Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows

Other loyal readers of my reviews might remember one of my back in 2014, when I began the Axia Film Society with the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which you will probably recall earned my extreme displeasure as I even included the movie in the top Most Worst Three films in the year. Yes, It was you who sat down to this review and I made it pretty clear that I would not come back for a sequel. Why then am I reviewing this? Yes, I know you are thinking that there will be a sequel but I didn’t.

Sequel Other review y knives between me and this film was Yes, I assumed that the film Schks aim would bomb colossal. There is no proper structure to it like Zam one there among in enormous with Nickelodeon Cross hands back normal headquarters. z as there still going to be money made out of this film Why Is there We’re out less than two years after the first one and trust me most rushed Sequels I’ve heard of over the years.

Marvel’s movies may be coming out every year, but the franchise obviously has a plan for every movie, thinking through which characters are necessary for the story. Also, those movies are not within the same series so, for example, there are not going to be two Captain America movies coming on out the same year. As I said in my initial Ninja Turtles review, I have been a huge Ninja Turtles fan ever since, I loved the original cartoons and the comic book, and thanks to my Netflix, I have been watching many of Nickelodeon’s more recent series and I mostly am enjoying it, a few small gripes aside.

I don’t know what I was expecting but for this one I did feel quite taken back. For a start, Michael Bay who I have already said is a trash director is still producing the movie, although this time we have a new director. Jonathan Lieberman is out and that’s alright since he is a hack director who only knows how to be a wannabe Michael Bay.

For those who have seen movies such as Darkness Falls and Battle Los Angeles, a chance for that makes sense. It might just explain why Michael Bay hired him to direct most of his projects in the first place. Instead, we have Dave Green, the latest director of ‘Earth to Echo.’ I’ve never seen it, so I guess, what can I say? Overall, this film is not depicting any scenario which is encouraging, but as one of the major fans of Turtles, I had to give this film a chance. Additionally, this is probably one of the first films I have reviewed which is the direct sequel of a movie which I have reviewed before. That is a chance for such things as well.

This isn’t the only point about this movie, which is worth even more attention; if you like, as I do, spend your time on the Internet, it is very hard to avoid looking at some critics’ reviews, their ratings, and get an overall impression of the early reviews of a movie, it is almost impossible, especially because I am not a member of the press in the first place, which in turn means that I can’t attend a critics press screening that many critics do to help them post their reviews quickly.

In this case, that particular scenario was rather inefficient as well, because the movie became available to the general audience, after which it had a review embargo on it, there were not many critiques posted on the Network and rotten tomatoes had effectively no score. By all accounts, I attended the film on Tuesday 31 May, so I assume things did change since then and are very likely more altered by the time this review is posted. That being said, I guess if indeed I did go into this review without any background information about this film, what I want to know is, did this film build on the previous one in any way more than simply changing the focus of action around the camera?

The plot of this sequel is outlined as the Ninja Turtles Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo (portrayed by the actors Pete Ploszek, Jeremy Howard, Alan Ritchson and Noel Fisher respectively) who are voiced over by the actors making them feel real, like all turtles, fear getting caught and stay hidden in the New York City’s shadows.

But, they are recalled back to work when the Shredder, voiced by Brian Tee, breaks out of Prison because Krang, voiced by Brad Garrett, wants to use him in order to conquer this dimension by securing several dimensional gates. On the other hand, the Turtles are also having trouble of their own where they have found a militant which for all purposes promises to turn them into humans, only to create a rift amongst the group as to whether they should use it or not. Are the Turtles strong enough to forget their differences and join forces to fight Krang.

Let me start by making this very clear. This one is an improvement of the first and I attribute this to one thing, the Turtles are brought to the fore and displayed in a better light. The dialogue was a notch high as compared to the previous movie, (it has its issues but I will go into that in greater detail later on) and there was a feeling of watching something that was more of a sincere attempt at making a Ninja Turtle movie instead of a quick replicative, which is how the first movie came off and I have a feeling that Dave Green’s impact is stronger in this movie which is why the film was able to impress me at certain aspects, and also there were some witty moments in the movie a number of impressive sequences.

