Not too long ago, I talked about how the new wave of Rise of the TMNT toys didn’t make the show look any better than the promotional images we got months ago. Well now we have the first Official Teaser trailer for the show appearing on YouTube. Feel free to take a look at the trailer for yourself before reading my opinions below.
Ok, what the fuck is that shit? Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles looks like a really dumbed down version of the classic cartoon series that a lot of people know and love… And I come from the Generation that grew up on the 1987 version, which was already a very dumbed down version of the original comic book source material.
What I think gets to me the most is that we have had two really good series in 2003 and 2012 that treated the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with respect and took a semi-darker tone with a good dose of comedy to balance things out. This new version, which taking into account that this is a more unskilled and younger TMNT crew, is just way too heavily leaning on bad puns and jokes. Seeing the brothers get slapped around like something out of Adventure Time “for the lols” and cracking really bad jokes just throws everything off. Rise of the TMNT feels like more of a NewGounds parody series (Yeah, yeah, dated reference Old Man Karl) than an official entry into the franchise.
As for the animation itself, it just looks too wacky. The characters are all over the place, almost looking like they are made out of rubber at times. Then there is the scaling of the characters, which changes from scene to scene, but that isn’t helped when Raph looks like Bane from the Batman comics and Mikey looks like a bunch of twigs coming out of a rock. You also have a lot of really bad, almost Speed Racer style, animation shortcuts with weird elongated angles when the crew is fighting that just looks off.
At the end of the day, I’m just not liking what is going to happen with the Heroes in the Half Shell. They have been a powerhouse franchise since 1987, over 30 years. Nickelodeon buying the whole property didn’t worry me too much when it happened since they put out the great 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles CGI series, which treated all past forms of the series from all mediums as something to be embraced and enjoyed. It was a hit with fans of all age groups and generations. Not to mention there is the great comic books produced by IDW Comics, which are dark and have some of the best storylines ever made in the medium; then you have the side stories like TMNT Universe, Batman & TMNT, etc that have done great things in comic books.
Now I’m worried as a lifelong fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that Rise of the TMNT is going to create something so bad it’s going to do to the TMNT franchise like Steel did to Superhero movies in the 90s… Kill it off and leave such a stain on the franchise that we will not see another TMNT property on the small or big screen for decades.
And finally… Take a look at the shot above… What the fuck! Face full of child April crotch!
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will debut on Nickelodeon in September 2018.