FILMRECENSION - TMNT Out of the Shadows
*SPOILERALERT*
Turtles Out of the Shadows.
I'm sorry, but as a turtles-fan who grew up with every turtles show in history, this is kind of painful to watch. The characteristics, the group dynamics, the feel of it all.. its just so off and completely unblalanced. Even though I will say I actually like this movie a little bit more than the first one simply because we see more of the canon-material, its still flawed beyond belief.
My biggest problem is how the director insists on enhancing the image and giving character development to one guy instead of the entire group. Both of these recent live-action movies are so obviously directed by someone who is clearly a Raph-fanboy, because in each one Raphael is more or less the one we should identify with as the hero, sometimes subtly and sometimes blatantly.
In the first one, its "Raphael to the rescue!". He is the only one not captured during the fight in the lair and needs to save the day. The rest of the turtles just sort of melt into the shadow; Don is lost in techno-babble, Mikey is annoying and Leo barely gets any screen-time because.. what, they couldn't figure out any reasons at all for giving the leader some character development? No obvious lessons learned or emotional breakdowns because of the pressure of dealing with leadership or anything? No, he's just sort of this voicebox who says what they are going to do, and that's basically it.
Instead its Raph who needs to learn something, its Raph who needs to connect with the group, its Raph that needs to be the guy that rescues them and its Raph that gets the final super-funny joke as they hang on for dear life at the end.
But what about the second movie? Surely Raph isn't the favored turtle in THIS story? They can't do it TWICE?
Well, shows how wrong you are, because this is even MORE unbalanced, as the director is trying to unfairly paint Leo to be some sort of douchebag when he willfully decides to keep the truth about the ooze from his brothers, blatantly says that the only vote that counts is his and Raph gives voice to what most of us are thinking, again turning Raph into some sort of moral center of the story (albeit a violent one).
Sure, in the end Raph's action was proven wreckless, but Leo is still going on about how he was right, they should fall in line and be all like him, yadda-yadda-yadda.
I just think it is appalling that while the first movie had Leo be this secondary character that didn't stand out at all, this movie turned Leo into this jerk that lacks any form of social standards. Its obvious that the creators of this movie haven't seen the show before. Hell, its even doubtful that they've seen the preceeding movies.
This whole the-ooze-might-turn-us-human-but-we-must-stay-turtles-because-that's-what-we-are... I will declare that it is highly unlikely.. no, as a matter of fact, its down-right impossible for Leo to ever make such a drastic decision that affects the whole group in such a profound manner without any input from the others or at LEAST (!) with him consulting master Splinter.
Any turtles-fan knows that while Leo occasionaly has to make the tough decisions, he is not SO closed-off and blindly arrogant that he actually can feel so justified to single-handedly make that call for everybody, no matter the intentions given as an excuse.
And in the end, what did it all amount to? Well, apparently it didn't even matter, because when it comes right down to it and they have to make the final decision of whether to use the ooze or not, Leo makes a complete reversal on his standpoint and just says "I'll do whatever you guys do." ... like, what??.. you were going to come to blows with Raph over this before and now its like "Fuck it! You decide!"?
And yes, again its Raph that wants all of the turtles to have a vote, its Raph who needs to overcome his fear of heights, its Raph who speaks for the entire group at the end .. God, this is such a flagrant fanboy-biased portrayal, I don't even...
Allright, let's move on before I get a nosebleed just thinking about this...
Then there's the Shredder. Good god... where to even start with this one?
If I thought the Shredder in the first film wasn't given any character and too little screen-time, this one, while being seen a whole lot more, STILL manages to be completely bland.
And I can't for the world figure out how they could mess this up so completely. They HAVE the character to work with and the actor who plays him, Brian Tee, actually looks really good as the Shredder; his appearance matches what I could accept as Oroku Saki and his voice when he meets Krang has that raspy threatening tone.
But they barely even present a decent facade, let alone a completed product. He mostly just stands around with a face that looks like it belongs on the side of a japanese mount Rushmore and acts like Leonardo's counterpart in the Foot Clan; he gives commands and nothing else.
No reiterating his schemes with maniacal laughter or anything that we have come to expect from the guy. He isn't even wearing his Shredder-suit until the very last part of the movie; he could've easily just as well have been mistaken for one of the leather-dressed ninja soldiers to the casual onlooker.
I thought they would've given us a more fleshed-out Shredder in this movie, seeing as how the first one was so ridiculously underplayed that this one had to be the definitive version. But no, this one is even more underplayed, and this time its truly insulting simply because he IS shown that much more and still manages to be this non-descript individual.
The scene where he meets Krang is probably the most underwhelming anti-climactic scene I have ever seen on film.
So Shredder just appears before Krang and is like "where am I?" and this massive robot with a disembodied brain comes out and literrally tells him to pay it no mind.