Is it a good film in my opinion? No, unfortunately, this one conflicts and fails on too many fronts, and I think this is in large part because it had to incorporate many elements from the first one.

A more major issue is, as always, the worst element in these films is Megan Fox’s April O’Neil, she is not much better here, but thankfully the director understands that she is a supporting character and not the lead and so that makes her more bearable this time round. She still has absolutely no character and there are a few scenes that confirm she is simply in here as window dressing, which is quite inappropriate in a children’s film!

Another huge issue is the antagonists. This film can never manage to settle for any villain and go with that. I brought up Krang while introducing the film, but he appears in flick barely at all. He appears in the beginning at one scene after Shredder gets busted out of Prison and he does not make another appearance until the climax of the film, for the last fight scene. Shredder is much better cast and is much more menacing this time and wears a fan cool new costume.

But this is all in vain, the Shredder does not even have one fight in the whole film, you developed this villain so much, and then gave him nothing to do and what’s more, what’s the use of hiring Brian Tee to do it, I’m sure he can do this, it was shown in the Wolverine. This time, we also have the introduction of Baxter Stockman but he is not really much better either.

I know Baxter Stockman is supposed to be like some sort of terribly deranged version of Woody Allen but to be honest he is that irritating, and it is not only because it is Tyler Perry who plays him. The only one it is perhaps best which stay with is Bebop and Rocksteady who are Gary Anthomy Williams and Professional Wrestler Stephen Farrelly aka Shamus respectively who are the characters who are largely promoted for the picture from the very start and I think are the areas where there’s a lot of Michael Bay trademark in this picture.

These actors are so obnoxious, Bayham! Every single scene depicts them screaming comedically jokes (which aren’t funny) and just being loud for no reason. I hope that there will be some decent fight scenes in the later parts of the movie because I really do not understand the point of it. Oh, and instead of going with the origin of buffaloes being the creatures spliced with the captured Rhino and Warthog genes, we are given a much more moronic one in which even Assassins Creed’s people would label it as illogical and dumb, and these are some of the people who f*cking drop from 10 stores and ‘cross their fingers that a pile of hay will land on them’. One of my pet peeves of the previous film, Will Arnett, was clearly the most unfunny person but thanks to the creators of this film who at last understand that his role is still small. However, he does appear more at the climax so we are stuck with him again.

Without a doubt, there was a lot of anticipation surrounding this film. Only this time the dramatics would be taken a notch higher, as Stephen Amell stepped into the shoes of Casey Jones, who would be making his debut in the franchise. Stephen Amell is well known as playing Queen in Arrow on DC television.

I will explain more about his casting later on. For now, focusing on the character, we really do not see that much of Casey Jones, there is no doubt he is a major character throughout the film, but he physically doesn’t do much, in fact there are only really two scenes where Casey Jones is seen in character. Both of them are good, showing off the character’s ‘Hockey’ and Martial Arts training, although I am not a fan of how he has gone from being a street smart vigilante to an unhappy police officer.

I know I’m probably conveying the idea that I hated this film, well, I can’t really say that, it’s a bad film, but it is in this case at least, an effort has been made to improve it somehow. Unfortunately there are a few places here where this entire affair goes south. For starters the humor is really not here, most jokes are just laughter they are not funny and this is what causes this entire thing to go down the drain at a very high scale. But this film, unlike the last one, has some genuinely funny lines. Moreover, the climax, as it should be, is a larger and better one than that of the previous film. To sum up it’s a rather weak plot but it’s a mediocre plot at the same time, and yes it does feel like Ninja Turtles.

