Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Hey everyone and welcome today we will be talking about the film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant mayhem. Fun Fact, TMNT is based off a comic book which came out in 1987 and this is the 7th film in the franchise. This Film came out in 2023and stars Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, and Brady Noon and was directed by Jeff Rowe. S0 without further ado let’s get right into it.
Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles:Mutant Mayhem follows Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael who Long to explore the human world but are constantly stopped by their father. When a supervillain by the name superfly starts stealing stuff to mutate all the animals and destroy the humans the turtles and their new friend April must find a way to stop him while also showing humans that all these mutants aren’t bad.
TMNT is an superhero action film. It has similar vibes to TMNT, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, or Kung Fu Panda.
When watching this film I noticed a lot of the voices were familiar. Nicholas Cantu was in The Fablemans, Brady Noon was in Diary of A Wimpy Kid, Ayo Edibiri is in The Bear, Maya Rudolph was in Bridesmaids, John Lena was in Peacemaker, Seth Rogen was in Superbad, Rose Bryne was in Insidious, Giancarlo Esposito was in The Boys, Jackie Chan was in Rush Hour, Ice Cube is in 21 Jump Street, Paul Rudd was in Clueless, Hannibal Burress was in Tag, and Jeff Rowe also directed The Mitchells Vs. The Machines.
Teenage mutant ninja turtles is one of those franchises where they have tried to adapt it many times and have failed almost every single time at giving us a decent movie. I wasn’t going in with high expectations but I must say this movie is the best adaption i’ve seen and overall a great movie.
It seems like the writers of this movie said alright let’s start from the beginning and that really paid off. In the past ive watched TMNT movies and they just jump right in and they introduce shredder as the villain but this movie took a different route which worked better. We see the turtles origin and see how they weren’t the only mutated animals and the other mutated animals grew to hate the humans because of discrimination they face. It was interesting to see that while also emphasizing the Teenage part in TMNT and having them learning how to work together and just starting their journey of fighting bad guys and showing there growth. This was a good job at showing an origin story on screen and even though shredder is there main antagonist, they give another villain time to shine which made me happy because I want to know who else is doing bad things in this universe.
Im really bad with names and in all of the TMNT films i’ve seen I can never tell which one is which. The main thing is they all have different color eye mask which is guess is supposed to help but doesn’t. I still can’t tell which one is which because im just that bad at names but this film gave the viewer more distinct characterizations to help the viewer identify the different turtles. I think it was cool to show this to show that yes they are a team but its not a copy and paste of the same turtle, they all have their own special qualities.
With the Teenage mutant Ninja turtles movie taking place in New York in todays time period they also threw in so many pop culture references and lots of slang. This is such a small but important detail because if you are making a movie and these turtles are teens during modern day then its best to incorporate some things to show the viewers that they are part of this generation and throw in pop culture references to remind people of the general timeline.
I loved the running joke about milking throughout the movie. It starts off as a small joke and they bring it up alot which I think is smart because it is was funny to have the turtles constantly be questioned about being milked and coming to the conclusion that they can’t be milked only for them in the end to actually be milked which was the funniest outcome.
The voice cast was just amazing. There were times when watching and I was like hmm that voice sounds like someone Ive heard but it can’t be them and then after the movie I found out it actually was and I was shocked. The voice actors truly added to the movie and made it more enjoyable.
The soundtrack was great. The music choices complemented the movie so well and really had me bobbing my head in the theatre.
I love when movies explore different styles of animation and It was really cool to see this movie use a style of animation I don’t see often. Most of the shots seemed sketched which made it look cool and authentic. I think since Into the Spiderverse people have been more open to being more experimental with animation in these blockbuster films and im glad because we see the influence in films like this which also do a great job with animation .
Throughout the movie we see how there are bad seeds in the humans and mutants which I thought was a great topic to bring up. We see that there is no blanket statement that can be used for one group or the other. The turtles and April prove this with their friendship which eventually leads the city of New York to want to help the turtles and the other mutants realizing they don’t want to hurt the humans and help the humans save the city against super duper fly.
My favorite part is the final battle in the film. It shows not only the turtles working together to stop superfly but also April helps show the world that not all mutants are bad and that they shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. It was great to see all the other mutants as well as the humans tag team to get the antidote to superfly so that they can stop him. It was even more heartfelt to see master splinter embracing humans after he was shunned by them and had such a negative outlook on them. interacting with the humans was one thing that they wanted and in this moment they see that most humans are good people.
Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles Mutant mayhem surprised me in the best of ways. It not only is an enjoyable movie but also has me wanting to learn more about the comic books and the different adventures they had. I love when a film can surprise me and keep me so invested.