Yeah, you know... because... why should he care?
It then goes on to blatantly tell the Shredder that he wants the teleporter which Baxter Stockman found in order to open this door to earth, like its as common as taking your dog out for a walk.
And Shredder just gives a response that's somewhere along the line of ... "Okay. Can I go now?" .. seriously, no disbelief, no questioning Krang's character or intentions... I swear, Shredder gives the most uninterested reaction to the first meeting of an extradimensional being ever recorded on film. And its not even a spoof! I'm serious, I pay even less attention to Shredder than I do to the human sidekicks in this movie, and that's when you know its bad.
But wait, there's more! Because not only does he have the radiant charisma of a rock, he is also a complete idiot.
For you see, he actually goes along with the plan to rule the world, chosing to trust this *COMPLETELY* *INHUMAN* *THING* right there on the spot.
Come on!.. you have never seen this creature before! At all!! You are not in any position in which you can just dismiss the very potential threat being presented to you by this completely unknown variable, let alone even going so far as to join forces with it!! You don't know its ultimate agenda, you don't know if its speaking the truth or not.
Of course, you could argue that Shredder might have and probably does have his own plans and is scheming right now to take control away from Krang at the end an- .. or okay, he really believs him and gets betrayed by Krang, yeah.
I can't believe this is happening.. and then, when Shredder dumbfoundedly exclaims "You betrayed me!" ... I was like "NUUHUUU!!???? IT'S AS IF THIS EVIL-LOOKING ALIEN HAS PLANNED THIS ALL ALONG!!!" :O .. oh my god..! Even the Shredder from the Cartoon of the 80s were smarter than this.
And to top it off, possibly the worst plot-decision EVER!.. get this...
...they brush aside the Shredder.
THEY BRUSH ASIDE THE SHREDDER!
.. Yeah, that's right! :O
He's basically disposed of like a little bitch when Krang just decides to stuff him in the fridge. And we NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN!! Yeah, so much for the badass ultimate nemesis of the turtles. *JAW DROPPED*
I would say that he had it coming for already being so incredibly stupid, but.. seriously? The Shredder is the supervillain in this franchise; if anything, Krang is the secondary antagonist, he always has been.
YOU...... ASSHOLES!!!!!
Krang himself is just your average generic megalomaniac. I would've wanted to get a more in-depth connection with the character, but we don't even get his backstory! No, you heard me. He just appears out of nowhere, like some random door-salesman that just shows up and wants to pester your life for no discernable reason.
And yes, as I said, the human sidekicks are nothing special, but to be fair, that's to be expected. Vern, Casey and April are all just there for human relations, barely noticable as a result.
We do get some sort of police-chief woman who actually manages to make me raise an eyebrow, but that's mostly because she is so good at playing the obligatory asshole for the majority of the film.
So, was it all bad completely through? No. There were some things that tried to balance out the negativity.
Like Bebop and Rocksteady
Every time we cut to them the whole movie just took off. The corny jokes and their goofiness is really something that I believed that I would hate and roll my eyes at, but they actually work surprisingly well. This is exactly how I would've imagined Bebop and Rocksteady would act if they ever got onto the silver screen; they certainly have more character and DEFINITELY more chemistry with each other than they ever had in the cartoon.
Also, I do think that the decision to reject the ooze by the turtles was the obvious right choice, because if they had taken the ooze to become human, there wouldn't have been anything special about them; they would just have been human ninja teenagers.. and.. yeah, it would have been just as dumb as it sounds.
But yeah, again, that was Raphael (ofc, who else) who made the moraly sound choice and took it upon himself to smash the container, again showing that he knows what's truly right and nobody questioned it.. as opposed to when Leo made such a decision and everyone went apeshit over it.. ... you know, I'm surprised the movie isn't called "Raphael and his three turtle-brothers".
The ending... my god is it cringe-worthy! If you thought the ending of the first movie was bad, with the tired "oops, i blew up your car"-cliché... well, here they go all in with Vern doing the sidekick-joke in the crowd that we've seen a million times, how Raph gets his five minutes of mic-time and how Casey and April OUT OF NOWHERE just decide to like one another for no apparent reason other than the fact that they usually get together in the other movies. Because, yeah.. they totally managed to show us a stellar performance in how a romance blossoms in this movie.
No, sorry... that was sarcasm.
Okej, så betyget?
Alltså, jag kan inte med gott samvete ens ge den här två dödsstjärnor av fem möjliga. Det får bli en och en halv.
Jag hade givit den en enda dödsstjärna om det inte hade varit för källmaterialet som faktiskt presenteras här i proper anda.
Men det gottgör tyvärr inte för den enorma mängden av horribla misstag och felaktiga inriktningar. Filmen är en enda röra.
Däremot går den att se, men bara om man absolut inte väntar sig nån direkt autentisk hänvisning till originalen.
