I remember, with great fondness, the first film incarnation, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from 1990 and featuring the talents of the late, great Jim Henson in the creation of the live action Turtles. It's sequels were not that great, leaving behind the darkness of the first film for a sunnier and cheesier experience that featured the title characters dancing with rapper Vanilla Ice at one point. The first one was darker, more in line, I am told, with the original comic that spawned the TMNT phenomenon on the world.
Fast forward 20-something years and the Turtles were back, this time as cgi characters in a cgi extravaganza that was produced by cgi-excess king, Michael Bay and it felt excessive, lifeless, confusing and pointless. The fact that it was more enjoyable than the Transformers movies was not enough to make it good. I did like that you could tell the four turtles apart but Megan Fox as April O'Neil was the star of the show with Will Arnett as her cameraman, Vernon.
That film did well, spawning this sequel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, which, while being more coherent is just as excessive as its predecessor. Shredder is back and he has partnered with a scientist to escape. Somehow he ends up in an alternate dimension where he meets the warlord Krang who sends him back to earth with a mutagen and a mission to assemble a teleportation device to bring Krang through to conquer everything. The mutagen is used to create Bebop and Rocksteady, two characters I remember from the first incarnation of the television cartoons way back when, who are sent out to assemble the pieces needed. The Turtles try and stop them, with the help of April O'Neil, Vernon and Casey Jones, a hockey masked vigilante who used to be a cop.
The Turtles are also wishing they could be allowed out in the world, not forever hiding but this feels tacked on to create tensions within the foursome. As with any Michael Bay spectacle (he's still just the producer here but fingerprints are all over it), the cgi looks good but it just becomes colours on the screen after a while. There's no depth to the characters, animated and otherwise. There's nobody to care for.
