I loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a kid. You did too, if you’re my age. There was that period, mid 80s to 1991 (Eastman and Laird to Secret of the Ooze) when the TMNT juggernaut was simply inescapable.

My brother and I spent days drawing the Turtles from the comics. Which were dark and far beyond me at that age but I loved them anyway. The original animated show, the arcade games. And the toys. My god were there toys. And Halloween costumes. All this rings my nostalgia bell loudly and my fondness for TMNT remains. I’ve even cast myself in the appropriate role for the Turtle-verse:

If I was a TMNT character I’d be the human-like body suit that houses Krang in my belly.

— Christopher ZF (@christopherzf) February 27, 2025

Here’s the thing I loved most about the Turtles. They’re weird. Like, really really weird. That’s the TMNT appeal. At the end of the day, we’ve got four adolescent human-turtle hybrid mutants living in the sewer who’ve been trained by a rat in ninjitsu to fight Shredder, and Krang and all the weird ass-nonsense that comes with being a mutant turtle.

The crazy is what makes TMNT work.

Which is all to say that the first trailer for the new Michael Bay produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been released, and it’s hyper-realized style misses all the fun of the bonkers-ass-crazy TMNT. The original Eastman and Laird comics were dark and violent and perhaps that’s what the director (Jonathon Liebesman, Wrath of the Titans, Battle Los Angeles) thinks he’s hitting in how the film’s been conceived.

But all there is to see in this trailer is the generic Michael Bay platform of redundant camera sweeps and hard cuts and interchangeable parts. Remove Transformers. Remove Shia LaBeouf. Leave Megan Fox. Add Ninja Turtles. And we’re done.

The old movies worked (well, the first two) precisely because they didn’t try too hard to make sense of how the real world interacted with the Turtles. They inhabited the world and they had an origin story involving some goop and science, but mostly they just cracked jokes and ate pizza and battled the Foot. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop knew how to walk that balance.

But this? These CG-steroid Turtles aren’t pleasing to look at (io9 disagrees). I thought the original released images we saw were weak, and this trailer just confirms that. Trying to make the Turtles actually work in the actual world just leaves you with some dumb looking creatures.

At least they’re not aliens anymore, right Mr. Bay?

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