Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

The 99% Cheese Pizza.

I, as many other longtime fans of these movies, was a little nervous going into the movie. That was mostly because of the rumors I had heard before the movie’s release and because of one name attached to the project: Michael Bay. When I’m going to see a stupid action movie, I’m perfectly comfortable seeing that name attached, but when the property is one that I’ve loved since my youth, I fear that all of the memories of the things I loved with spontaneously combust in my brain. But I could not allow the movie to pass me by because I love the property too much, and that’s why I went to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, written by Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec, and Evan Daugherty, directed by Jonathan Liebesman, produced by Michael Bay, and starring Megan Fox, Tony Shalhoub, Johnny Knoxville, Alan Ritchson, Noel Fisher, Jeremy Howard, Tohoru Masamune, William Fichtner, Will Arnett, Minae Noji, Whoopi Goldberg, Abby Elliott, and Taran Killam.

April O’Neil (Megan Fox) is a reporter for Channel 6 news in New York that hopes to graduate from fluff pieces into serious news by researching a gang called the Foot Clan. Her investigation eventually gets her stuck in a hostage situation that is broken up by some unseen vigilantes. She follows their trail up to a rooftop where she discovers (and photographs) 4 giant, young adult, genetically altered, unseen warrior amphibians. …They should come up with a better name. These turtles delete her pictures, but introduce themselves as Leonardo (Johnny Knoxville), Raphael (Alan Ritchson), Michelangelo (Noel Fisher), and Donatello (Jeremy Howard). Eventually, they take April to meet their master, an elderly, mutant, sensei rodent named Splinter (Tony Shalhoub), and the group discover that the leader of the Foot Clan, the Shredder (Tohoru Masamune), is trying to poison the city and use the turtles’ blood to make sure the Foot Clan are the only ones that survive.

I predicted the outcome of seeing this movie pretty well. The movie wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible enough that it ruined my entire childhood and caused my brain to combust in my skull. That would make writing this review rather difficult. The movie was what it was. It was fairly dumb, but entirely tolerable. As with most fans of things, I found that I didn’t really appreciate some of the changes that were made. For instance, this movie decided that the Foot Clan was so named because “they step over people.” Yeah? It’s not because they’re foot soldiers? Also, since when does the Foot Clan use guns? They were supposed to be ninjas like the turtles! And since they’re ninjas, their preferred form of martial arts would obviously be karate, right? Because they decided that ninjutsu was entirely overrated and too predictable? Well that all makes perfect sense. I would also say that I normally find product placement a little icky, but it would have been a travesty to not have some form of pizza product placement in this movie. Strangely, they went with Pizza Hut, so I assume the turtle’s choices are somewhat limited by living in the sewer. I mean, they live in New York City. There must be any number of better pizza options nearby. And Papa John’s delivers too, so they have no excuse.

I’m sure we’ve all seen what the turtles look like and are capable of reaching our own conclusions based on that. But you’re reading this so I assume you’re at least vaguely interested in my opinion. I liked how they looked … except for the nostrils. That made them look weird to me. I would also argue that some of their getups were a bit too busy for my taste. They have natural armor, so why are they wearing armor on top of that? And wouldn’t it get annoying to be doing flips and such with Michelangelo’s puka shells and gold necklaces flying into his face? Also, Splinter just looked icky. And more so than usual. Besides those minor gripes, I was mostly satisfied with the look and the action in the movie, especially the downhill diesel sledding scene that can be seen in the trailer for the movie. That scene was pretty ridictacular.

The cast did a decent enough job in the movie. I wish they had played more towards Megan Fox’s sexuality as they have in every other movie of hers I’ve seen. Mainly because she’s hot and she doesn’t seem to have much more to offer than that. She certainly doesn’t play her characters as if they were intelligent, or at least good at decision making. I mean, she saved the turtles and the rat from the burning building, but it was never addressed that she attempted to save her father at all? William Fichtner did a good job too, but at one point he said, “April has arrived early,” when April O’Neil arrived. I know he didn’t write the line, but it gets associated with him because it came out of his mouth. I didn’t have too many problems with the turtles themselves. I mean, Leonardo did all the leading, Donatello did machines, Raphael was cool, but a little crude, and Michelangelo was just a party dude. I did appreciate that they did Michelangelo well enough that he leaned more towards funny than annoying. It’s a fine line to walk with that character.

