TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM is exactly what I hoped we’d start seeing after SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE: more animated features feeling they have permission to go wild with their visual styles. Directors Jeff Rowe and Keyler Spears already took the baton and ran with it two years ago in THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES; MUTANT MAYHEM shares that film’s anarchic doodles-on-your-notebook spirit and preference for cartoonish exaggeration. But this time they’ve largely abandoned three-dimensional computer animation’s longstanding quest for realistic textures in favor of artistic flair. Not only the backgrounds, but even the characters look like energetic oil pastel sketches. Even objects that appear tactile are covered in lines, squiggles, smears. Light-colored scratches on swaths of black give the impression of reflections or lights, but also of lines drawn by human hands. Computerized precision takes a back seat to creative looseness and chaos. Every frame looks like the concept art that you see in the making-of coffee table books, as if they somehow removed that final step that polishes things but inevitably loses some of their personality. The personality is intact.
It’s also like SPIDER-VERSE in that it’s a fun animated all ages super hero tale with plenty of laughs, good music, and some emotional substance. And until we have too many of those, I enjoy that too.
MUTANT MAYHEM is a new take on the mysteriously enduring phenomenon of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, indie comic book turned cartoon, merchandising juggernaut and movie series. This version is produced and co-written by Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg (SUPERBAD, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, THE GREEN HORNET, THIS IS THE END) and it fits with their other work, especially in the chemistry of its voice cast. It makes so much sense when you hear that rather than recording everyone separately like so many animated movies do they made a point of having most of the actors together, playing off of each other, writing things around their actual interactions. I think that’s how it became the historic first Ninja Turtles thing to consistently make me laugh throughout.
I noticed many changes to the concept and mythology, mostly not drastic. They use the mad scientist character Baxter Stockman (Giancarlo Esposito, NIGHT ON EARTH) as a starting point. He was raided while experimenting on animal test subjects, which escaped, and his “ooze” spilled into New York City sewer system, mutating four baby turtles into our guys and a rat into their father figure, Splinter. Though Splinter is voiced by Jackie Chan, he doesn’t have the martial arts background of the traditional Splinter – his boys learn to fight from watching Shaw Brothers movies and Youtube videos. But observing how humans treated him both as a rat and as a rat-man, Splinter keeps them hidden and sheltered underground except when they go out for groceries.
Traditionally Stockman turns into a fly creature, here it’s a separate creation of his, known as Superfly, and voiced by Ice Cube (all time great rapper, disappointing anti-Semite conspiracy dipshit, very good in this role). Superfly is behind a crime spree, uniting the other mutants to steal high tech equipment as part of a master plan. The story is pretty simplistic (especially compared to SPIDER-VERSE) – bad guy has evil plan, then turns into a giant, and they fight him. But there’s a certain wisdom to that approach because it allows it to be a little more of a character-driven movie. It’s an origin story to their crime fighting, but that feels less the focus than their journey from a sad, sheltered life to making new friends and having more fun.
The main thing that distinguishes this from any other version of the Ninja Turtles that I’m familiar with is that it emphasizes the Teenage part. In fact, I read that this is the first time ever that all four ninja turtles are voiced by actors in their teens – Micah Abbey (Cousins For Life) as Donatello, Shamon Brown Jr. (The Chi) as Michelangelo, Nicolas Cantu (THE FABELMANS) as Leonardo, and Brady Noon (GOOD BOYS) as Raphael. Usually they’re adult voices with Michelangelo’s “party dude” accent, a fixation on junk food and z-grade children’s sitcom jokes meant to represent youthfulness. Here they really do sound and act like kids, and they joke around with each other more in the tradition of Freaks and Geeks or SUPERBAD. It’s far more respectful of its audience than those beloved live action movies of the ‘90s, I gotta say. Being teenage mutant ninja turtles, these guys see other young people out having fun and they feel left out because they have to hide from them. They catch an outdoor screening of FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF and speculate about what being in high school is like.
Along with this is the change of April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri, The Bear) from grown up famous TV reporter to high school outcast aspiring journalist. Not surprisingly I’ve seen more discussion of her being Black and having hips (a major disappointment for racists and people who don’t get off on that body type who had planned to jerk off to this cartoon) but her age is actually the significant change. I like this version because she’s funny and relatable, they are in some sense peers that makes their friendship deeper, and Leo having a crush on her is kinda cute, as opposed to the earlier movies where it’s kinda uncomfortable to hear them making horny comments about her.
The score for MUTANT MAYHEM is by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (BONES AND ALL). It’s a very effective electronic type thing, and even has a bit of a Nine Inch Nails vibe a few times. But the best thing about it is that it makes me dream of traveling back in time to tell people that in the future there will be a Ninja Turtles movie with a score by Trent Reznor. Because you know they would say, “Oh cool man, I always said they should make it real dark like the comics. Like THE CROW.”
