‘Our dad’s definitely not a giant rat…’
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles formed part of the Big Three Saturday morning cartoons for me growing up (the other two being Transformers and Bucky O’Hare) but I’ve never really loved any of the various film adaptations. This latest iteration sees the creators of The Mitchells vs. the Machines (Jeff Rowe and Kyler Spears) uniting with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg to drag the turtles kicking and screaming into the modern era…
Rowe and Spears waste no time with backstory and instead we’re thrown straight into the action. Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), Donatello (Micah Abbey), Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu) and Raphael (Brady Noon) are ready to ditch the sewers and live amongst the humans. They meet April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri) and embark on a pizza-fueled adventure for the ages.
While the main characters from the original cartoon are all present and correct (including the aforementioned plus Splinter (Jackie Chan), Bebop (Rogen) and Rocksteady (John Cena)), the main villains from the source material are absent. In place of Shredder or Krang, we are presented with Superfly (Ice Cube), a fellow mutant to the turtles who wants to wipe out the human race. While the character makes for a great villain, sympathetic and frightening at the same time, I can’t wait to see how Shredder is incorporated into the upcoming sequel. Or ‘The Shredder’ as he is re-branded in the post credits sequence here.
What makes this movie so effective, aside from the fact that it captures the tone of the original cartoon, is how gorgeous the animation is. Every frame leaps from the screen and by abandoning the photo-realistic style favoured by other animation studios to strive for something more expressionistic, Rowe and Spears create a film with its own aesthetic, much like the Spider-Verse movies did for Spider-Man.
Mutant Mayhem is not just the best TMNT movie, it’s a successful franchise starter that will delight 90s dinosaurs such as myself and new fans alike. It also boasts a genuinely excellent hip hop soundtrack. A success.