Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★

Much like every other guy my age, I was a huge fan of the Ninja Turtles when I was a kid. Obsessed would be a better word for it. I couldn’t get enough of them. Raphael was my favorite. And that was when I was at an age where I wasn’t fully aware of the concept of fictitious characters. They seemed very real to me. Especially in their first movie in 1990, and then when we saw them live and in concert around the same time (yes, I did actually go to that – great fun as a kid but incredibly ludicrous now looking back on it). Of course, the whole fad is a little crazy from the point of view of a 31 year old, but whenever I see the Turtles, it brings a bit of nostalgia back.

Such is the purpose of the new version of these Turtles in the Michael Bay-produced and Jonathan Liebesman directed “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” This film attempts to rewrite the origin story quite a bit, which I won’t go into here as I guess it could be considered a spoiler. There’s April O’Neil (Megan Fox), a young reporter for New York City’s Channel 6 News. She and her cameraman Vernon Fenwick (Will Arnett) are assigned to do the fun stories around town, but April wants to be taken seriously in the eyes of her boss Bernadette Thompson (Whoppi Goldberg). She’s also driven to live up to the her expectations of her late father, who died a long time ago working alongside New York’s wealthiest and most influential businessman Eric Sacks (William Fichtner).

Recently, a crime wave has taken over the city at the hands of what appears to be some kind of unstoppable terrorist organization called the Foot Clan. They’re lead by a martial arts master known as Shredder (Tohoru Masamune) and his right hand woman Karai (Minae Noji). April witnesses a Foot Clan robbery thwarted by our heroes and comes face to face with them: the four brother turtles Leonardo (Pete Ploszek, voiced by Johnny Knoxville), Donatello (Jeremy Howard), Michelangelo (Noel Fisher), and Raphael (Alan Ritchson). They also introduce her to their master, a rat named Splinter (Danny Woodburn, voiced by Tony Shalhoub). With them, she learns the true plan of the Shredder and the Foot Clan and has to help the Turtles stop them before it destroys the entire city.

At its core, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is pretty typical of the old cartoon series in the late 80s/early 90s. Outside of the tweaked origin story, the film does have that fun feel of cartoon. What it lacks is a focused story and any kind of set up and development for those in the audience who might not have been as obsessed with the Turtles as people like me.

If you weren’t a fan of the Turtles in the late 80s/early 90s, this film isn’t for you at all. You’ll be lost because the film does nothing to set up these characters. It’s supposed to be an origin story (first movie in what will more than likely continue to be an ongoing franchise). The four turtles are mostly over inflated caricatures of their personalities from the original series, which I actually found to be very annoying (especially Donatello – poor guy). The only person here who’s given the slightest bit of character development in April, and Megan Fox (being the terrible actress that she is) throws it all out the window.

Sure, it’s a Turtles movie. I get that. It’s not supposed to be award-winning material. I never expected it to be. But what I do expect – and what all audiences should demand – is to not be strung along from one action sequence to the next with little or no story tying everything together. “Ninja Turtles” feels like it was written by numerous writers (and it was: Josh Appelbaum & Andre Nemec and Evan Daugherty) who pulled out a couple of the oldest superhero storylines from their back pockets. Then they tied everything together with ridiculous action sequences that are a little hard to follow.

The growing trend with these superhero movies is to make them less of fantasy, and more likely to occur in the real world. If these people with super powers really existed, this is how it would play out. The same idea is applied here but to little success. Here we have the Turtles fighting the Shredder, which is typical of the cartoon, but unrealistic in a real world setting. So a shady businessman has to be created to help tie the fantasy world into the real world. This gives us separate villains and separate heroes. This leads to lack of focus, which ultimately leads to mass boredom from viewers. 

The film would have been much better if it was the Turtles vs. Shredder and April O’Neil with the assist, just like the series. Instead, we are given a new origin story that attempts to make the Turtles more realistic and plausible heroes in the real world. But they’re mutated turtles who are also teenage ninjas. They don’t have to fit in a real world setting. Batman works in the real world. I can even accept Iron Man as a real world character too. But the Turtles? This is pure fantasy and that’s the way it needs to stay. Too be fair, this isn’t the worst incarnation of the Turtles I’ve seen. Michael Bay didn’t absolutely destroy these characters like we all thought he would, but he didn’t do them any justice either. Better luck next time.

