Ever since I was a kid, I have understood one thing about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that not many people seem to know. These aren’t action heroes or ruthless killers, they know how to fight REALLY well and they’re strong but they aren’t just going around killing their targets one by one.
These 4 siblings have one trait that defines them above all; they are teenagers. There’s barely any fiction that dives headfirst into this aspect of them, that is until Michael Bay came out with his take and somehow its quite fun!
How to Stream or Download Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
You can stream it or you can download the film from a digital store. Click on the Download button at the end of this review. Check out also our review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from 2014.
The Movie Review
Following the events of the 2014 film, Shredder has taken his loss to the turtles to heart. He’s beating himself up about it, and during that time he comes up with a plan. He begins working with a mad scientist named Baxter, along with two henchmen named Bebop and Rocksteady.
Together they are determined to take over the world. However, our friendly neighborhood gutter diving turtles are still there to be a nuisance for him, or at least until they are ambushed by the villain Krang and everything is turned upside down.
Michael Bay’s film is super-fast paced, it moves from sequence to sequence in a flash and doesn’t really give you much time to soak in the characters and their stories. Almost nothing in its two-hour run time revolves around character development, all of it revolves around furthering the plot.
Though that isn’t a problem, because this seems like a film that doesn’t care about anything other than providing you with lots of action. It does that job fairly well, though it gets tiring after an hour into it, when nothing other than just fighting is happening.
Characters
The film has a lot of characters in it, and that comes as a huge detriment to the film. Casey Jones, April Jones, the four turtles, Master Splinter, Bebop, Rocksteady, Shredder, Baxter, Krang and Vern are the few that take up the most screen time.
The film tries to shuffle all of them at the same time, though it seems that Michael Bay genuinely cannot do that.
It’s hard to put all of these characters into the same film at most times, and it hinders the film from feeling like a coherent experience because it has too much filler content. it’s funny how despite having so many characters in the film, none of them really act well at all.
Visuals
Visually speaking, it is surprising to me why this film wasn’t made to be animated from the get go. I understand that live action and motion capture is more popular but with animation, this film could have been actually good.
All they would need is to add some themes of growth and maturity into it and voila.
They also wouldn’t have gotten this many characters to be in it if this was animation only. Not to mention, it might have looked much better. The film looks very fake, the animation sticks out like a slow thumb and the visuals just feel bland to see. It is hard to explain how plasticized it looks.
Music
Steve Jablonsky’s original soundtrack for this film doesn’t really help it. It adds nothing to the overall style or the plot of this film. The funniest thing about this soundtrack is the fact that it doesn’t even elevate the sequences that are in the movie.
None of the emotional sequences are elevated due to the soundtrack, nor does the action feel more exciting due to it! It just serves as background noise for the overall film, which is quite disappointing.
The Bottom Line
To put it bluntly, this film had the chance to be something fun and adventurous. It could have built up on the 2014 film and developed its characters. Though, the issue here is that it focuses on giving you a good time, rather than being a good film itself.
Director Michael Bay is known to create explosive and extravagant films, though honestly, this was just as bad if not worse than his work with the Transformers.
