‘Mutant Mayhem’ Makes Middle

May 16, 2023

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The latest ‘TMNT’ movie reboot is the freshest the 40-year-old franchise has been in ages

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of those franchises that feels like it’s been around forever—and it all started with a single silly sketch in 1983.

“The original creation of the turtles came out of love, passion, and a late-night bout of goofiness,” TMNT cocreator Kevin Eastman said in a promotion for the latest film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. “I did this drawing of a turtle standing upright with a mask, nunchucks strapped to his arms, and I put it on [cocreator Peter Laird’s] desk, and I said, ‘This is going to be the next big thing: a ninja turtle.’”

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That drawing evolved into a comic book series by Eastman and Laird at their company Mirage Studios, which they parlayed into a licensing deal with Playmates Toys and a line of action figures. The turtles were then turned into an animated TV series to promote the tie-in toys, and the phenomenon only grew from there: In the decades since, there have been more comics and animated TV shows, live-action and animated films, video games, a Vanilla Ice anthem, and an iconic ice cream bar. Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo have been reincarnated again and again for new generations, adapted each time to the era they’re reborn into.

Mutant Mayhem, which was released in theaters earlier this week, is just the latest animated TMNT film in a long line of them. And yet it manages to capture the spirit of Eastman’s late-night sketch in ways that few TMNT stories have since the creators’ original comic books. Through its perfectly imperfect animation style and a reimagining of the franchise’s world and characters, Mutant Mayhem is an exciting entry in a long-running series that makes it feel fresher than ever.

In all the iterations of these four mutant ninja turtles throughout the years, rarely has the “teenage” element felt so emphasized and authentic. The creators of Mutant Mayhem turned that frequently understated component of the characters into one of the key ingredients of their take on the franchise. “I grew up watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the ‘teenage’ part was always the most under-explored,” said cowriter-producer Seth Rogen, who also voices the mutant Bebop, in a teaser for the film. “I always thought it would be really interesting to explore them in that way, especially because—in my understanding—every version of them has been performed by adults. Within 15 seconds of watching the movie, the audience is like, ‘They’re teenage boys!’”

In Mutant Mayhem, Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Raphael (Brady Noon), Donatello (Micah Abbey), and Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.) are voiced by actual teenagers, and the audience is rewarded with their endless energy as each actor brings an endearing personality to their roles. According to writer-director Jeff Rowe, the script was completely changed after the young actors were brought in to record lines together, with the final product capturing the chemistry in the way they talked to and played off each other. (As Brown said in a promotional clip: “We’ve improvised a lot of the movie.”)

After being isolated in the sewers of New York City for the first 15 years of their lives, the turtles develop a collective desire to go out into the surface world and be accepted by human society, which becomes the driving force of the film. They lie to their adoptive father, Splinter (Jackie Chan), and sneak out to catch outdoor movies in Brooklyn, attend concerts, and dream of a simple life as regular high schoolers and pizza-loving, bacon-egg-and-cheese-eating New Yorkers. This sort of conflict caused by teenage angst may be a familiar, well-worn trope, but in this context it adds a sincere layer of depth to the characters that works because of how it humanizes them—despite the inherent absurdity that they’re mutant ninja turtles with a wise rat for a parent.

The film’s effort to reconceptualize its characters with relatable motives and distinct personalities extends to those in supporting roles. Ayo Edebiri voices a charming new take on April O’Neil, who isn’t a star reporter for Channel 6 News as she has been in many past TMNT iterations. Instead, she’s a teenage outcast herself, looking to break a massive story at her school newspaper while repairing her reputation in the process. The other mutants whom the turtles encounter are all given comical quirks of their own that allow them to be more than just monstrous henchpeople to Mutant Mayhem’s main villain, the hilarious and low-key menacing Superfly—who’s perfectly cast, Ice Cube’s unmistakable voice bringing him to life.

The turtles’ teen spirit may drive the film, but Splinter is at the heart of it. The master martial artist has always been more of a mystical sensei to the turtles than a traditional paternal figure, but Mutant Mayhem repositions him as a concerned, overprotective single parent. Splinter is, of course, still the martial arts master to his faithful turtle students. Yet this renewed focus on the familial bond between Splinter and the turtles is the more significant and affecting emotional dynamic. Mutant Mayhem boasts a star-studded voice cast, but Chan in particular is a fantastic fit for the part because of his comedic timing and heartwarming presence. (Hearing Chan repeatedly utter the word “ooze” during a flashback is just one of the many highlights of this movie.)

As crucial as the characters and storytelling choices are to the success of the film, Mutant Mayhem’s distinct CG animation style is what binds it all together. The turtles began with a simple sketch, and the movie makes its world in the image of a living sketchbook, incorporating that teenage element into its visual language with every doodle and stray line. The approach is part of a recent trend in animation inspired by Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse that diverges from the cleaner 3D look championed by the likes of Pixar, instead favoring a return to the medium’s hand-drawn origins, with a modern twist.

Rowe made his feature-length debut as the codirector and cowriter of Netflix’s 2021 The Mitchells Vs. The Machines, which was produced by Spider-Verse’s Phil Lord and Chris Miller. The Oscar-nominated film borrowed some of the technology used in Into the Spider-Verse to establish a similar visual style while creating some new animation tools to innovate further. Mutant Mayhem pushes for a more unfinished, hand-drawn aesthetic than its predecessors as it makes some experiments of its own.

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“A few years ago, Into the Spider-Verse happened, and that showed that a movie can look like the concept artwork and can be critically and financially successful,” Rowe told Variety. “That opened a lot of doors and I think we tried to take that football and run with it on Mitchells, and then on Turtles, I tried to be even less compromising. We decided we wanted this movie to look exactly like a concept artwork, and we want the concept artwork to feel distinctly human and not computer-generated. And that means sketchy and imperfect and misshapen and reminiscent of the way you draw when you’re a child or a teenager, and your passion and enthusiasm for making art hasn’t been dimmed by formal art training.”

In a vision of New York City filled with anthropomorphic mutant animals, this informal work-in-progress style aligns with the film’s youthful, comedic tone and the emotional arc centered on the mutants’ shared desire to be accepted, faults and all, by the world. The animation particularly shines during the film’s fantastic action scenes, including a montage inspired by Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy that seamlessly stitches together several fight sequences as the turtles shut down various criminal operations to the tune of “No Diggity.” (The Blackstreet song is one of Mutant Mayhem’s many incredible needle drops that pull from New York’s ’90s hip-hop scene. I didn’t expect to hear Ol’ Dirty Bastard when I stepped into a theater full of several groups of children and their parents, but I’m deeply grateful for it.)

It’s been a dominant year for animated movies at the global box office, with three films (The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and Elemental) claiming spots among the top dozen. Mutant Mayhem may not climb as high, but on the heels of Barbenheimer, the low-cost movie is off to a solid $10 million start at the box office after its opening day was pushed up for a midweek debut. Paramount and Nickelodeon Movies are already betting big on the new creative direction of the franchise: They’re developing a sequel, along with a two-season series that will connect to the upcoming film. Mutant Mayhem is a treat in itself, but soon enough the Turtles will be back for seconds, and then some.

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