Review: Elysium

by Trevor Kirkendall
★★

“Elysium” takes place in the year 2154. At this time, the citizens of earth are split up into two different classes. The very wealthy live on a pristine space station orbiting above the planet called Elysium. Everyone else lives on the surface of earth which is a very poor place, overpopulated and heavily diseased. On Elysium, there is no disease because each house comes equipped with a med-bay that scans your body and fixes anything wrong with you. Cancers are cured, paralyzed people can walk again and broken bones are healed.

The story revolves around a citizen of earth named Max (Matt Damon) who works for a top defense contractor called Armadyne, which provides all the police robots on earth and the security systems on board Elysium. He’s also a reformed felon trying to keep himself on the good side of the law. His former partner in crime Julio (Diego Luna) even tries to get him to join in on new jobs, but Max refuses to participate. He’s also reconnected with his childhood friend Frey (Alice Braga) who he hasn’t seen in years, and he’s eager to see if there might be a future between the two of them.

Things change for Max when he’s exposed to a high dose of radiation and is given only five days left to live. He knows the med-bays on Elysium will cure him, so he asks the local crime boss Spider (Wagner Moura) for help getting up there. Spider wants Max’s help stealing something from a rich guy first. They want to steal the thoughts from Armadyne CEO John Carlyle (William Fichtner) in order to get bank numbers and other valuable information about Elysium.

What they don’t know is that Carlyle is working with Elysium Secretary of Defense Delacourt (Jodie Foster) on plans that would remove the current President from power and install her as the new leader. When Max and Spider steal the information from Carlyle, they get this information as well. Delacourt sends out Kruger (Sharlto Copley), a ruthless agent, after Max to get that damning information back.

Writer/director Neill Blomkamp, known for directing the 2009 Best Picture nominee “District 9”, is, in my opinion, too smart to be making movies in the first place. Listening to him do interviews is like listening to an astrophysicist talk about what they do for a living. “District 9” was a smart film and a modern day sci-fi masterpiece. But all the things that made “District 9” so great have been scrapped from “Elysium”. Instead, Blomkamp has given us way too many dense subplots that distract from the main characters and plotline of the film.

Its hard to care for your protagonist when there are so many other people clogging up his screen time. Not once did I find myself caring whether of not Max would get up to Elysium and be cured. I know that sounds harsh, but that’s Screenwriting 101. How can you care about someone when setup and development are sacrificed in order to give an equal amount setup and development to a supporting character? Supporting roles do not need the same type of attention that lead roles require.

Blomkamp should know this. His screenplay for “District 9” was so well done because it was so simple. There was one character and we were shown what he was like before the traumatic events on the film began to unfold. He was easily identifiable with the audience. In “Elysium”, Max doesn’t fit this mold. He’s set up as an everyman working in a low paying yet physically demanding job, he’s trying to better his life, he’s trying to reconnect with a former love interest. It couldn’t be anymore forced or contrived if they tried.

None of the talent on screen is overly impressive either. We’ve seen Damon and Foster in these roles before. The only actor who’s actually doing something we’ve never seen before is Copley. His role as Kruger is quite the polar opposite of what he was in “District 9” which is refreshing. I did enjoy Kruger’s character in this film. He’s a ruthless man out for blood, and Copley plays it very well.

Its also full of sharp action sequences, which isn’t a surprise given that Blomkamp has already demonstrated himself as a proficient action director. But polished action scenes and fancy special effects alone do not make a good movie. I feel like Blomkamp rushed this one, which is weird given that its been four years since we’ve seen anything from him. What looked like a promising break from the typical summer films, “Elysium” falls into the exact same traps that plague every other movie that comes out of Hollywood during the hottest months of the year. From the man who gave us something as brilliant as “District 9”, this is quite a disappointment.