.
    • The rich bad guy (Eric Sacks) plans to get richer by spreading a deadly virus on New York City and by being the only supplier of the cure. That's already suspicious in itself, but the fact he planned to start spraying the gas from the top of the tower means he would be arrested by federal agents right after forensics. The camera footage and testimonies would pinpoint the origin of the gas to his property.
      • Another plot hole is that if the mutagen in the turtles' blood was so precious that the Foot needed to take three turtles, why not take Splinter too? After all, his blood has mutagen in it too, and taking three turtles rather than one suggests every ounce of mutagen is valuable. In fact why just take only three Turtles and not all four along with Splinter?
11. The movie itself only involves the Turtles trying to save New York City from getting deadly virus, yet most of the film boils down to a lot of filler, with almost nothing going on during the movie.
12. Eric Sacks is a pretty weak villain and a generic "corrupt CEO" with an even more weak plan, in fact, there's more focus on him than Shredder, and that's because Sacks was originally gonna be this film's Shredder, but it was subsequently abandoned due to fan disappointment and in favor of casting actor Tohoru Masamune as an authentically Japanese incarnation of the character, then changed later in production. Honestly, Sacks as the Shredder in this version would have made him a more interesting character if he was written not or so.
    • Speaking of Shedder, he is no better due being generic and lame villain with no real motive for doing so.
13. Excessive loads of insulting and blatant product placement (eg. Skype, YouTube, Google, Windows, Pizza Hut, and Dunkin' Donuts).
14. Hamato Yoshi, who depending on the media, was either Spinter's owner (in the comic book, 1990s film trilogy and 2003 versions), or who Splinter was before being turn into a rat (in both the 1987 and 2012 versions), and was the one that gave Splinter the influence to train the Turtles as well as gave them their connection to japan and Nninjutsu, makes no appearances in this film, not even so much as a MENTION.
    • Instead, Splinter trains to Turtles to be Ninja Turtles by a random "How To Book" in the sewers.
15. Any emotion that this film tries to make is hampered by a joke
16. Poor attempts of humor, most of which comes from Micheangelo.
17. While epic, the climax is very hard to fallow.

Good Qualities

1. The voice acting for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is decent.
2. The scene were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles plays a song as they ride up the elevator to Splinter is a funny and charming scene.
3. While oddly implemented, the backstory that explains how April, Splinter and the Turtles met was nicely made.
4. The action sequences are pretty awesome, despite the poor and unnecessary camera work and bad special effects.

Reception

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles received generally negative reviews from critics and fans alike for the plot, computer-generated effects, and lack of character development. Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 21% of critics gave the film positive reviews; the average score is 4.2/10. The critic consensus reads: "Neither entertaining enough to recommend nor remarkably awful, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may bear the distraction of being the dullest movie ever made about talking bipedal reptiles". On Metacritic, the film has a 31 out of 100 based on 33 critics indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". The audience polled by Cinemascore gave the film an average grade of "B" on a scale of A+ to F, as well as 5.8/10 on IMDb.

Chris Stuckmann gave this movie a D+.

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