I would highly recommend going into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with low expectations. It might be the only way it doesn’t disappoint, especially for fans of the Turtles. It’s not bad enough to ruin the brand, but it’s not good enough that I can fully recommend it. It’s just okay. The story is simple and unimpressive, the action is fine, the turtles look a little weird and Splinter looks icky, and the performances are fine. If you’re comfortable with that, see the movie. Otherwise, it’s probably only really worth a RedBox. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gets “So they’re aliens? No, that’s stupid. They’re turtles” out of “Hey, have you seen that video where the cat is playing Chopsticks with chopsticks?”

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Wrath of the Titans (2012)

You’re Sweating Like a Human.

I shouldn’t have wanted to see today’s movie, but I inexplicably did.  I saw the original movie a really long time ago and absolutely loved it.  Then they remade that movie, and it was disappointing and dumb.  Then they made a sequel to that, and the response was pretty consistently that it was worse than the first.  Whether it was my love of the subject matter or just the expectation of the fun that can accompany a big dumb action movie, I really couldn’t say.  But I wanted to see it.  Not enough to make me go to the theaters for it, and not enough to make my buy it on DVD when it was released.  But, when my roommate Richard showed me a selection of 5 movies he had purchased digitally to watch, I instantly picked this one.  How’d it go?  You’ll find out in my review for Wrath of the Titans, written by Dan Mazeau, directed by Jonathan Liebesman, and starring Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Édgar Ramirez, Toby Kebbell, Rosamund Pike, Danny Huston, Bill Nighy, and John Bell.

Perseus (Sam Worthington), the demigod son of Zeus (Liam Neeson), is trying to live the quiet life of a fisherman with his 10-year-old son, Helius (John Bell), after his famed defeat of the mighty Kraken.  Zeus visits Perseus to warn him that the power of the gods is weakening and the walls of Tartarus that contain Zeus’ father, the mighty titan Kronos, are breaking down.  Perseus tells Zeus where he can cram it.  Zeus travels to Tartarus to meet with his brothers, Hades (Ralph Fiennes) and Poseidon (Danny Huston), and Ares (Édgar Ramirez) and Hades jump Zeus and Poseidon, capturing Zeus and mortally wounding Poseidon.  As Ares and Hades set Zeus up to have his powers drained by Kronos, Poseidon travels to Perseus to tell him what happened.  With Poseidon’s trident, and Poseidon’s son Agenor (Toby Kebbell), as well as Andromeda (Rosamund Pike), Perseus sets out to meet with Hephaestus (Bill Nighy) to find a weapon powerful enough to defeat Kronos.

