Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

I grew up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon show; yes I’m one of those dudes who can sing the opening credits song by heart. The cartoon show was silly to the max, but my preteen heart loved it. I think we all love silly things when we are kids and the turtles cartoon show was one of the many silly things I loved. Later, I discovered the original Turtle comics done by Eastman and Laird, the original turtle creators. Now those were cool comics! Action packed sci-fi fantasy with awesome artwork, in these comics, which were the seed of what we now know as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, we were presented with a decidedly less silly (though no less fun) version of the turtles. The turtles in these Eastman and Lair comics were the true turtles. Sometimes I wish the movies would embrace that sci-fi fantasy side of the comic book a little more, but alas, the films still haven’t gotten entirely there yet. In those comics the turtles would travel to other dimensions, drive flying cars, you name it. Eastman and Lairs comics where really out there. 

I remember back in 1990, when they announced that a live action turtles film would start production, the first question that popped in my head was how they hell are they going to pull that off? The idea of talking mutant turtles seemed impossible to translate to live action in my mind. Remember, this was way back in 1990 when movies had little to no computer animation, so my doubts were valid. But surely enough they pulled it off. I remember that first time I saw the turtles on the cover of Comic Scene magazine…I was flabbergasted! They actually pulled it off! They brought the turtles to freaking life! Jim Henson and his creature shop worked their magic, and suddenly there before me, on the cover of this magazine were the four turtles, looking more alive than life itself. It was magic. And that first film still holds a magic to it for me. It’s a simple film, it only cost 10 million to make (can you believe it?) and it had this charm to it. The turtles had charisma, they had personalities. They felt real, tangible. They were there. How do these new Turtles compare to the old ones?

Well, for starters, these new turtles are entirely computer generated images, so not an ounce of what you see on screen is real, which sucks for me because to be honest, what I liked about the originals was that they looked “real”. But whatever, there’s no stopping computer generated images, they’ve completely taken over films, so I’m not gonna fight it anymore. The way they are making movies now is entire sequences are computer generated, and this new TMNT movie is the best example of that, there’s entire sequences that are computer generated! I mean, literally, entire scenes that go on and on and on without a single tangible thing on screen, it’s crazy. It doesn’t stop shocking me how much this happens in todays cinema. In my opinion computer generated images are taking away something from the art of filmmaking which used to be all about shooting something with a freaking camera. Now a huge chunk of a film is never filmed, which is a contradiction if you ask me! But when it’s well made it works, and on this film for the most part the computer animation is pretty spot on and good. So once you get past the idea that you’re not seeing actors playing the turtles, but instead computer generated images, well, I kinda got used to it. My main preoccupation was that they wouldn’t be able to transmit the turtle’s personalities and that we’d end up with a bunch of generic characters ala the Transformers films. Well, I’m happy to inform they did. Still, I felt I got more personality from the portrayal of the characters in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990).

I guess the big difference between the 90’s film and this one is the budget. The filmmakers behind this new turtle’s film had many more millions at their disposal, and it shows. By comparison, the first film is a small film, yet what made the 90’s film work so well was the chemistry between the turtles themselves and the story, which was about brotherly love, respect…the first film wins in this respect. It has more warmth, more depth, more character. This new one is all about the action and the effects, sure we get some back story, but it’s missing the heart. It failed to connect with me in that way that the first one did. I mean, how about that scene in the original in which the four brothers are mourning Splinter and suddenly his spirit appears in front of them in the camp fire? The four turtles cry and laugh together knowing their master is alive…it’s such an awesome scene with so much heart. Where is the equivalent of that on this new film? There is one scene where the turtles are about to die and Raphael goes on an emotional burst and tells his turtle brothers how much he’s always loved them, but that’s about it. We needed more heart on this new film. And for that, you need a script that goes for the heart, so I guess we could blame the script for not having that warmth that the first film had in spades. It’s why you end up liking the turtles, because they love each other in spite of their differences.    

