Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the on again, off again live-action reboot of the popular action franchise that spanned comic books, movies, TV series, action figures and video games in the late 1980s through the 1990s, has finally premiered its first trailer. Don’t get your hopes up: it’s just a teaser, opening with The Shredder (William Fichtner) speaking in dramatic platitudes about crime rates and saving his city, claiming to have created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with April O’Neil’s father, and then culminating with a little action and amusing dialogue starring the Turtles themselves.
Wait… what was that middle part? The Shredder made The Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles to save New York City from crime, and he did with April O’Neil’s father? That’s a new wrinkle. What the hell are they talking about? And why do we care so much about the plot of a film based on a parody of Frank Miller comics that took on a bizarre life of its own and eventually found teenaged reptiles fighting brain alien from Dimension X?
Because we grew up on The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that’s why, and although the franchise never went away, the heyday of the series – particularly the original animated series and the first, surprisingly decent live-action movie – remains a part of our pop culture consciousness. Which is why, although younger audiences may wind up being dazzled by the Michael Bay-produced, Jonathan Liebesman-directed, Megan Fox-starring version of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, some of us are probably always going to grimace at the new storyline, and sneer at the new CGI interpretations of these characters. Or at least be a little weirded out.
But… it’s just a teaser. A minute and thirty seconds of a feature length film, setting up the basic premise and promising some large scale action sequences that we’ve never seen before with these characters on the big screen. We’ll reserve our judgment for when the film film comes out on August 8, 2014, but for now.. what do you think?
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
