Yeah, so…maybe I overreacted a little bit.
Back in late March, when the first trailer for the new Michael-Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie premiered online, there was a problem. While so many others were excited, I couldn’t get past the idea of CGI-ed out versions of Michaelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, and Leonardo, not to mention a computer-generated Splinter and, yes, a CG Shredder. What can I say, I’m a 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles loyalist at heart.
In lieu of advanced digital effects, TMNT ’90 features physically present animatronic suits, which, 24 years later, continues to give the movie an authenticity. Sure, Partners in Kryme's rap theme song now sounds staler than a Tone Loc album, and the film's depiction of David Dinkins-era NYC makes it a time capsule randomly inhabited by Sam Rockwell, but the turtles themselves remain endearingly naturalistic. There’s something timeless about what you can actually touch; no matter how greatly the FX game evolves over time, Jurassic Park’s seemingly primitive T-Rex will always impress in all its imposing presence. On the other hand, try watching the 2002 Scooby Doo movie without harping on how Scoob and Matthew Lillard’s Shaggy never actually make eye contact. Because, you know, Lillard’s trying not to laugh acting alongside a stick with a tennis ball at its top end that’ll later be turned into a cartoon dog.
If the stellar Dawn of the Planet of the Apes reaffirms anything, though, it’s that modern-day special effects can wow us when the human element is still involved. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, commendably, was shot entirely in locations, forgoing green screens in favor of filming the actors wearing motion-capture suits and shells in New York City, enabling them to interact with Fox. Thus, it has that much in common with how Any Serkis and his fellow ape actors shot Dawn outdoors in New Orleans and Vancouver (each city doubling for San Francisco).
And it shows. Yesterday, at a private screening for a few NYC critics, producer Andrew Form presented about 12 minutes’ worth of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles footage, none of which was completely finished. As Form pointed out, they’re still working on the movie’s effects three weeks out from its official August 8 release. It’s crunch-time.
That’s what happens when six of its characters—the four turtles, Splinter, and Shredder—are being rendered through the same high-tech motion-capture trickery used to turn Andy Serkis into Caesar. While nothing in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is on Caesar’s plateau of lifelike wonderment, the CGI Turtles I previously called “four steroid-infused Shreks" are impressive in their own right.
The most reassuring takeaway: Bay’s Platinum Dunes team and director Jonathan Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles, Wrath of the Titans) seem to have the right handle on the movie’s tone. They haven’t Christopher-Nolan-ized the “heroes in a half shell,” draining them of any spunk to darken the source material.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles finds the titular crime-fighters saving people's asses as lightheartedly as you’d remember them from childhood. They're also individually distinctive, varying in height and dispositions. Michaelangelo’s still the resident wisecracker/girl-obsessed member, unable to focus on their underground surveillance camera feeds because he’s mesmerized by cat viral videos; Donatello, in a welcome character alteration, speaks in a nasally tone and wears nerd-approved specks; Leonardo, with Johnny Knoxville’s unmistakable voice, is still the level-headed leader; and Raphael, while once again the foursome’s humorless brooder, sports cool-guy shades, what looks like a red du-rag, and talks with an exaggeratedly deep pitch. Raph’s dominant toughness makes him the butt of others’ potshots; in one of the scenes’ strongest one-liners, Michaelangelo comments, “He’s doing his Batman voice.” Not only is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles refreshingly un-Nolan-esque, it also throws some playful shade Nolan’s way.
The first of the two sequences wasn’t much different from the ’90 film’s subway moment, when April first sees the four reptilian ninjas. This time, though, April’s not an investigative reporter covering the city’s crime beat—she’s a lifestyle journalist who dreams of becoming a hard-nosed investigator. Intrigued by the villainous Shredder’s criminal stronghold over Manhattan, she tells Vern (Will Arnett, unsurprisingly tasked with one-note comic relief), her loyal cameraman, “I know this is a story that actually matters.” (A line that's unintentionally comedic due to Fox's drama-school-dropout emoting) Her desire to work on more than just celeb fluff pieces sends her into NYC’s Broad Street subway station, where a group of Shredder’s Foot Clan henchmen—now looking militant with automatic weapons and draped in Black Ops accessories, a change-up from their previous gun-free, bug-eyed ninja appearances—are beckoning the turtles to show themselves while holding forcing civilians to lie face-down on the ground, at gunpoint.
The second sequence, which Form says leads directly into the film’s third-act Times Square action set-piece, was an extension of the “snow chase” glimpsed in the most recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trailer. April, Vern, and the eponymous heroes are fleeing from human baddie Eric Sachs’ (William Fichtner) secluded mansion; it’s a somewhat chaotic descent down a snow-covered mountain, with Vern trying to maneuver a semitrailer truck as Sachs’ armed goons race after him in three vehicles. While Foot soldiers fire at them, the turtles' coolest new trick gets put to use: They use their shells, both the large circular ones on their backs and their vest-like chest coverings, as bulletproof armor, as well as the occasional battering ram.
Within the mayhem, though, Michael Bay’s teenage-horndog perspective emerges. During the chase, Fox pokes her head out the truck’s passenger-side window to take snapshots of the action, giving Arnett a view of backside that, naturally, distracts him and sends the truck smashing into a snowbank—a slightly less egregious call-out to Megan Fox’s hotness than Michaelangelo’s earlier comment that “she’s so hot I can feel my shell tightening.”
Hopefully in the complete and finished Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, there’s less awkward sexual innuendo and more, say, pizza. Michaelangelo fawning over pepperoni slices? That’s charming. Insinuations about what’s essentially a Teenage Mutant Ninja Stiffy? Creepy.
Aside from its practical suits and the late Jim Henson’s memorable animatronics, the 1990 TMNT movie doesn’t lose sight of its target audience: youngsters who’ll watch adult-sized turtles toting nunchucks and katana blades with wide, enchanted eyes. When Mike, Don, Raph, and Leo swoon over April in that film, it’s innocent, schoolyard affection; in the footage screened yesterday, Megan Fox is constantly on the verge of reenacting this. Though Michael Bay is mostly aiming at teenagers with this Ninja Turtles, the world’s not ready for reptile-on-Fox intimations. People like myself are still coming to terms with forgetting about this...
...and accepting this:
(OK, you're right—Michaelangelo does look kind of cool there.)
Matt Barone is a Complex senior staff writer who once headed his own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan club (in grade school). He tweets here.
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