There’s a scene on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) in which the turtles are all in an elevator and suddenly begin to make music with their ninja weapons which was pretty cool; it reminded me of the silliness you’d find in the old Turtle movies, and in my opinion this new one needed more of that as well, it needed that goofing around from the old movies. In the old movies it seemed like the turtles never stopped goofing around, on this new one the goofiness is slightly muted. Something else I didn’t really like about the new one is the look of the foot clan. On the comics and the cartoons, the foot clan always looked like ninjas…on this new movie they simply look like soldiers with machine guns? Where’s the freaking ninjas? Ninjas were an essential part of the Turtles formula! Hello we’re talking about NINJA turtles? Why take away their ninja enemies? That was a big drawback in my opinion. Instead we get  soldiers with these weird masks…this was not the foot clan I grew up with; shame on whoever made that terrible choice. I wanted ninjas in purple and black suits, but alas, somebody decided to give them an upgrade and we get these crappy looking soldiers. Ugh. And where the hell is Casey Jones? I want my Casey Jones! He was an essential part of the Turtles! They better include him in the inevitable sequel or I’m calling the geek police.

In terms of story, I did like a few things, but despised others. For example, I thought it was very cool how they managed to mix April O’Neil into the turtles past. That was a golden move, now she’s not just a curious reporter; she was actually involved in the birth of the turtles and in their ultimate salvation. In the old ones she was just this nosy reporter who befriended the turtles. So that was cool. There’s these flashback sequences that were extremely similar to the flash black sequence in the 90’s film, where we see just how the turtles grew into who they are now, we get to see how Splinter helps them grow and become ninjas, teaching them the ways of Kung Fu. Unfortunately the whole plot about the big bad corporation trying to contaminate the city with a contagious toxin, just so they could sell them the antivirus and make gazillions felt old hat and warn; all too similar to the plot for The Amazing Spiderman (2012). Actually it’s almost exactly the same exact plot device! Even the whole ending of the film takes place on a rooftop trying to stop the virus from spreading, just like in The Amazing Spiderman (2012), hell,  on both films everything ends with a huge antenna falling down towards an unsuspecting crowd of New Yorkers! So don’t expect much in the way of originality because if you’ve seen the Amazing Spiderman, then you’ll feel like déjà vu with this new Turtles film in terms of story.

But overall, it’s an entertaining film. It’s got action, it’s got comedy, Splinter is a bit more kick ass and stern then the mellow guru one from the other films. Shredder is this giant cyber samurai…but I felt they didn’t flesh out Shredder enough. Again we fall into the classic modern filmmaking technique of not giving us a memorable villain. Sure he looks cool with all those blades and the shiny metal suit, but where’s the fire? Where’s the insanity? Nowhere to be seen, instead, Shredder feels more like a tool on this one, again, like in so many modern films (like for example the new Robocop) they take away the mad villain and replace him with a villainous corporate suit; which is so blah, so less fun. So, final words this is a satisfying Turtles film, I just wished more of it had actually been filmed. I prefer the puppet wizardry from the originals; I’m old school that way I guess. Still, it’s not a bad turtles movie, it entertains and it has exciting action sequences. It just needed a few things: the real foot clan ninjas, Casey Jones and some tangibility to it. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) Rating: 3 out of 5

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) Rating: 4 out of 5

The Last Stand (2013)

Title: The Last Stand (2012)

Director: Jee-Woon Kim

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Forest Whitaker, Johnny Knoxville, Peter Stormare, Luis Guzman, Jamie Alexander

Review:

Read an article the other day on Deadline that said that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s come back vehicle The Last Stand was dead upon arrival, that it’s officially a huge flop and that “nobody wants to see Arnold anymore”. Speak for yourself is all I say, I want to see Arnold again alright, and I want to see him kicking ass like he used to, so of course I went to see The Last Stand in its opening weekend. But of course, this is the day and age when the success of a film is determined by it’s opening weekend grosses and sadly, according to box office numbers, The Last Stand only made an abysmal 6.3 million on its opening weekend…which of course immediately marks this one as a turkey in the eyes of its producers and the film industry in general; especially when its budget was 30 million. But is the slow turn out for this movie representative of its quality? Is The Last Stand a shitty come back film for Arnold? Read on my friends, read on.

