Okay. I enjoyed this movie a lot. Still, I'm going to start with a few things I found disappointing. They certainly didn't ruin anything for me, but it would have just been that little bit more fantastic if they'd been done differently.
Disappointment #1: Turtles don't fight with honor.
When the OT and NT Turtles were having their motto-off, I was sure "Turtles fight with honor!" would be in there. But it wasn't. In fact, I don't think it's in the movie at all.
Disappointment #2: No sushi.
I really enjoyed the scene where NT Leo and NT Raph are in the kitchen with OT Splinter. It was one of the few points where the movie actually slowed down for a minute, and it was a really sweet moment. But I was disappointed that the Turtles never actually ate what Splinter gave them. I thought they would, and then OT Splinter would be delighted with these Turtles who share his appreciation for raw fish. (Especially disappointing because OT Splinter got so little screentime overall.)
Disappointment #3: The abandonment of April.
When I first saw the minute-and-a-half clip of OT April being rescued, I really enjoyed it... but I mistakenly assumed that there was context for it. There wasn't. OT April isn't mentioned or heard from either before or after this scene. It was still enjoyable in itself, but it was bizarrely disconnected from the whole rest of the plot.
Disappointment #4: Shredder Prime is a loser.
It seemed really out of keeping with the tone of the comics, and borderline disrespectful, that the very first Shredder was defeated by some thrown garbage. On the other hand, maybe it was meant to be a joke about how easily the original Shredder
was beaten. In that light, it's not so bad.
All right. Now that I have that out of the way, here's a more general review of the plot and the handling of the characters.
In terms of the plot: I had expected this movie to be very light on plot, and to really just be a rapid-fire sequence of fan service. It was not. The original getting-two-universes-to-collide device was pretty contrived, but after that things improved. The first act led very naturally to the second act, and the part about the Utrom Shredder's plot was downright inspired. A meta-plot, almost. (I will never cease to be delighted by meta-anything.) And it made for a completely organic lead-in to the third universe.
I also really liked the backwards progression of the plot: from New Toon, to Old Toon, to original comics. It was a real time trip for the viewer as well as for the characters.
And on that note: the characters. I can't believe we've lived thirteen years without seeing Krang and Shredder bicker like an old married couple. The writers got their relationship spot-on. I thought that maybe Shredder took a little too much initiative in finding his dimensional counterpart (wasn't Krang usually the mastermind behind their plans?) but it worked as a plot device, so I'll forgive him.
It was excellent to see the Utrom Shredder again, and it was nice that Karai also came back (after her strange near-non-existence in Season 7) - she even got character development! Utrom Shredder is still not a particularly interesting character, but his total dominance over OT Shredder, and his appraisal of the Technodrome as pathetic and in need of an upgrade, was great fun to watch.
Still on the subject of the bad guys, I was a little annoyed at first by these pointless five-second scenes that Bebop and Rocksteady kept getting. It seemed to just be saying, "Hey, we brought back these characters who only existed in one universe!" Okay, we get it. Move on. But then, at the end, they turned out to be integral to the defeat of the Utrom Shredder. I thought this was dangerously close to having them be so stupid they destroyed their own boss, but actually they defeated a
different Shredder, one whom their own Shredder was no longer allies with, and so in their own bumbling way they served their master and saved everybody. A fitting farewell to a pair of abysmally incompetent, but loyal and well-meaning sidekicks. (And that part would have been weird and sudden without the earlier seemingly-pointless scenes, so I forgive them as well.)
Now. The Turtles. I was impressed at how the writers managed to give all twelve of them pretty equal screentime. Aside from comic Don and Mike, who barely got any lines, but that leads into my next point - the Turtles were written as
themselves. It would have been really easy here to retroactively project character traits onto the earlier incarnations, but the writers didn't do that. By and large, they kept the comic and OT Turtles as they were in their own continuities, and not as regressed versions of their later incarnations. Since Don and Mike had no pagetime or character development in the early comic books, I don't mind so much that they don't have it here either.
Some people have said that the OT Turtles in this movie were
not themselves, that they were played even goofier than in the '80s toon. I don't think that's such a bad thing. By pushing them a little farther into that silliness, the writers made them distinct from the more serious 2k3 Turtles, and that contrast only served to highlight everything that was lovable about the Old Toon. The OT Turtles, in this movie, weren't so unserious that they were useless, so I don't think the writers went too far on this one.
Another place the writers didn't go too far - tropes of the different canons. I was afraid they would go overboard with things like OT Raph's breaking of the fourth wall, but they didn't. It was in there twice and it was hilarious. Similarly, the dramatic voiceovers of the comic Turtles stopped before they crossed the line from funny to annoying. The writers clearly knew their stuff, but they didn't take the easy route by leaning on elements that were done to death in the different canons. They made nods to these classic iconic elements, and then they got on with the story.
I'll wrap up the character review with a good/bad thing: I did enjoy seeing NT Don overcome his initial impressions of his other self, and learn OT Don's method of percussive maintenance. I would have liked to see the other pairs learning from their counterparts as well. But mostly I thought the interaction between them was good and believable.
A final note: If this movie was intended, at least partially, as the last piece of the New Toon, then I think it failed. For all its flaws, "Wedding Bells and Bytes" was a good ending to the series. Our mutants were reunited as a family, Casey and April got married, and the Turtles' enemies either were destroyed or (inexplicably) seemed to lose interest in fighting them. It was a satisfying conclusion in the sense that you felt the story was over, and there was nothing more to say about it.
This movie largely wrecked that. At the end of it, the NT Turtles go back to their own dimension, but they have no place to go
within that dimension. Their home has been destroyed and the public is now aware of the existence of giant Turtles. That's not an ending; that's a set-up for another story.
But maybe we should take that as a hopeful sign. I mean, who would have thought that in 2009 we'd be seeing a new story with the OT Turtles and their universe? Maybe someday we will get another little piece of the NT world as well.
Thank you to everyone who worked on this. To the people who directly made it happen, and to the people who laid all the groundwork over 25 years of loving effort. You have made a lot of fans very happy.
(And looking forward to seeing the full version on DVD someday.
)