Yet another disappointing outing for Greek mythology.  I’ve had a love for Greek mythology since my childhood which makes it even more disappointing that I haven’t seen a good movie about that era in a while.  300 was in 2007 and Troy was 2004, and neither of those was actually a mythology thing as much as it just happened around that time, and those gods were mentioned in passing.  Since then I’ve seen Clash of the Titans, Wrath of the Titans, and Immortals, and none of those movies made a good run at it.  But, one thing this movie does have going for it that the Clash of the Titans remake did not is that this movie isn’t shitting on a movie I love.  This is a somewhat original idea that wasn’t very good.  It’s only loosely based on any kind of mythology, and pretty much the only thing that makes it Greek mythology is the name and relationships of the characters.  Since it has nothing at all to do with any Greek mythology, I probably would’ve been happier with it if they had just made it their own story and not included Zeus and Perseus and all the rest of them.  But, if they just made this exact movie about the demigod Steve and his father, the god Mike, I probably wouldn’t have been interested anyway, so fuck me I guess.  Well the story wasn’t great either way.  It’s mainly just about a couple of people wandering through various green-screened settings until they find a stick that kills the big bad thing.  Also, my recollection of the Clash remake is that it was mostly about how humans didn’t need the gods to achieve something.  I recall Perseus refusing to use his fancy god weapons because of this, but this one goes exactly opposite that.  Perseus can’t do shit without the fancy god weapon in this one, so he spends the entire movie looking for it.  The more human Perseus also tries fighting the more god Ares multiple times during the movie, but humanity certainly isn’t good enough this time around.  ::SPOILER ALERT::  Also, the defeat of Ares is super disappointing, as Perseus beats him with a rear naked choke hold.  Which means, for the audience, that Perseus jumped on Ares’ back and wrapped his arm around Ares’ neck and it just became a race to see if Ares or the audience would fall asleep first.  The conclusion of the entire movie was also very disappointing.  First, the defeat of Kronos felt like not much more than Perseus dropping a shiny toothpick down Kronos’ gullet.  ::END SPOILERS::  The very ending of the movie was just kind of confusing and lame.  The god’s have a big walk off into the sunset kind of thing, the humans celebrate Perseus’ victory, something about training Perseus’ son to be a soldier.  I don’t really know what happened because it was rushed and confusing.  All I really know that happened was that I was disappointed.

In the movie’s defense, the look and scale of the movie was all pretty damned epic.  They have a cool looking chimera that was probably in God of War, a giant lava guy that was probably in God of War, an epic Labyrinth that I’m pretty sure was in God of War, and a bald white guy with red symbols painted on him and swords chained to his wrist, but I didn’t recognize him.  The look of the movie seems to owe a lot to the God of War games, but there’s a chance that it wasn’t just a straight rip off.  But if Kronos wasn’t ripped off from God of War, it’s entirely possible that it was just a slightly altered remake of the Balrog from Lord of the Rings.  I also liked the guys with two torsos that were fighting in the last battle.  They worked pretty well.  Also, when Zeus and Hades teamed up to kick some ass, I thought that was very exciting.  Though most of the stuff in the look of the movie felt like I had seen it before, I don’t mean to take away from its scale and grandeur.  It was possibly the only thing in this movie that was actually well done.

The performances were about as hit or miss as you can get.  Sam Worthington has never impressed me.  He’s been in good movies before, but he’s never been what’s made them good as far as I’m concerned.  He’s not so much a bad actor, but he’s certainly not a good one.  And I guess it runs in the family, because the kid who played his son (Yes, I know that John Bell is not his real son.  The last names kind of gave it away for me) got on my nerves.  His biggest performance requirement was just to stand in the background of scenes and stare, dumbfounded.  It’s no surprise that Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes can bring it in the performance department, but it might be a surprise that they actually bothered to bring it for this movie.  They both did good jobs, but every time I saw them I just kept thinking about how the last time they were together before these movies was for Schindler’s List.  That’s fuckin crazy!  I would also count myself as a fan of Bill Nighy, but it occurs to me that this man does not do subtle.  It usually works for him though.  Also, that Bubo, the golden owl from the original Clash of the Titans, shows up in this movie was very exciting to me.  Not that it did anything, but it was there, man!

It didn’t come as a surprise for me that Wrath of the Titans was disappointing.  I was right in assuming that the story would have nothing to offer and I was right to assume that the only performances I’d like would be Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes, but I at least hoped that the action in this big dumb action movie would be satisfying.  Imagine my surprise when it was also disappointing.  The only things I really enjoyed about this movie were the visuals, but I feel like I can get most of that by playing God of War, and I’d enjoy myself more.  Wrath of the Titans isn’t bad enough that I would say don’t watch it, but it’s also not good enough that I’d recommend it.  If nothing else, get it from RedBox for a day and go in with low expectations.  Wrath of the Titans gets “Hades, I am so sorry for having done this to you” out of “Because I forgive you for this.”

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