Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Movie Thoughts

It had been 14 years since there last was a Ninja Turtles movie. The last one was Turtles 3, which was ranked the worst of the trilogy in comparison to the previous 2 Ninja Turtles movies. Back when I was growing up as a young kid, Ninja Turtles was a major hit. There was a lot of Turtle Merchandise, video games, had its own TV show that was actually very popular, more so with Turtle fans. There was an attempt with going into a Live Action Series during that time where they introduced a 5th Turtle Venus De Milo. A recent was made in 2003 was a new Ninja Turtles series that was completely a polar opposite of what the original series I saw back in the early 90s. I guess it was more of a contrast with the comic book though I've never read them, my 1st experience with seeing the Ninja Turtles was through TV and that's probably why I didn't really catch on to this one.

So, a little recap of the Ninja Turtles but now we go into the 4th Movie made for this franchise. The style was different as this one was Computer Generated instead of Live-Action like the previous trilogy had been. When watching it and going in, I was not sure what to expect like were we going to see the Turtles I remember when I was younger or the ones that showed up in 2003 that had more of a serious tone. To my surprise I thought everything came off just fine.

Familiar Characters

The movie had some very familiar characters outside of the Ninja Turtles each matching their own personalities. Michelangelo went back to the party dude that wanted to have fun, which I liked because that was how I remembered him personally. There are also other characters that were apart of it like Splinter, April O'Neal, and Casey Jones. I thought that was pretty good. The villains other than the Foot Clan were mostly new characters. It would have been nice to have seen some other familiar characters like Krang, Rat King, Leather Head, and Baxter Stockman, maybe even Shredder but I think they're saving them for another movie. Shredder of course would be interesting how to explain how he came into the fold. If you recall from Turtles 2, Shredder used Ooze to transform him into Super Shredder and he ended up crushing himself in the bay.

The Story

It was very interesting to say the least. They were all separated before reuniting later on in the movie. It was set 3000 years into the past with Yatoi, a Warrior-King and his 4 generals leading an army in conquest. Every 3000 years, 9 stars would have to be aligned properly. Leo is in the forest on a mission to become a better leader while the other turtles are off doing something else. Eventually they reunite trying to save the world from this menace. Raphael has a bit of a temper but also is out as a vigilante as Nightwatcher. There's this guy that is April's client, Max Winters, hired the Foot Clan for a price since Shredder is no longer there just yet. The main thought about it had to do with the four generals and if they get resurrected, they could cause havoc and there are aliens involved.

Comedy

With Ninja Turtles, it was common to have some humor and it can be good and funny. I think for this movie they found a well-put balanced feature between that and the action. I really don't know what else to say exactly about it.

Overall

As I said before, it would have been nice to have some more familiar Ninja Turtle characters that were known but it wasn't a bad movie. It came off rather well and for it being CG, it was really good. They did it justice and the series itself with how they looked. Even if you never saw the Ninja Turtles in the past, at the very least go check it out at least or if you were someone who had seen Ninja Turtles when you were a young child. It's worth checking out. There's more to it and when you're watching, you won't even realize how long it's been or just looking at CG and not even thinking about it. I give it thumbs up.