Tenenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
My Grade: C.... Flat C.
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Somewhere in this there is a movie....
Not a good movie. Not necessarily a bad movie. But a movie.
But what we have here feels like someone shipped something across the country, overnight, via some cheap parcel service and not only did they not pay extra for package insurance but they didn't pack the item properly. So what ends up at the destination is a damaged mess that someone has to attempt to piece back together with off-brand superglue.
This is a 30-year-old Lego set bought on eBay, shipped by the aforementioned manner and when you get it not only are the instructions missing but most of the pieces are too.
This movie is, mercifully, under two hours long which is either a blessing or part of the problem.
The movie takes place some indeterminate period of time after the events of the first movie and some indeterminate things have happened. It feels like watching a TV series on DVD and one of the discs is missing so you lost a block of episodes. The Turtles have swapped out their party-van from the end of the last movie for a garbage truck with various features on it reminiscent of the toy from the '80s, April -presumably- has gotten her job back at the news station while also performing under-cover reconnaissance for the turtles for... some reason. Vernon has somehow sold himself as the one solely responsible for saving the city at the end of the last movie even though anyone with a brain would figure out how hugely unlikely that is (considering how Shredder would have been recovered) and that the Turtles should have been very clearly seen at the end of the movie landing with the tower. And for some reason the April and the turtles are interested in the actions of one Baxter Stockman.
Shredder has been imprisoned and changed from an imposing, shadowy, fierce-and-bald massive figure to an average-sized Japanese man and is being held in a prison but soon to be transfered to another facility, Stockman hatches into motion a plan to intercept the convoy transferring him and free Shredder. Things sort-of go wrong and Shredder ends up in the presence of Krang (a brain-shaped alien in a exosuit body) who wants Shredder's help in gathering up pieces of some alien technology that'll allow Krang to move his war-machine the Technodrome into or dimension so he can conquer the Earth. Krang then gives us a wacky bit of comic relief before disappearing until the end of the movie. Shredder uses a formula given to him by Krang to turn two escaped cons into animal beasts to help fight the turtles. Bebop (a warthog) and Rocksteady (a rhinoceros.)
The turtles struggle with living in the shadows, not allowed to be seen by people, while they save the world from evil brain-blobs and insane samurai with unclear motivations to conquer the world.
What we end up with is a movie with missing elements that, ultimately, feels like the thin idea of a story used when you used to play with your action figures. "Uhh, Shredder wants to do something mean and evil, the turtles make quips and there's a FIGHT!"
The turtles have more of a presence here than they did in the last movie but it's still sort of flat, they mostly repeat things already explained to us by other characters and the story and to pretty much say things that only contribute to the "arc" they're on with struggling between wanting to be part of the human world but remaining who they are.
Oh, and Casey Jones, who only shares the name with his comic book/TV show counterpart. He's a security guard who wants to be a cop but he's too much of a screw up to really get there. He's good at low-rent Shia LeBouf comedic antics.
April O'Neil has an ass that's often in skinny jeans.
It's odd that TMNT is treated and used so much as a "kid's property" when there's little reason it should be other than the popularity of the 1980s/90s cartoon and toyline. Virtually every other incarnation of the turtles has been more serious, the comics (excluding the Archie comics series based around the cartoon series) follow up cartoons (excluding the short-lived live-action show) they've all be fairly serious and straight; on par with most other comic book titles.
In the current version of the comics Splinter and the turtles are reincarnations of a man and his sons from feudal Japan, Shredder a reincarnation of the man who killed Splinter (Humato Yoshi), his wife and sons. Casey the son of an abusive father living a rough life, and April a college intern at the lab where the turtles and Splinter were exposed to the experiments that granted them humanoid form.
The current comic line is fairly dark and "realistic" in line with the original comic series but also manages to find some link to their cartoon versions between the color-coded bandannas and trademark personalities (leader, techno-geek, wacky comic relief, rage-aholic.)
There's chances and opportunity to do the property seriously but, for some reason, the studios in charge of the franchise right now, along with producer Michael Bay are content with, well, smashing together action figures without any real reason for anything to happen.
There's a lot wasted here. Shredder is better used and presented than the shoe-horned in version in the previous movie, Krang is almost an after-thought, and Casey Jones was a complete waste. They didn't need to make him bat-shit crazy like he was in the toon, or as grim of character as he was in either version of the comics but something on-par with how he was done in the original movie franchise would have been good. I really like how he was handled there.
Bebop and Rocksteady are done fairly well but the CGI doesn't entirely work, just like with the turtles. It just looks... fake. Which it's CGI, yeah, but it still look manufactured and not really part of the scene. The "test versions" that presumably were made leading up to the first movie were better designs. Their personalities and such are pretty good and on par with the cartoon series, however.
And the use of the Technodrome is sort of wasted here, we never really get to fully see it and, well, the whole thing is sort-of hollow.
I dunno, the first movie I felt was okay. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, it wasn't a "good" movie but just okay. I sort of fall that way here, but maybe short since this movie could've been better; the first movie a chance to shake out the bugs and to see what sticks and works. Here? It's like they learned nothing and pretty much just took the worst parts of the first movie and doubled down on them and sort of backed off on the stuff that did work.
So, I rate this a movie one CGI barrel of spaghetti.
