The Aesthetics of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem

A review of the most recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle film's 4K disc release.

You can see the use of browns and shadow in this still from TMNT: Mutant Mayhem

The aesthetic choice I disagree most with in Zack Snyder's Watchmen movie (all versions) is the distinction between coloration and lighting. For example: in the comic, when you see a back alley look orange, it's because artist Dave Gibbons is implying that the lighting makes it orange, whereas Snyder might have it actually be painted orange onscreen. Granted, there's a reason for this: Snyder is trying to adapt the film to comment on previous comic-book movies, rather than prior comics, and those include the likes of Dick Tracy and Batman and Robin, which did have gaudily colored sets. It makes the sets feel more like sets, while a reader of the comic may suspend disbelief more easily and envision a real city, lit like one.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem lights its city in browns, reds, oranges, and all the off-shades of a city at night with aging lightbulbs and splashes of neon. It's the first animated movie for kids I can think of that learned anything from Michael Mann's Collateral, a film I doubt anybody else will compare it to. The TMNT may have bright green skin and brightly hued bandanas, but Mutant Mayhem seldom lights them brightly enough to really make them pop that way. Instead, like the rest of us in a city at night, they're browned out.

This is even more impressive in a movie where everything looks like a layer of teenage daydream drawing over top of CG models. The artwork style is in some ways deliberately “outsider” – asymmetrical, non-proportionate, and coloring outside the lines – but the lighting is that of a professional cinematographer. It doesn't look like an Eastman and Laird comic book – it looks more inspired by the work of Lynda Barry and other alt-weekly cartoonists (from when that was a thing), Duckman's Everett Peck, or the Klasky-Csupo team.

4K home editions don't often add much to animation, but in this one, where the 3D world is defined by its shadows, hazes, and diffusions, it's essential. From the over-bright neon fixtures of a run-down high school to the low-exposure red of an old-school dark room, Mutant Mayhem cares not just about the look of its world and the characters, but the specific looks of scenes. Its approach feels inspired by the Spider-Verse movies, but it does its own thing

The TMNT have proved a remarkably resilient concept over the years, changing very little from incarnation to incarnation as a quartet of specialized-skill martial arts fighters raised in the sewer by a large rat and befriended by a female reporter.¹ The latter changes the most in this one, as April (Ayo Edibiri) is now a high school student with a fear of being on camera. Normally she's the sensible grownup, but this time, she's more of an equal, and all credit is due to the movie for making her the opposite of a Megan Fox type while still going out of its way to describe her as beautiful. Movies have been slow to recognize that all types of people are attracted to all types of people, but if a superhero movie can get the message, we're getting somewhere. There's some dispute over whether the original cartoon whitewashed April; it certainly did Baxter Stockman, the mad scientist, voiced here by Giancarlo Esposito.

The early TMNT issues had no clear character design for April O’Neil. Her cultural representation varied wildly between issues as you can see from these images from TMNT #3 and 4.

Though “teenage” has always been part of the title, the turtle boys are usually portrayed at the older end of that spectrum; soldiers in a war against the ninja Foot Clan who've been hardened by battle, though they can still crack wise. Here we see them, before they've ever even laid a finger on anyone other than themselves. They're young, they use up-to-date slang, they rag on each other, and ultimately have to learn how to fight together. April is usually the audience surrogate and entry point into their weird world – here, they are, and they discover the larger weird aspects of their reality at the same time April does. Splinter (Jackie Chan) is now just a New York rat who learned martial arts from videos, which makes his Hong Kong accent completely unsourced and bizarre, though by giving a nuanced vocal performance, Jackie Chan will silence doubters who write him off as just a stunt guy.

Ice Cube voices villain Superfly, loosely based on the Playmates Baxter Stockman action figure – in this continuity, Stockman creates a mutant fly rather than becoming one -- and even drops an NWA reference, which makes me feel the way my parents must have felt seeing Richard Pryor in The Muppet Movie². A gaggle of other mutants recognizable to toy collectors and voiced mostly by famous comedians deliver backup, forcing the Turtles to make some decisions about family rather than doing obligatory ninja fights with Shredder. (Honestly, Shredder's a cool villain but way overplayed – there are others that exist.)

Director Jeff Rowe (The Mitchells vs. the Machines) doesn't just make the lighting extra-cinematic, but some of the action beats, too – there's a great sequence of cross-cutting between various attempts by the Turtles to shake down the local mobsters, using single-take action shots with matched cuts and slo-mo where appropriate. Splinter's big action scene is filmed like an actual Jackie Chan spotfest. Smoke effects are amusingly enhanced by pseudo hand-drawn squiggles.

If there's one minor nitpick, it's that the movie doesn't always trust the viewer to get its message moments. There's a scene where Splinter suddenly realizes he's more like Superfly, as a detrimental father figure, than he imagined, and as he stares in slow-motion, we see it register. So of course Superfly has to literally explain the point, unironically, about how they're the same, so Splinter can specifically also say out loud what he's learned and how he's different. It feels like the tacked on messages at the end of G.I. Joe and He-Man cartoons³, intended to prove to parents that the shows weren't solely toy commercials. I suspect parents and corporate executives are the target audience for that Splinter-Superfly scene and a couple of others, inserted to “prove” this isn't just an action movie full of fighting. Teens will get it immediately, and probably find the posturing lame.

Considering how long animated features take to get made, the odds of a sequel happening while the leads are still teens may not be high, and the tease of Shredder inherently makes part 2 less exciting. Rat King, where art thou? That said, I'd love to spend more time in this world, and see the turtle teens in human high school, a new (at least to me) setting for them to go.

The 4K doesn't feature nearly enough extras: a couple of drawing tutorials, and two very brief featurettes. It cries out for a commentary, though perhaps Paramount feared the creators, including producer Seth Rogen, wouldn't be able to keep things entirely kid safe. With this and Preacher, Rogen is rapidly proving he's the type of guy who'll do right by comic book IP. Fans may not like every change, but these characters have been around so long that total carbon copies just don't cut it any more. The joy, the action, and the wacky mutations are all here, intact, and while I really don't care to think too hard about Splinter romancing Scumbug, today's teens do like their shipping, so I'm reliably told.

(Editor’s Note — If you’re a fan of TMNT and a D&D player, you might want to check out our old article on Ninja Turtles as a Character Class for B/X and Old School Essentials.)

1. Editor’s Note — Frank Miller’s run on Daredevil has provided a remarkably solid and serious foundation for what could have been a silly one off. The connections between Splinter/Stick, The Foot/The Hand, Casey Jones/The Punisher, provided rich loam for creativity.

2. Editor’s Note — I felt this way when Ice Cube remade Mr. Blandings Builds His Dreamhouse in Are We Done Yet? But it worked there and I watch that film with relative frequency.

3. And now you know, and knowing is half the battle. The other half is red and blue lasers.