And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two
horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon and his name was
Michael Bay. Okay, maybe I’m being a bit hyperbolic here, Michael Bay is not the Anti-Christ, but he did cause
Armageddon.
It easy to take cheap shots at this man who hasn’t met a scene that he
felt wouldn’t look better cut into 50 three second shots, but his films
have made millions and millions of dollars which is certainly some kind
of verification (of the End Times perhaps). He is the definitive
commercial filmmaker and no one can deny his impact on the medium as
either director or producer.
Gritty Reboot Step One: Grunge it all up.
In this latest trashing of our nostalgic childhood Michael Bay sits back in the producers chair while
Jonathan Liebesman takes over the megaphone, but this is clearly a Michael Bay film as it’s got his attention deficit fingers all over it.
“Whoo-hoo!”
April O’Neil (
Megan Fox)
is a reporter tired of doing puff pieces for Channel Six News, she
wants to cover the Foot Clan, a shadowy criminal organization that is
terrorizing New York City. While investigating on her own time she
witnesses a vigilante thwarting the Foot Clan, a vigilante that is super
strong (he tosses shipping containers around) and possibly not human.
When Shredder, the leader of the Foot Clan hears about this he orders
his minions to take hostages to draw him out. This is one of those leaps
in logic that characters make constantly in this movie. There is no
reason for Shredder to believe that some monster that attacks his men at
the docks would give a damn about a bunch of New York civilians as the
Turtles haven’t been established as heroes yet.
Foot Clan, evil ninjas or boring mercenaries, you decide.
After the hostages are saved by the Turtles April follows them up to
the roof and discovers what they are, which is of course Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles. She photographs them but is quickly relieved of this bit
of evidence, and when she tries to tell her boss at Channel 6 about
giant talking ninja turtles she gets fired.
Megan Fox is April O’Neil “Action Reporter”
Later at her apartment she goes over an old tape she made as a little
girl when she use to play “Girl Reporter” at her dad’s lab and it’s
here we discover that the Turtles and Splinter were lab subjects and
also April’s pets. She rescued them from a lab fire, one her dad
started, and then dumped them in the sewer. Why did this little girl
risk her life to save her pets to just turn around and dump them in the
sewer? Hell if I know. Did we really need a direct connection between
the Turtles and April? This is even lazier than the Joker being the
killer of Batman’s parents, we don’t need this.
Splinter also apparently learned ninjutsu from a book he found in the sewer.
April tries to get help from billionaire Eric Sacks (
William Fichtner)
who was her dad’s partner and shocking to no one it turns out he is one
of the baddies. He’s in league with the Shredder and has an evil plan
that is dumber than lamest of the Bond villain plans. A plan that
involves in part releasing a toxic chemical from a spire on his own high
rise building in a scene that looks completely cribbed from
The Amazing Spider-Man.
“I’m rich so by definition I’m evil.”
That’s as much as I’m going to get into the story…well actually there
is no story, there are just a series of consecutive events that at
times tease one into believing there is a plot, but it is all smoke and
mirrors as there is nothing here. Characters continually move from point
“A” to point “C” with no regard to how they got there, because point
“B” is for losers. At one point they are being chased down a snowy
mountain in Upstate New York and then one cut later and they are all of a
sudden in the sewers of Manhattan. The magic of bad editing.
Michelangelo, this movies one saving grace.
The movie does have one redeeming element and that is the interaction
among the Turtles, there is some really humorous moments as the four
Turtles banter back an forth, and Michelangelo’s crush on April is quite
funny and well handled. Sadly I can’t say anything positive about the
look of the Turtles as they are just big, ugly and over designed CGI
creatures, but they are genius when compared to the design of
Robot-Shredder who looks like a walking talking exploding Ginsu factory.
“Hey Shredder, Silver Samurai wants his armor back!”
April has comic sidekick played by
Will Arnettt and I spent much of the film feeling sorry for him, being paired with Megan Fox after already being stuck working with her on
Jonah Hex seems just too cruel. He serves no real purpose and only makes one wonder…
“Where is Casey Jones?”
In conclusion if you want to watch a movie where super-strong, bullet
proof mutant turtles take on machine gun toting ninjas who are in
service to a CGI knife show, then this may be the movie for you. If not
then go see
Guardians of the Galaxy, and if you’ve already seen it, well go see it again. Or you could just go and read the original Eastman and Laird comics.
I miss these guys.
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