Since the beginning, I haven't had much confidence that this movie will turn out to be good. This trailer seems to confirm a lot of what I've feared. Here are some of my main issues/concerns.
The Focus:
When I heard that Michael Bay was producing this movie, one of my biggest worries was that the movie would be Transformer-ized in the sense that the human characters like April would be the focus and the turtles would be subjugated into a smaller role where they're basically just there to look cool. I don't think they'd do it to the degree that they did with Transformers, but this trailer hasn't really alleviated the fear that the turtles themselves won't be written very well.
So far it seems like April is the one we're supposed to be identifying with, which makes me wonder if the turtles themselves will be explored in any sort of interesting way. The trailer presents this story from the angle of April encountering the turtles. Of course, it is just a teaser so it could just be a creative choice for this debut presentation. However, if it reflects the angle of that they're going at for the story as a whole, it's going to be a big letdown.
I feel like the people in charge are often skeptical about the audience being able to connect to non-human characters like robots, aliens, and mutants. The way I see it, if you write characters like the Autobots or the TMNT to feel like humans through their struggles and emotions, audiences will relate to them. To me, the turtles have never been difficult characters to connect with because they feel about as human as most fictional characters in action and adventure stories. My hope is that this movie will explore what is human and relatable about these characters.
The Look:
I don't like the design of the turtles. I'm not an artist so I can't really go that in depth about character design, but I've got three main issues.
First, the lips look weird. I don't believe they've ever had human-like lips until now, and it seems like it was for a good reason.
Second, I think they've done a bit too much with the outfits. It seems like they're going for this idea that the turtles have each cobbled together outfits that reflect their personalities and identities. It's not a bad idea, but I think it's a bit overdone here. Something more subtle might have worked better. Since they're essentially humanoid animals, they don't really need to be wearing much to look complete. Their shells kind of act like clothes and with minimal ninja gear, they have a very complete look.
Finally, in my opinion the turtles are too physically imposing. From what we can see here, they look rather large. They're traditionally shorter than April and that stature kind of suits the youthful nature of the characters and the agile nature of their fighting.
The Scope/Atmosphere:
From the beginning of this trailer, we're told that the city is being destroyed and we see the top of a skyscraper falling off. To me, it seems like the scale and the tone of the conflict in this thing are way off. The turtles fight the foot clan and street gangs like the purple dragons. The majority of the time, it's not really the kind of loud, destruction filled conflict that you get when someone like Spider-man is fighting a super villain. These are mostly hand to hand fights with simple, old fashioned weapons. It's the kind of scrappy fight that a guy like Casey Jones who just has some hockey sticks and baseball bats can jump into and hold his own.
When I saw the scene with the turtles sliding down a snowy mountainside and catapulting into what appeared to be a military vehicle, I was reminded of the G.I. Joe movies which are supposed to be those kind of high level crazy missions. That's not what the turtles are. The climax of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was them facing off against Shredder on a rooftop. And that was perfect! It was simple, it was personal, and it was grounded in the city setting where they most belong.
Bottom line, I realize this is only one trailer and I'm not saying it'll definitely be awful, but right now I'm not very optimistic about this movie. Hopefully the next trailer will address some of my concern and the movie will prove me wrong.
Thanks for reading. Please check out the video version of this article here.