The rebooted “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” franchise is more than another attempt to cash in on an established pop culture comic book nostalgia property. It’s a celebration and an expansion of the Michael Bay Empire.
No, Michael Bay, erstwhile Godfather of Boom, the overlord of the much-maligned “Transformers” franchise, didn’t direct “TMNT,” but he serves as producer, and his ego-stained handprints are all over the film, both from look and feel to narrative choices.
At one point Bay and director Jonathan Liebesman (who also helmed the atrocious “Battle: Los Angeles”) announced that a few changes to canon, first and not the least of which is dropping the “Teenage” and “Mutant” aspects of the film, calling them simply “Ninja Turtles,” presumably to 1) emphasize their more important character traits, and 2) to give his ADHD-addled followers a fair chance to know what movie they’re about to see, given they’d likely give up on trying to read a title as long, complex and confusing as “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”
Furthermore, Bay announced the characters’ origins would change and the turtles in some way would have their origins in outer space. He even embarked on an ersatz PR campaign, taking to his web site to defend his narrative choices, and promising that we’d all love what he was doing to our beloved Heroes in a Half Shell.
As it is, Baysian hallmarks are visible even in the trailer: the Turtles now sport slightly different looks, some featuring the group’s trademark masks covering their eyes, while others sport full Zorro-style masks that also cover their heads. Each turtle has accoutremonts that reflect their personalities: Donatello, being the “geek” of the group, now sports taped horn-rimmed glasses and an Egon Spengler-style goggle gadget; surfer-dude Michelangelo sports sunglasses and a beaded necklace. They’re superficially distinguishing, designed to help unenlightened viewers (read: casual moviegoers) tell them apart, as if the handy and iconic color-coded masks aren’t enough.
And then there’s the slick, gleaming, lens-flare action sequences that would be just as at home in a car commercial or music video, both of which Bay has dabbled in in the past, and a miscast Megan Fox as journalist/Turtle ally April O’Neil. Fox has apparently made peace with Bay, whom she compared to Hitler during press for “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” and earning herself a one-way ticket out of the third film, her right to be leered at through Bay’s enormous camera lens gifted instead to generic blonde Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
So Hollywood’s maddest action scientist has struck again, eliciting the continual cries from the fanboy community that Bay has again “raped my childhood,” doing so with perverse glee, getting his rocks off by tormenting those of us who have spent a lifetime pining for what he’s providing, just doing it far, far differently than any of us want.
