Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: 50% Fan Service, 50% Balls

Today I saw the new TMNT. First, let me say that it's great to see the turtles back in action, and in a respectable way. Not that gaytarded live action crap they had in the late 90's, or that hit and miss, mostly miss, cartoon of the early millenium, but something that you can sink into, and enjoy. It makes me happy in a way that the new abomination transformers movie never will be able to. Unless it defies reason and rocks balls.

With that out of the way, this movie had some sweet designs... if you're not a human. The humans were kind of cheesy looking, as if the designers couldn't decide if they should be realistic or stylized. Completely forgetting that the turtles are totally stylized, they decided to go with a hybrid. Also, the humans color palettes are all far too bright, when the movie has a general dark feel and uses darker colors. But the turtles: sweet! Splinter: cuddly and wise. Monsters: pretty crazy cool designs... all, like, 16 of them. Seriously.

The fighting. You might think that the animators actually bothered to see the way martial artists actually move for this movie. A lot of this stuff was pretty convincing. One rooftop rainsoaked fighting scene in particular.

The story. This is simultaneously the movie's strongest and weakest point. I think this is the part that generally contains the SPOILER warning. So, SPOILERS. It opens up with Leonardo who has been sent to South America by Splinter to learn to be a better leader. It takes place after the second movie, where Shredder was killed, ergo, there is no shredder. Leonardo is in South America where he has a chance meeting with April, who has since become some sort of treasure hunter, and she convinces him to come back. He does, and Michaelangelo, Donatello, Casey Jones, April, and Splinter all greet him with open arms. Raphael is angry, because Raphael is an angry person, that Leo returns. In Raph's mind, Leo is a coward of sorts. He thinks that Leo's Splinter appointed quest was really showboating and turning a blind eye. When Leo left, Splinter commanded the turtles below the surface world to train and prepare for Leo's return. In his absence, Don and Mikey make money. Don as a tech support agent, and Mikey doing birthdays dressing up in a foam turtle suit. Raphael has taken up pure badass vigilantism. And I mean bad. Ass.

And that's essentially what this story is. A conflict between Raphael and Leonardo. The prodigal son, and the farmer's son. The son that left and returned, and the son that has never left. And that, at its essence is what makes this story so good. A conflict between brothers. Leonardo and Raphael's characters are developed nicely. You really see their conflict intensify. It's pretty rich, and thick.

The story is also the movie's weak point. A general discovered a portal 3,000 years ago and unleashed 13 demonic beasts on the world and turned his generals to stone AND destroyed a city at the same time. The (now. thanks to the portal) immortal general feels intense remorse for what he did, not fully understanding the depth of his crime, and spends the next 3,000 years waiting for the portal to open again so that he can fix his wrong... and this is where things get really muddy. First, his generals are awakened from their stone prison through a system not even explained. Next, he hires a certain clan (whose leader is the only decent looking human) to track down these 13 monsters so that he can throw them in the portal and undo the damage.

First, that's too much. Too many items. I like the meat of the plot: brothers have to learn to be brothers. I also like that they didn't use shredder. I also like the reemergence of everyone's favorite clan, but the setup they used... too much. Find a simpler villain, a simpler route. Especially when you take into consideration that they show the capture of 12/13 monsters, fights with the four generals, the gigantic prologue introduction (I'm really hating those things), the brother conflict development, and the main antagonist development. Gear down.

Second, they didn't even properly explain what I saw. Why 13 demons? The movie says, "they continued to plague mankind." Why, then, did it not ever showing them "plaguing mankind" beyond the confines of the movie? Why are they all in NY when they were released in South America? What, exactly, were the parameters of Leo's leadership quest? And then getting these guys back into the portal... why does that undo A. the main antagonist's immortality? B. Kill them? C. What curse? It seems like they were trying to, simultaneously, anthropomorphize and make the portal seem like "just some occurrence." Pick one, and then explain why.

Ah, right. The fan service. It was mostly well used. We got the turtles fighting, Casey Jones fighting, even splinter fights, the Foot appear, and they all throwdown. April O'Neil in a samurai costume? Weak. And the only reason it was done to was to match the current antibias towards women who aren't scrappers, fighters, and otherwise action oriented adventurous. An unspoken commandment: "Thouh shalt not portrayest thine female protagonsits as anything less than masculine, excepting thine female protagonist art elderly, childlike, or otherwise infirmed. Amen."

So, I spent most of this talking about the movie's short comings, but it's not really that way. I mean, the movie's not 300 awesome, but it deserves probably a solid 75%, and could have gotten as high as 90 if it had simplified things a bit. The movie did a lot of things nicely. The style of animation was very complimentary: using a "realistic" level of CG to create very non-realistic looking creatures, blown out proportions (human and otherwise). The moment when Raphael expresses contrition to Splinter was actually moving, and Splinter's response was equally moving. The whole experience stirs up a big old bowl of nostalgia for anyone who watches it. It's a lot of fun.