Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

I've read some pretty damning reviews and spoilers. Looks like this one will be a spectacular misfire. It feels like the Internet has been against it from the get-go, so it already had its work cut out for it.

You know what they ought to do? They ought to release a music video to try to turn things around. What's that? They already have? Is it any good? Let's have a look:



It's an MTV exclusive!

(EDIT: I put a stop to that autostart bullshit.)

[Dalty]

Thank the Ghost of Steve Jobs!!!

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

I realize these are probably just some folks who want their shot. Why wouldn't they want to put a song on a TMNT soundtrack? I mean, shit, what an opportunity. There's a good chance some of them were once fans of the comic, show(s), or movies. Even so... goddamn is that song bad.

And did you get a load of Shredder? We were just talkin' 'bout Swiss Army Knives.

[Jubbers]

I've seen this group before - it's a Christian multicultural a cappella group whose videos get shared on Facebook regularly by people like my mom. I think her and a handful of her friends posted this one last Christmas. Big hit among moms.

[omicron]

I think this movie is going to bomb big time. There might be some nostalgia that draws in people, but overall it looks like a crappy reboot of a semi-popular property.

[Mal Shot First]

When I was looking up trailers for this movie on YouTube, I was shocked to discover that there were quite a few comments by people who seemed to be genuinely excited about it. I don't think they were trolling either. I don't get it.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

I think this movie is going to bomb big time. There might be some nostalgia that draws in people, but overall it looks like a crappy reboot of a semi-popular property.

It's tracking to make less than Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend. Guardians has done remarkably well during the week. Lots of repeat business. Even though it had a smaller opening weekend than Captain America: The Winter Soldier, its five-day total is close to ten million dollars higher.

Most box office analysts are expecting Guardians of the Galaxy to gross somewhere in the forty-to-fifty-million range this weekend. The same people are expecting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to gross somewhere in the thirty-to-forty-million range.

Turtles is sitting at 31% on Rotten Tomatoes at the moment. It only has thirteen reviews so far. I wouldn't be surprised if the Tomatometer went down even more as more reviews came in.

The reviews certainly won't help it. The Bay association won't help, either, especially after the most recent Transformers movie. The Platinum Dunes association also isn't likely to help.

I've read that this movie's version of Splinter SPOILER: is, like the Mirage Comics Splinter and the '90 movie's Splinter, a rat who becomes more humanoid. I've also read that there's absolutely no Splinter/Hamato Yoshi connection in the new movie. Splinter's supposed to learn martial arts from some martial arts book that's lying around or something. Seems kinda dumb, but I guess it's better than having him be an alien the way he was in earlier versions of the script.

You know, when it comes to the Yoshi connection, I think I prefer the '87 cartoon origin for Splinter. It's slightly more believable that he was a human first, and that he wasn't a rat mimicking his owner's moves. You don't really become a skilled and wise martial artist by miming somebody doing katas in his bedroom.

[Mango]

That song reminds me of my youth.
Not like the Ninja Turtle part of my youth; Turtles are friggin' bad ass.

It reminds me of a time in junior high when we had to watch a video which presented it's info in a 'hip' way: by emulating these new fangled video games! As one of the two or three people who played video games I was embarrassed.

Mind you, as a Turtle fan I've had to suffer through a version in which the turtles are wise cracking heroes who piloted a blimp and fought an alien brain in an android baby-body. And that was fine with me.

I'm not known for having my finger on the pulse of popularity but I do think the property is more than just semi-popular at the moment. I'm a big fan from the old comics and the role playing game (admittedly both niche markets), and they led to the 87' cartoon which pretty much infected my generation. There was also a successful cartoon in 2003 that went for a few years and the comics are still going. And I think that cartoon only ended when the license was bought out by Nickelodeon, who has the latest version of the cartoon out which is doing pretty well. I Also hear and the current crop of toys are getting good reviews across the action figure circles, partially because they seem to be made to play with; an important factor in kid's toys.

So the movie seems like it would have been a safe bet. However among my gaming group we are mostly taking bets to see if it will be worse than "Wolverine Origins." I fall on the side of "How could it?"

But we are still going to go see it, and thus fund the travesty...

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

X-Men Origins: Wolverine made almost $180 million domestic. It was also released at the very beginning of summer. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) is being released in the middle of the last month of summer. It also has Guardians of the Galaxy to worry about. It would shock the shit out of most box office analysts if Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made much more than $100 million domestic.

If Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles makes under $33 million this weekend, chances of it hitting the $100 million domestic mark by the end of its run are slim.

I think the popularity of the TMNT brand in the cartoon market won't have that positive a bearing on the new movie. For one thing, the cartoon is CG. These new cinematic Turtles are CG. They're also leagues apart, design-wise. I think fans of the comics and cartoons had more room for forgiveness in '90, since they were jumping from 2D animation to 3D live action. The live-action versions were also somewhat faithful, design-wise, and they kept it so that the turtles were all still dressed similarly. There's just a bigger visual disconnect this time around.

Wait. I just reread what you wrote. You said you didn't see how it could *be* worse. I read it as *do* worse the first time around.

How could it be worse? Platinum Dunes, man. Platinum Dunes.

[Corporal_Hicks]

Why did they make it PG-13? Dumb. Either make it PG in order to tap into the 5 and 6 year old audience (and get their parents at the same time), or go R so the grownups that grew up on the comics and 80s cartoon can feel like they've been pandered to.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

It's down to 20% on Rotten Tomatoes.

[Dalty]

I never got the big deal. Seemed like a load of pointless arse when it landed first time round when I was in school. The toys and cartoons hung around for maybe 20 months then it vanished.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

It's down to 19% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Like Mal, I'm genuinely surprised there are people excited about this. One of my mother's former students is really excited about it. Here's what he wrote about it:

"ome hell high water im goin see this tonight me an my beautiful wife ohhhh ye"

That's some real enthusiasm.

[Dalty]

And some amazing spelling. English teacher, was she?

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Special ed teacher. It's pretty impressive that the guy writes as well as he does.

Not to make you feel like an asshole or anything.

[Jubbers]

I signed up for a Fisher-Price catalog a few weeks back. Jubboiter loves Thomas the Tank Engine, so I wanted the brand new Thomas Wooden Railway catalog. Haven't gotten that. I finally received SOMETHING from them this morning, via email, and that was

TMNT Power Wheels vehicles ready to roll!




(My favorite. The little boy on the right is having so much fun he might actually explode.)

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

That's tied in to the new Nickelodeon series, which is supposed to be the bee's knees. I haven't seen any of it, but it appears to have an impressive voice cast.

[Jubbers]

If it were tied in to the other TMNT, that kid would have a sad Kafka face on, wouldn't he?

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

That sounds like something I'd like to see.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

James Rolfe does a decent Sad Kafka:

[Mal Shot First]

The color scheme on those TMNT-themed vehicles reminds me of this:

[neglet]

I remember when my son was in the Age of Thomas (2-6). In the middle of it we told him we were moving to England, where Thomas lived, and he was totally cool with it. He was so disappointed when we took him to a Thomas event at Canary Wharf and "Thomas" didn't really talk.

[Jubbers]

The Thomas & Friends episodes on Netflix and Hulu are a mix of old-style (great facial expressions, but the faces of the trains don't move, the people are blocks, episodes are narrated by Ringo, George Carlin, etc) and new-style (all CG, trains have individual faces and voices, and the people move and talk just like the trains, etc.).

Jubboiter really likes the old-style episodes. She'll watch it (especially the songs) and she'll move her little trains on the couch going "beep beep." She also likes being read Thomas stories from this storybook we got her, wearing her Thomas shirt, and she even has Thomas swim trunks. If one of the CG episodes comes on, however, she will cover her eyes with her arm and run out of the room. These are also the episodes that show up on PBS currently. I flipped the channel back and forth between it and something completely different, and every time CG Thomas appeared on the screen, she would run out of the room again, arm up to shield her eyes (I am a terrible mom sometimes).

[Djack Zteelecock]

Unfortunately, early returns point to a better opening weekend for 'Ninja Turtles' than I had hoped. I'm not too surprised; one of the review excerpts at RT that I glanced at called it 'Transformers' with the turtles replacing the robots, and those robot movies pulled in obscene amounts of money, despite looking absolutely awful (I saw the first one; I can confirm that it is awful). The article at Yahoo! I was reading claimed a $25.7 mil opening day for NT, and estimate around a $65 mil weekend haul.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Well, damn. It's almost certainly going to win the weekend. This goes against tracking numbers. Then again, Guardians was only tracking to make something in the high sixty million range last weekend, and it ended up making $94 million. Tracking hasn't been worth a damn these last two weeks.