I saw the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with my cousin's daughter, and it was... okay. I think we were reaching the age of awareness (e.g. four to six) right at the tail end of its popularity, so we didn't get the full blast of it if we were born about five years earlier. In its stead there were shows like Animaniacs, Batman: The Animated Series or Disney Afternoon. But considering it was still running until '96, we still could experience it in some way. Harlan had boxes of tapes he'd recorded the episodes onto, and we loved watching the '90 and '91 movies together. He also had some of the comics, which were very different from the animated series, but I wasn't really literate at that point.

And if you're a fan of the original, you're going to be disappointed. Let's start out with my most subjective complaint: When I think of the 80s, I think Michael Jackson, 8-bit systems, Reagan, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Unlike Batman or Superman, which continued way after their creation dates, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ended with the 80s. Yeah, they continued on in other forms and would have a resurgence of popularity, but it wasn't the same craze as back then. So the upgraded version is just... jarring. We're living in a post-Giuliani and Bloomberg world. The city's cleaned up. I see the Foot running around with semi-automatic machine guns and wondering how the fuck they can pull that off when the police would just storm in with their Department of Homeland Security-bought goodies and kill them all. Back in the '80s this seemed more plausible with urban decay, high crime rates, and the inability of the city to keep control of the situation. The Turtles were the heroes who stepped in where the government couldn't. Now New York is happy and tourist-friendly, and quite frankly I don't think grimy enough for the Turtles.

But that's just me whining nostalgically. Where you can actually complain is on two points: The first is they should've changed the name of the movie from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to April O'Neil. Most of the focus was her journey through writing an article about the Foot, finding out the truth about her father's death, and how she's somehow directly involved with the birth of the Turtles. Fuck that. If I wanted to look at some hot chick's adventures I could've gone to any other movie. Here I want to see giant turtles kicking ass. I'm not saying the original movies didn't have their own tangents — I remember Danny and his problems with his father in the first — but they were always subordinate to the Turtles. I think you can make the case here she had more screen time than they did.

The second is who the fuck is Eric Sacks, the main antagonist? What the fuck happened to Shredder? He became Sacks' strongman, like some voiceless bodyguard. Yeah, there were cool scenes of him fighting, but he and the Foot became almost a faceless entity whereas Sacks stole all the intriguing scenes. Why was he even necessary? Shredder by himself is awesome and doesn't need any help. He didn't need to stand on equal grounds with some pussy scientist. In the second movie in fact he fucking kidnapped one, tied him up, and forced him to do his bidding. That's the Shredder I expect.

And the plot didn't make any goddamned sense either. Sacks created a poison to sic on New York City, but for some reason the cure was destroyed in a fire and he was too stupid to figure out how to recreate it. He finds out the turtles he was experimenting on are alive as these terrifyingly huge ninja fighters, so he captures them and wants to drain them of their blood for the cure. Then he'll unleash the poison onto the city and conveniently have the remedy ready, get paid by the government, and be filthy rich. ...And for some reason the Foot will gain control of New York like this? I don't know, the Foot seemed insignificant in this situation. My favorite part is they start releasing the poison before they even make the cure. You don't even know if it'll work or not! Science requires lots of tests first before you can figure out anything. You just can't pull out some blood, mix in some green stuff, and get a cure magically. Even if it did work like that, the citizens of New York people are going to know you're the culprit! The poison is coming from the top of your tower! You think people won't notice that? That the government will just give you money instead of arresting your murderous ass?

I'd recommend sticking to the old movies. If you're going to travel down the science route, I'd say put Krang in there because we haven't seen him in a live action yet, but considering whoever wrote this script seems to be incapable of making a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, I don't have my hopes up. And hey, the original has Casey Jones too!