Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Review

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had many iterations over their four decades of existence. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have put their own spin on the property with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.

15 years ago a vial of ooze falls into the sewers after the TCRI raided Baxter Stockman’s (Giancarlo Esposito) secret laboratory. That vial leads to the creation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles who live in the sewers with their adoptive rat father, Splinter (Jackie Chan). The Turtles want to interact with humans, but they are warned by Splinter that humans will reject them. When The Turtles have a chance encounter with aspiring journalist April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri) the quadrate of brothers become crime fighters and attempt to bring down the crime lord Superfly (Ice Cube).

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been a franchise that has been re-interpreted many times. This happened in their early days since it started as an underground comic as a violent parody of Frank Miller’s work on Daredevil, whilst the cartoon adaptation in the1980s was targeted to a younger audience and became a pop culture phenomenon. Different generations have had their own version of The Turtles through the various TV and film adaptations and new versions can have their own interpretation of the property.

Mutant Mayhem aimed to be a new reinterpretation of The Turtles whilst having a few nods to the franchise’s past for older fans. Mutant Mayhem acted as an origins story, showing how the Turtles got into crime fighting. Most TMNT media show The Turtles were already fighting crime in some form. In Mutant Mayhem the Turtles learned ninjutsu as a form of self-defence and they use their ninja skills to raid shops and see movies. They get into crime fighting to help one person and end up having to take on a mutant crime lord and an evil corporation.

Mutant Mayhem was more of a traditional superhero story like Superman, Spider-Man, Batman Begins, and Iron Man where a hero uses their abilities to fight crime and ends up facing a greater threat. This template worked for the Ninja Turtles since it combined ground-level crime fighting, the underground world of mutants, and a powerful corporate entity that has an army of mercenaries. If the film had inter-dimensional travel and an alien invasion it would have had every aspect of TMNT lore. Mutant Mayhem had a sense of escalation since The Turtles start with fighting low level to having to defend New York City from destruction.

Mutant Mayhem was a film that had a lot going on. The Turtles were taking on two villainous factions who had their own agendas. One wanted to harvest Turtles’ blood to make super soldiers, the other wanted to commit mass genocide. Added to this were the character arcs. The Turtles longed to be accepted by society, go to high school, and do normal teenage things. Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu) was given the most attention since he had to step up and become a leader and he developed a crush on April. April also had an arc since she had to overcome her camera shyness if she wanted to fulfill her dream of becoming a journalist.

Splinter was given a standard arc where he needed to stop being so overprotective of his son and let them have some independence. Superfly was made out to be a dark mirror to Splinter since he was also protective of his children and hated humans. Superfly was willing to take extreme action to protect his fellow mutants. He acted like Magneto from Marvel Comics.

In previous adaptations of TMNT, The Turtles were portrayed by adults, and they acted more like adults. Mutant Mayhem marked the first time The Turtles were accurately played by teenagers, and they acted like teenagers. They messed around and did stupid things. It helped make their characters feel a little more real and relatable. Leo’s interests in April were romantic, instead of being based on homages, like Mickey’s passes towards April in the 1990 and 2014 films. The core of any TMNT media is the relationship between the brothers and this helped give Mutant Madness a lot of its heart. 

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was clearly an influence on Mutant Madness. The Spider-Verse films showed animated superhero films can be box-office gold and animated films could stray from the Pixar/Dreamworks look. The look of The Turtles was influenced by Claymation, especially looking at The Turtles’ faces. The rest of the animations was wonderfully unique. The art design was made to look like something like an older child would have drawn. It was particularly notable with the colouring in the film because it looked like it was done with pens, colouring pencils, and felt tip pens. It’s great to see animated films from Holly being more willing to experiment with their animation and it could inspire children to make their own drawings. This art style also worked in favour of the film’s action sequences which were fast, fluid, and offered a great variety.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem was a delightful film that was made with love and respect for the source material whilst being willing to twist certain aspects of the lore.