“Oh no, it’s not dark. It’s from Nickelodeon. He has two Oscars by the way, Trent Reznor.”
Earlier in the summer TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS had a soundtrack of untouchable New York hip hop classics of the ‘90s, and in my review I joked that this must’ve been what boomers felt like when they saw FORREST GUMP. Well, MUTANT MAYHEM does it too – “Eye Know” by De La Soul, “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” by ODB, “Can I Kick It?” by A Tribe Called Quest, “Ante Up” by M.O.P. two times… I love it, but the FORREST GUMP comparison is starting to hurt. Boomers got all those movies about the ideals they fought for during Vietnam, the civil rights era, their hippie years. Gen-Xers and Millennials just get nostalgia about the cartoons we watched and the toys we bought. Oh well. Putting together a greatest hits album is really the only way to balance out the overwhelming wackness of “Ninja Rap” (heard briefly here as a joke) and “T.U.R.T.L.E. Power” (not referenced as far as I noticed). Also abandoned: the original theme song. I don’t mind. I get it.
One prominent song choice is Paul Engemann’s “Push It To The Limit.” They use it for training montages, which I understand because I always thought it sounded like a training montage song. So much so I forgot it was from SCARFACE for a minute and was thinking it was from BLOODSPORT or something. (By the way, I believe the turtles have an actual photo of JCVD on their wall, and a drawing of a 9 DEATHS OF THE NINJA poster.)
Of all the changes from previous incarnations, the one I’m a little iffy on is the turtles being self-trained, just because I like stories about senseis passing down fighting styles, training to fight other ninja orders and shit, and I think you want that serial martial arts movie stuff as a contrast with the absurdity of the characters. On the other hand, it’s kind of nice that Jackie Chan gets to play Splinter as a funny character instead of the familiar wise Asian mentor archetype. There is a scene where he has to fight and they did a really good job of making it seem like a Jackie Chan fight scene. I actually wondered if he had any involvement with it, but they probly just studied his movies.
It’s also a way to distance it slightly from the basic-ness of this origin story after so many years of super hero saturation. They’re not born to fight evil, mutated to fight evil, or trained to fight evil. The initial motive for going after Superfly is to be accepted by society so they don’t have to be excluded anymore. The emotional hook overshadows the comic book cliche.
It’s also interesting to me that the movie leaves things in a very different status quo from what I’ve seen in other versions. As far as I know they’ve always had to hide out from society, but here they out themselves and enroll in high school – that’ll make for a pretty different sequel! Also, the filmatists are too fond of all the weird mutants – including Bebop (Rogen), Rocksteady (John Cena, 12 ROUNDS) and Mondo Gecko (Paul Rudd, GEN-X COPS 2: METAL MAYHEM) – to make them evil. I know at least some of these are traditionally bad guys, but they’re friends with the turtles at the end. Rowe has said in interviews that he was more inspired by the toys than the cartoons, which tracks. If a kid has an action figure of some obscure character they don’t necessarily know or care if it’s supposed to be a good guy or not.
I’m sure I’ve explained this before, but I’m just a little too old to have experienced childhood Turtlemania. I was in middle school when the cartoon started and I did watch the first few episodes, because when I was younger my friend Jerrod’s Dungeonmaster older brother had collected black and white comics about ninja turtles and barbarian aardvarks and shit. I don’t remember actually reading them, but we flipped through them, drew our own copycats like Technovark (a ROBOCOP parody) and bought an issue or two of Hamster Vice. So there was some appeal to this “they’re ninjas, but also animals, do you get it?” concept, but the cartoon was the domain of little brothers, and I didn’t have one. So that’s the extent of my Turtle nostalgia.
I’ve written about the first two live action movies, which are impressive rubber suit and stunt showcases, but really don’t do it for me as stories or characters, and I find them much more annoying than cool. The two previous Ninja Turtles movies that were the most my speed were the live-action-ish TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS and the DTV animated TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES VS. BATMAN, mostly because they’re the only ones with some jokes that made me laugh.
It’s fair to say MUTANT MAYHEM is now my favorite Ninja Turtle movie, for its visual artistry, for actually being funny, for even making me care a little about these turtles and their emotions, even if I can’t always remember which one is which. I really don’t know how the fuck this concept has lasted so long, but I don’t need to know how. I’m glad it has.
August 15th, 2023 at 2:18 pm
Personally, I’ve never been a TMNT fan. That said, I’m definitely planning to watch this once it hits streaming because I want to support these more experimental animated movies. While I can appreciate a good Pixar or other “traditional” CG animated movie, I’ve really started to become bored of the style those all seem to have. Really happy that the excellent Spider-Verse movies are starting to inspire a little bit more diversity in big budget animated movies.