In The Last Stand, Arnold plays an aging sheriff who was part of the L.A.P.D. during his younger days,  but has moved to the quiet little town of Summerton to live a simpler life; to live his last days in peace. But of course, there’s no rest for the wicked and so a big time Mexican drug dealer has just escaped the grasp of the F.B.I. and is looking to make his way to the frontier, so he can make the quintessential getaway to Mexican territory. In order to do so, he’s acquired a modified Corvette ZR-1, ensuring in this way that his getaway is a speedy one. Too bad for him that in order to crossover to Mexico, he has to go through the town of Sommerton and Sommerton is Arnold’s town, you do the math.

So that’s your basic premise for this very basic movie. I think that the reason why this film isn’t making huge bank is not because “nobody wants to see Arnold anymore” because I think in the public’s eye, and in movie fans eyes Arnold is as cool as he’s always been; people do want to see more of Arnold. They just want to see him in a better movie thats all. A problem the film suffers from is that it's  premise is far too simple, one look at the trailer and you know exactly how everything is going to go down. There’s nothing remotely novel about the film, and that’s always a dangerous deal. Well, the big draw is of course seeing Arnold being an action star again and making fun of himself, but that’s not enough, you have to pull people in with some sort of entertaining or cool concept, otherwise audiences will wait for the dvd, which is what will probably happen to this here film. It seems to me that for Arnold’s big cinematic comeback, we needed something a little more bombastic then Arnold fighting off a small group of goons, in a small town. If you know anything about Arnold Schwarzenegger then you know that ‘small’ just doesn’t fit into his vocabulary. Arnold has always been about bigger and badder things. This story just seemed too small, to laid back for what you’d expect from Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But the question remains: was this a bad movie? Hell no. Truth be told The Last Stand is actually a fun romp, an entertaining flick that’s decidedly smaller in scope, but not any less entertaining because of it. Hey, at least this isn’t another Collateral Damage (2002), Arnold’s lowest point in my opinion. The Last Stand actually has a couple of good things going for it, first off, there’s the joy of seeing Arnold back on the silver screen in his first solo role since Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). The only difference here being that Arnold is no longer the indestructible action hero he once was. On this one he shows signs of vulnerability and old age, which he wisely makes fun off. On this one he’s the Sheriff who just wants to enjoy his day off. Of course it’s cool to see Arnold raising his gun, pointing it straight at the camera, shooting some bad guys and saying things like “Welcome to Sommerton!”. Movie buffs who have seen Arnold on screen since his Predator (1987) or Commando (1985) days are gonna get a special kick out of that, I know I did! Then we got the supporting cast which was fun to watch, Luis Guzman in my opinion was one of the funniest and most entertaining things about the film, he really livens up the movie with his comedy. Johnny Knoxville plays the resident coo-coo, but he does it well. Not so sure he deserved top billing on this film though, his role is minimal. 

Then we have the other star of the film, the cool as hell Corvette ZR1 which instantly goes down on my Memorable Movie Cars list, this is one of those cars that becomes an essential part of the film. It has its moments, for example, there’s a car chase that takes place right smack in the middle of a corn field, pretty cool sequence. We also get a cool shoot out at the end of the film, if you wanna see Arnold shoot some big guns, you shouldn’t be disappointed; and yet another cool extra is seeing Arnold go on a ‘mano a mano’ with the main villain of the film. It’s interesting seeing an aging action star doing his best to show us that he’s still got it even though he is well into his 60’s, like Conan the King wanting to have a good fight before going to the heavens with the gods in Valhalla. My final word on The Last Stand is that it should’ve been a bigger film, Arnold should have chosen something more explosive for his big come back, it’s too small in scale to call any attention upon itself. At least Arnold’s still got two more films to prove his still got some box office draw. There’s The Tomb (2013) which he’ll co-star with Sylvester Stallone and finally Ten (2014) which I’m looking forward to because it’s directed by David Ayer, the writer/director behind such awesome films as Training Day (2001) and Harsh Times (2005). Let’s just hope that these two films make more money than The Last Stand did or there’s little chance we’ll see that proposed Legend of Conan film we keep hearing so much about, now there’s an idea for a comeback!

Rating: 3 ½ out of 5