Director – Jeff Rowe, Co-Director – Kyler Spears, Screenplay – Evan Goldberg, Dan Hernandez, Seth Rogen, Jeff Rowe & Benji Samit, Story – Evan Goldberg, Brendan O’Brien, Seth Rogen & Jeff Rowe, Based on the Comic Book Created by Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird, Producers – Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen & James Weaver, Head of Cinematography – Kent Seki, Music – Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Visual Effects Supervisor – Matthieu Rouxel, CGI Animation – Mikros Tecnology, Animation – Cinesite Studios (Visual Effects Supervisor – Chris Kazmier) & Wizz/Quad Group, Production Design – Yashar Kassai. Production Company – Paramount/Nickelodeon Movies/Point Grey Pictures, Ltd.
Voices
Micah Abbey (Donatello), Shamon Brown Jr. (Michelangelo), Nicholas Cantu (Leonardo), Brady Noon (Raphael), Ayo Edebiri (April O’Neil), Jackie Chan (Splinter), Ice Cube (Superfly), Maya Rudolph (Cynthia Utrom), John Cena (Rocksteady), Seth Rogen (Bebop), Rose Byrne (Leatherhead), Natasia Demetriou (Wingnut), Giancarlo Esposito (Baxter Stockman), Paul Rudd (Mondo Gecko), Austin Post (Ray Fillet), Hannibal Buress (Genghis Frog)
Plot
Cynthia Utrom, head of the TCRI corporation, sends a detachment of mercenaries to appropriate the mutant serum created by Dr Baxter Stockman. During the fight, a vial of the serum falls down through a grate and into the sewers. Fifteen years later. The spilled serum has caused four turtles, Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael, to grow up as humanoids. The serum has also mutated the rat Splinter who acts as father to the turtles. Splinter warns them of the dangers they face from humans and has trained them in the ways of martial arts from their lair in the sewers. While on a covert supply run to the surface, one of the turtles’ shurikens goes astray and hits the scooter of high school teenager April O’Neil. When a hoodlum steals the scooter, the turtles go into action to retrieve it and defeat a gang of petty criminals. The turtles choose to reveal themselves to April. April wants to become a news reporter and is eager to write a story about the turtles. They persuade her that she can instead write one about the thefts of large equipment being conducted around the city by the mysterious Superfly. All the while they keep it a secret from Splinter that they have befriended a human. They meet Superfly only to find that he is a mutant fly and commands a legion of other mutated animals. Their happiness at finding others like themselves dims when Superfly reveals his plot to build a device that will mutate all animals and have them rise up against humans. As Superfly launches his plans, transforming himself into a giant-sized fly, the turtles must come out of hiding to save the city.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were one of THE essential pop culture icons of the late 1980s/early 90s. They first appeared in 1984 as a self-published comic-book created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. This proved successful and in short time the Turtles were spun off as a toy line and then an animated tv series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987-96), which lasted for ten seasons of 193 half-hour episodes. It was at this point that the Turtles phenomenon exploded. To follow were three live-action films beginning with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) and all manner of marketing tie-ins, including a live concert tour. The Turtles phenomenon died off by the mid-1990s but there have been numerous reboots and reiterations since then. (See below for the other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films and tv series).
The rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are currently held by the Nickelodeon channel, which produces television and a good deal of animation for children. Nickelodeon were the ones behind the animated tv series revival Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2018-20). I am not a fan of this series, nor its previous film incarnation Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie (2022), which reincarnated the Turtles in a hip, ADD-crazed style drawn in ugly block-like shapes. Mutant Mayhem is a new production from Nickelodeon. It seems to be independent of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, although retains changes that were introduced in that series such as rewriting April O’Neil as a nerdy bespectacled African-American teenager.
The new production comes from Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and their Point Grey production company. The Canadian-born Rogen first appeared on the short-lived tv series Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000) followed by the breakout hit with the Judd Apatow film Knocked Up (2007). Rogen and Goldberg, his writing partner and friend since high school, were able to bounce off his fame and wrote their own scripts for Superbad (2007), Pineapple Express (2008), the disastrous The Green Hornet (2011) and began directing with the hilarious Biblical Apocalypse comedy This is The End (2013) and The Interview (2014). They previously wrote/produced of the outrageously entertaining animated Sausage Party (2016). The two have also produced the comic-book adapted tv series Preacher (2016-9), the time travel comedy Future Man (2017-20), the superhero series The Boys (2019- ) and the horror film Cobweb (2023). In the director’s chair is Jeff Rowe, who was co-director on The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021).
Sitting down to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, my immediate point of comparison was to Sony’s animated Spider-Verse films Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023). Both are quite different works but have similarities in that they approach comic-book superheroes in a way that determines to shake up standard animation and make the screen artistically alive. Mutant Mayhem is CGI animated, where the screen is made to resemble a combination of oil colours and pastel sketches. In the midst of this, the turtles come out looking like they are plasticine animation figures. It creates a wonderfully vibrant and alive animated frame.
(l to r) April O’Neill with the Turtles – Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo
I had some initial scepticism upon sitting down to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, as it felt like the film was still dependent on the Nickelodeon tv series. The Turtles have a better, more traditional design that the big blocky shapes they were in that series. That said, there are still some oddities – Donatello gets a pair of big square nerd glasses, while Michelangelo is made into the runt of the group and drawn as though he were not so much a teenager than a child. Splinter is rewritten less like the wisely sensei he usually is than a paranoid and over-protective figure whom all of the Turtles happily refer to as ‘Dad’, although the casting of Jackie Chan as his voice is a stroke of genius.
Despite misgivings, Mutant Mayhem began to grow on me. Rogen, Goldberg and their writing team have created a Turtles origin story. It is one that smartly winds together not only the ooze, Baxter Stockman and the creation of the turtles but also creates an origin story for both Splinter and April as well, the first of which has appeared in the films. While April is still the teenager in high school a la the Nickelodeon version, Rogen and co both manage to have their cake and eat and show her transitioning into a Channel 9 reporter. By the end, it all works quite satisfyingly.
Some of Seth Rogen’s characteristic cheerfully vulgar humour does show through – it is worth remembering that Rogen and Goldberg’s previous venture into animation was represented by the hilariously vulgar Sausage Party – with an ongoing gag throughout about milking the turtles and their lack of nipples, or even April’s venture into the sewers observing turds floating past. Not to mention the incongruity of an animated Turtles films made by the kids channel Nickelodeon coming with a score from the king of industrial angst Trent Reznor, the creative force behind Nine Inch Nails.
