Check Out This Insane Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Concept Art

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-new-images-02Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a movie that has a lot of problems. One of the big ones, perhaps the one that fans of the franchise were the most vocal in expressing their displeasure about, is the look of the title characters. Since the release of the film, which became such a hit that Paramount Pictures almost immediately gave the green light to a sequel, various pieces of concept art have hit the wire, showing what they could have looked like. And now there’s more. We even came across some renderings of what fan favorite villains Rocksteady, Bebop, and Krang might have looked like, were they included in the film.

What you see here in these pieces by artist Jerad S. Marantz is more in line with the traditional rounded faces that the Turtles have always had in their previous incarnations. Though there are some interesting textures in play in these images, gone are the more humanoid features of the Heroes in a Half Shell that pissed off so many people

Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesGroup leader Leonardo…

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…and tech wizard Donatello look more or less the same as they do in the comics, cartoons, and earlier movies. Granted, they’re not as over-the-top as those, with a more realistic approach (as realistic as adolescent, genetically modified, martial arts practicing reptiles can be anyway), and they even have a very youthful feel to them.

Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesRaphael’s character design has a few tweaks in this collection. Most noticeable among these are those spines that are all over his head, body, and shell. I’m not sure what they were going for there.

Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesThere’s even a redesigned Master Splinter.

Where things get crazy is when we get to the characters that didn’t appear in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There’s been a lot of talk about Rocksteady and Bebop, Shredder’s two henchmen mutated into a rhino and warthog, respectively, and how they were supposed to be in the movie, but weren’t. We saw some earlier concept art for them that was definitely derived from their appearance in the animated series. In these new pieces, however, they look like straight up monsters.

Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesCheck out Rocksteady…

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…and Bebop, who looks kind of like a biker werewolf.

And then there’s Krang, a brain with a face who drives himself around in a robot body. There’s been talk that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 could venture into Dimension X, which is where this particular character originates, and whether or not this pans out, these images are pretty damn nuts.

Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesHe’s got a couple of different robots to ride around in. The first, in keeping more with his original appearance, is a human-ish body (it does have four arms, but generally looks like a metal dude), with Krang hanging out in the belly region.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The other is something out of a futuristic nightmare, like a hellish spider robot.

We don’t really know much about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, except that Dave Green will direct and that it is scheduled to open June 2 ,2016. We do, however, want some of these villains show up. If they do make an appearance, do you hope they look like this or more like their earlier selves?