Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

• Directed by Dave Green
• May 22, 2016 (Madison Square Garden) / June 3, 2016 (US)
• Based on characters created by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman

After defeating the Shredder, the Turtles must face an even more dangerous nemesis-Krang!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is a sequel with a great deal of promise and some good fanservice that ultimately is not as strong as it should be because it crams too much in with too little time to deal with it all.

Perhaps the best handled of the new items was the introduction of Rocksteady (Sheamus) and Bebop (Gary Anthony Williams) who not only got the best setup but felt like an appropriate and credible threat in the film. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze really screwed things by not including them and using Tokka and Rahzar instead. This is their first live action (though they are CGI) iteration, and it was just a great treat. They were morons who were dangerous because of their abject stupidity and violent natures.

Plus we get Krang (Brad Garrett) showing up in an easily recognizable form but he just shows up. How he got to Earth is fuzzy and his plans beyond conquest/destruction are not clear. To bring Krang and the Shredder (Brian Tee) together Krang has The Shredder go around collecting pieces of a device that will bring the Technodrome to Earth. The thing is Krang has access to teleporting technology (as does Shredder) which he uses to get Shredder during a prison break so why hire Shredder at all? It would have been easier for him to do it himself and kept outside forces that might stop him/screw things up completely ignorant.

Having to collect the pieces certainly pads out the story. What was maybe a little better than 90 minutes is stretched out to about two hours. Those additional elements certainly give excuses for fight scenes. But when you give it some thought the reasons for the search make no sense. All involved can pinpoint their locations . Searching is not a factor.

There’s a lot of talk about the Turtles being ninjas and being in the shadows yet their version of the Turtle Van is rather noticeable. I’m fine with it being noticeable, but it would’ve been appropriate to make some kind of joke about it considering the level of humor and the type of jokes used in Out of the Shadows.

I think they could’ve chopped 20 or 30 minutes out of this (like the Turtles suddenly having a strong desire to be human) and had a much tighter film. They wouldn’t had to have dumped too much of the humor, but they certainly could’ve dumped some of the extraneous scenes.

Brian Tee as the Shredder here and while he’s good in the part, he doesn’t dress like the Shredder. Aside from the wrist gauntlets, he’s often seen without a helmet. One of the defining characteristics of the Shredder character is his costume. But he’s rarely completely or even mostly in costume.

The Foot are much less paramilitary here and much more ninja. In the last film they were kinda an army for hire that also acted like they were a criminal organization but displayed no martial arts skills. Rather they brandish guns quite frequently. Here they are more martial artists and I am hard pressed to think of any using a gun.

Vern Fenwick (Will Arnett) manages to be much more pathetic of a character than he was in the last film. It is not comedic at all, but rather you just feel sad for the guy. I don’t think he was too import to the story in the least. Then again he wasn’t an actual character, but rather more of a punchline. 

Casey Jones (Stephen Amell) shows up here. While no Elias Koteas, Amell does well enough but he’s not as serious as Elias was. Jones is introduced when the Foot Clan decides to attack when Shredder is being transferred. And that’s probably one of the better scenes in the entire film. Then again that scene is largely live action. There is very little CGI in that other than what is used for the Turtles.

The fight scenes as presented are okay but being CGI animation they are presented as one would animation. Live action has its limitations when it comes to presentation and they probably should’ve put that kind of thought into staging them. There’s so much movement that it takes on the feeling of moving uncontrolled on a waterslide.

While not bad Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is only just fine. We finally get some big screen iterations of fan favorite characters. As a story if you think about it too much of you’ll start finding the holes. But then again, this isn’t meant to be deeply analyzed. Rather, it’s just there to entertain.