Here Is Everything Wrong With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

You had to know that this was coming. The Jonathan Liebesman-directed, Michael Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a big hit, finishing 2014 as the 14th highest grossing movie domestically, and raking in more than $477 million worldwide. It was such an instant triumph that Paramount greenlit a sequel damn near the moment the film opened. But despite how successful it was, it got shit on all over the place by critics and many fans, and so of course you had to expect Cinema Sins to give the film one of their patented “Everything Wrong With…” videos, and this is an extensive one.

There are, admittedly, a lot of problems with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, ranging from those weird humanoid faces to the fact that it’s more about Megan Fox’s April O’Neil than the actual title characters (out of all the issues, this is my biggest gripe). But damn, this video is almost 23 minutes long, which is a bit excessive for a movie that is only runs 101 minutes in total.

If you’re familiar with these videos, you know precisely what you’re walking into. Some of these are legitimate complaints, like how you bought a ticket to see ass kicking turtles, not Megan Fox; how the story is full to bursting with convenient coincidences, like the Turtles were April’s pets, and her dead dad’s former partner is the villain; and things like continuity flaws. But for every genuine flaw, they have to toss in things like the Paramount and Nickelodeon logos being “sins,” or the fact that it is set in New York City is somehow a problem. Things like these are attempts to be funny that are super hit and miss, and more than anything, they just make this video overly long. Unless you’re like a super hater of this movie, you don’t need to sit through all 23 minutes.

You do, however, have to love the fact that the mustard-and-parmesan sandwich Arrested Development reference earns them points and taking off two sins.

Like it or not, there more of this in store, as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 already has a release scheduled for June 3, 2016. Directed by Dave Green (Earth to Echo) instead of Liebesman, hopefully the sequel will tone down that annoying swooping camera shtick that is everywhere in the first film and focus on the Turtles rather than April. Despite their look, they actually get the tone and feel of the Heroes in a Half Shell right, they’re just not in the movie very much. And we might see Rocksteady, Bebop, and Krang in the follow up, so there’s that to look forward to.