DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE MOVIE. IF YOU DON'T PLAN TO WATCH IT AND WANNA READ IT, BE MY GUEST.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT), oh I I've missed you! Growing up in the 80's this was one of my staple Saturday morning cartoons. I mean, from the moment the intro music plays and you hear, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Heroes in a Half Shell... TURTLE POWER!" you know you're hooked! I mean, c'mon, it's one of Sheldon Cooper's favourite cartoon theme songs.

Fast forward some twenty odd years and we've had guys in turtle rubber suits and various CG animation movies and TV series spin offs and now this...

Sadly, it was not meant to be. Now I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy the movie. Had I not known what knew about the TMNT franchise back then, and had seen this NEW TMNT for the first time without knowing anything about the characters, I would say that yes, this was a GREAT movie.

But we all know better.

I'll start with April O'Neil played by Megan Fox. I felt that while this movie was about the turtles (hey, it's gotta be, I mean, the name of the movie is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) it focused on her too much. I mean, sure, the movie writers had to show her doing the reporter thing, trying to find out who these "vigilantes" are and we all saw that from the various TMNT trailers. But right through the movie, even down to the ending it was ALL about Megan Fox. I felt as if she was like the glue holding this movie together. Like, if you didn't wanna see annoying 6ft tall talking turtles, you could at least oogle and gawk and her. But I digress.

Master Splinter. He has various origins but for the sake of time, I'll just stick to what was shown in the movie. He and the four turtles were part of this lab experiment called, "Project Renaissance" and they were injected with a "mutagen". As with these Hollywood Lab experiments, a fire breaks out, and all is destroyed. But a young April O'Neil saves Splinter & the turtles and releases them into the sewers, where they start to mutate and take on human form (as in standing on two legs). Splinter was the first to fully develop and as the turtles being to grow, he cares and raises them as his own. During that time, he comes across a book (that was oh so conveniently left in the sewer) on Ninjutsu and teaches himself the art of Ninjutsu before teaching the turtles themselves, but he has no direct connection to Japanese culture or heritage and somehow he learns it quite well and so do his turtles. Again, I didn't question it and assumed their ability to pick up the art of Ninjutsu so quickly was because of the mutagen. I will say this though, Master Splinter held his ground when he faced off against Shredder.

Or should I call him Swiss Army Knife Shredder? As funny as that sounds, that's basically what he did. He wore the armour in the movie, which is a combination of modern robotics and traditional Japanese Armour and stuff but really, all he did was beat down the turtles by swinging a whole set of blades or hurling several knives at them. And them he'd activate some big ass magnet on his suit to recall all the blades and knives. Seriously. That was it. I really didn't like him as a villain in this movie and I'll leave it at that.

And now the big moment you all (hopefully) have been waiting for, the Turtles - Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo. If it's one thing that I DID like about this movie, it'd have to be them. The writers were at least able to get their personalities/mannerisms/gestures right.
Leonardo, the leader of the turtles, always taking responsibility for his brothers and their actions.
Raphael, the strong silent type, always pushing around his brothers, never showing his true emotions, always having that gruff look on his face when really he's just a big softie and coming to the end of the movie you see him make a speech where he acknowledges this.
Donatello, the nerd, always coming with new ideas or inventions and always having a plan to get him and his brothers out of danger.
Michelangelo, the class clown, always joking around and injecting humour into ever situation.
There was this one scene, where all four of them are riding the elevator to the roof to face off Shredder and while they're all riding this elevator to the top, psyching themselves up and getting ready to face Shredder, "DJ Mikey" (as he sometimes calls himself) throws down a beat and one by one the rest of them fall in and I was like, "Yeah, at least they [the writers] got them right!"

So yeah, if you ask me what I think of TMNT, I'd tell you it's an okay movie, it made me feel nostalgic but that's about it. I mean, there were times in the movie where you saw Shredder say, "Tonight I dine on Turtle Soup" in subtitles of course because he speaks Japanese and then switches to English when he faces off against Master Splinter and the Turtles (what's up with that?) and then in the rooftop fight scene where Raph and Mikey say in unison, "Cowabunga!" as they charge in to face Shredder, only to have their shells handed to them. Although, I will say that the action scene where the Turtles, April and that camera man guy (forgot his name sadly) are trying to get away from the foot clan and they're dodging and fighting and then you see Donatello slingshot Raphael into the side of a Hummer, that was a pretty decent action scene there. But I digress. It's no "Guardians of the Galaxy" but like I said earlier, if I walked into the movie theatre not knowing anything about the TMNT franchise and viewed this as my first exposure to TMNT, I'd tell you that it was a great movie.

But we all know better, don't we? X3

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