Skip to main content

Ninja Turtles Reveiw




What I liked: Allow me to begin by noting I watched the movie starting about 1 am. That may have impacted my watching experience. I liked the opening credits. I thought they were 1 kind of cool like the books in elementary school with pictures that were photographs of collages. 2 It seemed like a fun homage to comic books. 3 There weren’t actually pictures of turtles. I liked shredder’s suit. When it comes to giant robotic samurai battle suits, this one wins. Granted the only other one I have seen was in a wolverine movie, but still. It had many good features: magnetic throwing knives so you can throw them again and again and again. Millions of spikes. What are they there for? No one knows. Is there a reason that 5 million swords are better than just one or three or 75? Don’t be ridiculous, plus when you order that many you get bulk discounts. They did a surprisingly good job of keeping the reporter girl in the movie given that she has no super powers, cannot be a love interest since the protagonists are underage turtles, is a terrible reporter, can’t fight, and is altogether rather oblivious. I did like the references they piled in, I’m not sure how they were allowed to use all of the references they did but it was good. I want the mutagen lab machine. As best I can tell it has lots of little pokey columns that spin and then rotate around the other pokey columns. I’m sure I could find  some use for it.
What I didn’t: While CG was a huge improvement on the foam suits of the 90’s we are still left with the problem of 6’ tall talking turtle ninjas. I guess the movie can’t really change that detail but it is still a major shortcoming. Also they were raised by a rat. I just feel a kungfu panda moment coming. I remain concerned about the plan that bad guys seem to be using rather frequently recently: releasing X compound from a very tall building to affect all the citizens of X city. This is not a very predictable delivery mechanism. This bad plan was made worse in this movie because apparently this deadly whatever has been in a cannister in the spire on top of the building for at least 10 years. Did they have an antidote to X during those 10 years? Of course not. This is profoundly bad planning. If you mount deadly thing on top of your headquarters, what happens when there is a big windstorm and the spire comes down. Oh no all the bad guys have accidentally gassed themselves. I also feel like the bad guys are unclear on the purpose of blood “remove all of their blood, even if it kills them.” What were the bad guys expecting as the outcome if they removed all of someone’s blood? Apart from the cheesyness and flat delivery and retro 90s design and presence of turtles and rats and still completely unexplained hordes of bad guys (I mean seriously if your boss routinely poisoned people as a training exercise, would you stick around?) can’t think of much to complain about.
Who should watch this: Middle school, target age is middle school.
Would I watch it again? No but would be curious on the outcome of Shredder vs Silver Samurai.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ready Player One Review

What I liked: I bet all of the developers loved making this film, I saw so many video game and movie references in the background of scenes. I bet all the developers just inserted their favorites like the ninja turtles, a whole platoon of halo soldiers, and orcs. That it was a video game made it possible and exciting to have all kinds of absolutely random physics and logic defying things happen. Obviously, I loved the T. Rex and who would not enjoy seeing Mechagodzilla or a cyborg orc driving a monster truck? Early in the movie they made good use of the video game architecture in a way that reminded me a bit of secret rooms in super mario. The characters visit the world of the Shining, which was amazing and hilarious. I loved the variety of characters, vehicles and weapons that we get to see and it is more fun (at least for me) that they draw from more than strictly the 1980's. I also really liked the music, for the most part the selections were great for the scenes. The book was...
3 comments
Read more

Solo Reveiw

What I liked: The architecture of a heist movie has 4 stages: stage 1 explain how hard the job is, stage 2 come up with a ridiculously elaborate plan to accomplish the job and acquire hard to find equipment, stage 3 execute the plan but something goes terribly wrong, stage 4 sneaky twist and huge pay off. The Solo movie takes the bold move of streamlining the first two and a half steps, picking up with stage 3.5 "Something goes terribly wrong". This saves everyone the slow wind up to the actual action. This saved time translates into a movie with not one but all the heists. We have grand theft, customs evasion, train robbery, vault robbery, the classic hustle, and of course smuggling. I guess they may have tried to crowd too a little much in because they also almost always skip stage 4. This stage skipping also means that we don't know if the things they are doing are actually hard or they are just incompetent. I'm surprised more heist movies don't explore this ...
2 comments
Read more

Wrinkle in Time Review

What I liked: I liked Charles Wallace, that kid was funny. I liked that the ladies in crazy dresses were warriors and that the kids were warriors too. You know me I'm all about a good action movie with awesome fighting, but I liked that at least in this universe the defining characteristics of warriors were compassion, kindness, and love. Similarly, I liked that the bad guys weren't launching a massive military conquest of the universe, I mean everyone is doing that these days. Surprisingly, I liked the Mrs's dresses. They were crazy and over the top but it was fun that they changed with every teleportation and that they were completely absurd. The outfits were rather like the Mrs's wearing them, over the top and fantastical. Knowing all of them from other shows I may have had some unfulfilled expectations. At no point did anyone say "You get a wrinkle, and you get a wrinkle, Everyone gets a wrinkle!" which I must admit was a little disappointing. I also think...
2 comments
Read more