Warning: The turtles faces are ridiculous.
Truefact: despite the cheesy camp of the 80s cartoon series and the trilogy of films based somewhat on it, the original Mirage Studios (and now, IDW) version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is actually somewhat gritty. That grit is of course lessened somewhat by the comedy inherent in the ridiculous premise, as well as the fact the series was conceived as a semi-parody of Frank Miller’s run on Daredevil. And as a result, it remains both cool and extremely wacky.
That is probably not going to be the case with the Michael Bay-produced cinematic reboot, for which the first full length trailer has now been released. While we’ll have to wait a bit longer to discover just how similar to Transformers this film ends up being, we now know for sure that we’ll see April O’Neil (Megan Fox) and Shredder (William Fichtner) discussing serious platitudinal matters, while incomprehensible action scenes play out without context. Turtle power!
The trailer also confirms that the turtles’ origin is no longer random exposure to radioactive waste. Instead, years before, Shredder and his partner, April O’Neil’s father, conducted deliberate genetic manipulation in order to create heroes, because reasons. After all, what better way to put the public’s mind to rest than to spend what must have been billions making super-sized, man-shaped turtles, then turn that billion-dollar investment into vigilantes with no authority to enforce the law. Obviously, that’s a very well-thought out plan that will deliver a serious ROI for people who funded the research.
Of course, this means the bad guy created the good guy, but this should in no way remind you of everything wrong with 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man, or of Unbreakable. Not even a little bit. Another thing you should not be thinking about is how absurdly hilarious the turtles look without their masks. On the uncanny valley scale, it’s just after Tom Selleck without his ‘stache.
Anyway, I happen to think Pain & Gain is one of 2013’s best films (no, seriously, I do), so I’ll probably be renting that and pretending Michael Bay is secretly a cinematic genius, instead of seeing this. But maybe you have a stronger stomach than I do! Sound off in comments and let us know what you think about the Bay-ified version of the turtles.