Regarding the cast, I’m not going to dwell too much on my opinion about the cast’s performance since I have already expressed most of my views on them in the earlier review; however, that is not to mean that I have no opinions, Will Arnett and particularly Megan Fox are the worst performers in the film since they both perform so poorly because of bad direction. There has been only one alteration in cast and that is, instead of Johnny Knoxville, Peter Ploszek now voices Leonardo without a doubt; this is an improvement because Johnny Knoxville’s voice was quite distracting in the previous film.

Bryan Tee would be a good Shredder as long as the script handed him something to work with. Tony Shalhoub is alright at Splinter but the script took even more away from him. As for Splinter, he is also quite pathetic in this movie, he barely passes on any knowledge yet again. Steven Amell is passable at best in the early scenes as Casey Jones, rather fails in the role, and it is particularly hard to dissociate the actor from the character given how long I’ve seen him play Oliver Queen in Arrow.

In case you are looking for a better version of Casey Jones, perhaps you could watch the Fan film available online called Casey Jones The Movie, and if you wanted to make use of recognized professional wrestlers, John Morrison did a nice job of portraying the character in Super Power Beatdown (I will place a link to that one at the very end of the page).

I am not a fan of Tyler Perry, as you could guess, and I also did not consider his contribution in this motion picture to be gracious, and I also was not impressed by Gary Anthony Williams and Stephen Farrelly aka WWE’s Sheamus as Bebop and Rocksteady. Would I say there were any performances I enjoyed in this film? Yes, the actors who played the Turtles nailed it this time round. The script was worse in the previous movie and the director did not help either, in this case, the actors are not restricted and they are very effective. These guys can play the Turtles well and are the standout performances of the cast.

Laura Linney is in there and she doesn’t do a bad job, but her character has hardly any depth and the writing is unimpressive and so I am not particularly concerned with her. The cast is not the greatest, but you know what, they made an improvement from the last effort.

That actually was my biggest criticism about the previous film and I don’t have high hopes for the CGI here as well which let’s not forget that I am still not impressed by the design of these Turtles. I will give credit where it is due since they do appear to do a better job integrating the Turtles and CGI into the live action environment than the first film but it still comes across quite jarring because the film relies heavily on CGI. There are also some moments where the CGI is awful and in fact, some of the movement is really poorly timed and looks like it was just thrown together at the last second.

Firstly, let’s review the action sequences. Most of them are pretty decent although they are bound to a number of Michael Bay clichés’ such as the camera zooming in slow motion, a blast here and there, for those of you who have watched films by Michael Bay, will understand what I’m talking about, but having said that, such scenes are pretty ok, and a few are quite outstanding.

As for my feelings about the plot: well that’s really here to be. Firstly, I adore the look of the new Shredder’s suit as well as Krang’s design. Isn’t it amazing that for the first time there’s a Ninja Turtle movie that features Krang? I cannot explain how many years have fans of TMNT been look forward to this.

There are 2D and 3D versions and I opted for the 2D version since the 3D effect from the previous movie was done poorly. One of the reasons why I saw it in this format is because I noticed only four 3D effects which are purported to be there, and yes they would have looked good in a fight sequence in Brazil, but otherwise the two thousand version of the fight is okay and I would say it is safe for viewers to watch it that way.

I don’t want to sugarcoat it and say Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows is a masterpiece, because I think it is only a slightly better film than its predecessor. It’s not good, but it’s not awful either. For Ninja Turtles fans who were put off by the first film I’d suggest watching this one. They’ve got the Turtles’ voices right and there’s a good story here, a flawed one though (especially with the climax which is a lift off The Avengers climax).

Still, it is not a perfect film. The effects still aren’t that good, and don’t seem to fit live action well enough, the acting isn’t up to par, and villains had an identity crisis, virtually eliminating the threat most of the villains posed. Not a good film, but I expected worse still.

No other films to say in this review as ceases like I’ve said previously watched this film back in May and delayed it to publish my review for When Marnie Was There.

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