This year's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie franchise reboot has had a long and difficult birth, though it's only made interesting by just dull and tiresome this journey has been... weird, right? For every piece of news (Michael Bay producing, Jonathan Liebesman directing), casting (Megan Fox as April O'Neil) or story development (aliens), there's been a predictable outcry of disgusted naysaying from fans, and then the attempts to quell the rage from those on the production who tell people to be patient and that they have as much love for the property as they do. Everyone wants it to be good, but ill will just permeates this thing. It's as doomed to be critically reviled as it is set to be a financial success. Someone change the goddamn record.
The first is a character piece, a brief video summation of one of the Turtles - Raphael - and how gets handled in this new flick. And they certainly say all the right things ("brooding", "man of action", "wants to be the leader") that go towards identifying him... but why then do the clips make him come off like a complete jackass. Don't get me wrong, he was always a jackass, but there was something of a balance to him previously, but this actually just sort of repels. The hulking monstrosity of the character design does little for him (or any of them) either. | The second video gives a potted history of the creation of the comic book that launched a worldwide franchise, looking at how Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman turned some goofy drawings into something worth hanging a multimillion dollar blockbuster on. It's short and relatively informative, though clearly created to slyly reaffirm the visual rhythm of the new movie (quick cuts, repetitive music, obnoxious as hell). |