In celebration of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) movie I thought I’d do an old school review on the first one that was released in 2014.

My friends did not want to watch this movie with me as they were not into TMNT which made me question my friendships. I’m half joking, I found others who liked TMNT and I was glad. But I watched it by myself and I liked it. It was good.

I liked the way it was filmed and the progression of the story. The boys are just starting on their quest to be the heroes of New York so of course they have problems and of course Leonardo is having trouble being the leader. The struggle made sense and was nice to watch as you saw them become a team at the end of the movie. I felt like I grew with them.

I liked the cinematography as well. The way it was put together visually. It was creative and just cool! Like the fight on the mountain… to me that was so cool. I would do a Donny and nerd out at that moment.

People complained about how the turtles looked but really what did they expect? They are mutant turtles! Only a cartoon can make that look good because in real life that’s terrifying. I like that they tried to make it as realistic as possible. Because I imagine if mutant turtles existed, who were ninjas, they’d look like that. It’s only Raph who worries me. How does he fit back into his shell? All those muscles… can he scratch his nose?

I had trouble relating to his character in the movie, he was so aggressive and a muscle head but when he was in trouble that’s when I really felt for him. He has a big heart and he cares a lot but it always comes across aggressive or strong because that’s who he is. You gotta love Raphael.

Then there’s Donny, I love him! He’s smart and a bad ass and he wears purple! And he has glasses like dang Donny is still my favourite. He also fights with a bo. It took me ages to decide which turtle I would be and what weapon I would want but I finally landed on Donny, that bo life is for me.

Leonardo the leader. He takes his job so seriously, he’s like a typical older sibling. Being an older sibling ish (African I have no siblings but that didn’t stop my parents and my aunts make me look after my younger cousins) I can relate but I’m not as serious as him. In fact I feel like I’m a mixture of Donny and Mikey whilst still ruling with an iron fist. Leo goes on a journey this movie as he’s desperately trying to gain control but I think he should learn how to have fun. Or let someone help him. Being a leader doesn’t mean you have to do everything by yourself.

Mikey was great and they really captured his character. He kept hitting on April though and that was weird and a little funny as well. He’s so cute and a natural bad ass. He doesn’t try hard and he’s the true baby of the family but he holds them together I think. Michael’s the glue.

Enough gushing what about Shredder!!!

So Shedder was supposed to be Eric Sacks but he’s white and nerds raged and he was re cast late into production and was played by Tohoru Masamune. I’m glad the nerds raged because come on how many Asian roles are there in Hollywood films? How many are the main characters? And you were going to cast Shredder, a Japanese ninja, as a white guy? Can we POC have nothing? So I’m glad they raged and I’m glad he was re cast but I will say this I wish they’d re cast sooner. The story suffers because of it and you don’t really get to know or see Shredder (it’s better in the second movie with Brain Tee wooh! I love that actor too much).

The fight scene though with Splinter and Shredder… wow they killed it. It’s hard to make a fight between them look cool but they did. In fact they made Splinter look both realistic, cool and badass, whilst also being a little scary.

I don’t know I liked it. And a review of TMNT2 shall be coming soon.

Ciao!