Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Trailer #2 Review

Good day to you ladies and gentlemen, after a lot of trailers recently I’m finally here to review a new one and this one is fairly interesting as we’re gonna be talking about the second official trailer for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Now I’m still looking forward to nuff films over the summer like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Expendables 3 and Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, but this film is the one I keep forgetting about. The first trailer looked alright, but it wasn’t anything that blew me away and so far all the promotional material for this film has yet to get me pumped for this new version of the Ninja Turtles. But now we have a new trailer and I feel like I need to talk about it.

Have a look at the trailer below:

So my first thoughts after seeing the trailer? Looks better than it did before.

This is definitely the most turtle-centric trailer we’ve gotten so far as the focus on the human characters was really pushed into the backgrounds and there was more of the turtles shown than ever before. We got to see and hear the turtles as the fought soldiers, interacted with each other and April and overall it just felt more in line with the type of TMNT characters that we’ve gotten in the past. Beyond the turtles we got to see glimpses of Splinter and got to see Shredder in action as well.

So what do I like about the trailer? Well here are some things I observed:

• These Turtles Feel Like Brothers: Straight from the beginning of the trailer the for turtles are communicating talking about hostages, taking out the bad guys and saying interesting one-liners like “This is our city.”, “Like shadows in the night.” They sound cool as hell and definitely have personality.
• The Film is Self-Aware: The point when Raphael says “Give me the camera.” And Someone (probably Michelangelo) says “Look he’s doing his Batman voice.” That shows that this film actually takes place in a world similar ours where pop culture references are in the know, so stuff like the gruff Batman voice from the Christopher Nolan films is common knowledge to people. I hope that this is just a piece of more references to come throughout the film.
• The Film’s Gonna Be Funny: So far the trailers have been fairly serious, but in this one we hear a lot of funny one-liners (especially with Michelangelo talking to April, that was some funny stuff) and there’s one part in the trailer that will be sure to please and humour certain fans, but more on that later.
• William Fichtner May Not Be Shredder: For the longest time we have all been told in press stories that William Fichtner would be Shredder and that pissed off a lot of TMNT fans and I too thought it was a bit odd considering the origin of the character. However now there’s a small screen in the trailer where Fichtner’s talking to a shadowy figure saying that he’s taking his armour to the next level. So one can possibly assume that this the actual owner of the Shredder armour, which in turn could mean we may this be getting the an asian actor to play Oroku Saki, however this is just speculation at this point, but hey one can hope right?
• Shredder’s More Metal Than Man Now: That first shot when Shredder comes along and bust out to swords from both of his arm area and then releases another two on each side I was like “Damn, the Shredder’s turned into a machine!” The dude can throw and retract swords from his arms, he’s HUGE and he’s super strong as he can just throw Raphael like he’s nothing.
• The Scope of The Film Is Pretty Big: It seems like the story and action won’t just be taking place in the city of New York but also in some snowy mountains (probably outside of America) and I like film’s that can stretch beyond one location.
• They’re Not Aliens, They’re Turtles: Probably one of the most notable points of the trailer is when Will Arnett says “So they’re aliens?” And Megan Fox replies “No that’s stupid. They’re turtles.” Bam! And just like that all the backlash about the turtles being aliens that made so many fans pissed off is shut down in one sentence. This film is definite self-aware and it is sassy about it. That was a good line and pretty much made me smile.

All these things being said, I do have some nitpicks and concerns. Now I’m no massive TMNT nerd so I don’t have anything major to moan about, but the look of the turtles is still a bit iffy to me, at some angles they look really cool but other times they just look really odd and ugly. I am also not keen on how much of a robot Shredder has become, its like Silver Samurai from The Wolverine again, why must this keep happening to Japanese-armoured villains? While I’m not too frustrated with the change, I am kind of annoyed that they have to go so hardcore with the upgrades to the suit to the point where he looks like a mini Transformer. Oh and that dub step music, that’s just awful. Why is it a main source of music for trailers? Its horrible and it sucks!

So in conclusion the second trailer for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles looks pretty intriguing and honestly it has my attention now. This is the first piece of material that feels like it has the spirit of the original TMNT in there, the voice acting seems solid, the turtle action sequences look frantic, kinetic and well-choreographed and it seems like there will be humour in the film as oppose to being totally serious all of the time. While I’m still not completely sold on the film, I feel like after watching this trailer that I have more reason to watch it now.

So what do you think of the second trailer of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Are you down with this film now or are you still unimpressed with the way this film is looking in trailer form? Whatever your thoughts are drop them in the comments below and I’ll see ya on the next review yo. 😀