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Things you liked and disliked about the movie? (SPOILERS)

posted 10 years ago by Horror_Metal
19 replies | jump to latest

My personal likes and dislikes:

Likes:

- The personalities of the Turtles were all pretty dead on. Leonardo was heroic and virtuous, Raphael was wild and rebellious, Mikey was a cool partying surfer type, Donnie was a genius who actually used his intellect throughout the movie.
- How it showed the Turtles as babies and then growing up and training over the years through flashback.
- Eric Sachs was a pretty interesting and charismatic villain (just wish they would have renamed him Baxter Stockman).
- Everything about Splinter was pretty well done.
- The elevator scene was kind of funny and reflected how they were all fun loving teenage brothers.
- The final battle on the rooftop was pretty action packed and exciting.

Dislikes:

- I absolutely HATED the way the Turtles looked. Huge and hulking ugly mutants that were way too overdone and garbed in too much crap. Why did they have to make their faces so realistically like an actual turtle? It just didn't work at all.
- Shredder was an overly exaggerated Transformers reject with arms made entirely of knives. I don't know who thought this would be a good idea. I also hated how he lacked a backstory, was never referred to as Oroku Saki, and how he seemed to play second fiddle to Eric Sachs.
- They eliminated the Hamato Yoshi character and instead had Splinter (who was never in Japan) and the Turtles begin as April's pets, a silly coincidence which has become an overused cliché in recent times.
- Splinter became a master of ninjutsu by reading a copy of Kung Fu for Dummies which just happened to be in the sewer and I guess somehow learned to read before then teaching these "skills" to his Turtle apprentices.
- The whole movie mostly followed Megan Fox as April, with not enough focus on the Turtles.
- The Turtles seemed to get their asses kicked a lot, and when they did manage to get the upper hand it was usually due to brute force and not martial arts skills.
- Raphael's silly emo speech near the end of the movie while they're falling. Ugh...
- Some of the jokes were really lame and had me rolling my eyes and groaning way too much. How many cringeworthy lines can one movie have?
- The ending didn't make it clear what Shredder's fate was.
- They had the perfect opportunity to finally bring in some of the characters we've been waiting over two decades to see, but for whatever reason didn't.
- This movie brought nothing new to the Turtles saga, and was basically just the same origin story we've all seen so many times before, just not done as well this time. The 1990 version is far superior and is still the best Turtles movie by far.

Despite having so many dislikes, I actually enjoyed this movie a lot more than I thought I would and was never bored while watching it. However, it could have been way better. I'm thinking I will enjoy the sequel way more as they are reportedly introducing several elements that we've been waiting to see in a live action Turtles movie for fifteen years. So anyway, what are some things you liked and disliked about this new Turtles film?

Horror_Metal

[–] kularr 9 years ago

My main problem with the film is they destroyed my favorite turtle. Michelangelo was my favorite, but they made him into an idiot MTV rapper, "Yo girl. Yo baby." spewing moron. I expected him to cross his arms and say "Word".

[–] Smith006 9 years ago

I really thought the voice of Splinter was miscast. It should have been someone like Sho Kosugi. A Japanese man with a good voice who starred in tons of 80's ninja ficks. Seems like a no brainer.

[–] Btheatrical 9 years ago

I thought Shalhoub was perfect since this Splinter isn't Japanese. He's just an everyday rat. It wouldn't make sense for him to have a Japanese accent lol

[–] klanky 9 years ago

Except he looked and acted Japanese with the fu manchu beard and the traditional looking robes and talk of hogosha.

I'm guessing he appropriated the entirety of Japanese culture from that one book that gave him all his martial arts knowledge.

[–] Kaliyugaforkix 9 years ago

I always enjoy seeing an old concept updated even if i don't like how its done. It still gives you insight into how the present views something that might've been seen very differently in the past; how they translate it. I grew up with the original Ninja Turtles, I saw the first movie as a little kid in the theaters so its fascinating. It makes sense I guess that as a Michael Bay joint this update would be soullessly super sized; its big gulp generation- lots of schizo cuts, bullet-time dubstep wankery, techno fetishism, everything's big big BIG. I like grounded action stuff more, it was entertaining in a mindless ADD way but there was obviously no depth, even the little that was in the originals. Its too cool and too fast for that boring sh&t. You weren't going to get the turtles sitting together at a campfire, meditating a vision of Splinter and crying- no homo, man.

The most interesting thing to me is the pumped up, steroid freak look of the Turtles, in keeping with the rest of the epic proportions here. They were so grotesque I think I liked it in a what-were-they-thinking way. Everything's so ridiculously exaggerated already i guess it made sense to turn them into hulking monstrosities. Their near invulnerability added a new dimension to it too. I didn't like that they made Raphael a thug or the self taught jujitsu though; i liked him better as the hothead smart ass and I couldn't get into the idea that they just became these amazing martial arts experts (especially shinobi style Splinter) from a book. All together, A fun little freak show.

[–] silence_you_fools 9 years ago

Likes:

The turtles looked good. I could blow the dust off a 25 year-old box of comics and find a good number of TMNTs where they actually looked like they do in this film; all roughed up, and scraggly and ugly. Their personalities were also well defined given the context of a cynical marketing extravaganza.

They were well-composited with the live action elements. Not something that many films do successfully, even though most 'big' films rely on it heavily. You can see that the live action parts are heavily filtered, stylized and digitally doctored, and this helped bring everything together. i.e. everything looks a little fakey-fake (sure, inc. Megan Fox) which helps sell the shots when the turtles are interacting with the live action humans.

Shredder looked good.

Dislikes:

Everything else. This is a dreadful, soulless, tonally schizophrenic film with some truly horrendous dialogue, awful performances and cynical direction. Even the score sounded phoned in by a guy who was rethinking his decision to become a film composer. I almost turned it off 35 mins in, but I'm stubborn and rarely give up on a movie. It could serve reasonably well as a poster child for everything that's currently(2015) wrong with films.