Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

Em: 00:03:07

Hi, everyone. I'm Em. And welcome to verbal diorama, episode 330, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.

This is the podcast that's all about the history and legacy of movies you know and movies you don't. That's finding this all rousing. I am fully roused. Welcome to Verbal Diorama.

Whether you're a brand-new listener, whether you're a regular returning listener, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for choosing to listen to this podcast.

I am always I'm so happy to have you here just generally, but also for the history and legacy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which is a mouthful of a title, so I'm probably going to shorten it for the rest of this episode.

But it's also fantastic movie and huge. Thank you if you are a regular returning listener for coming back and listening to this podcast again.

I am always so overwhelmed by the love that I get for doing this podcast. I have been doing this for very almost seven years now and 330 episodes is nothing to be sniffed at.

And to be honest, I'm just so mindful that people take time out of their day to listen to me talk about film history. Like it still kind of blows my mind a little bit. But thank you so much for your support. It genuinely does mean so much.

And if you are new here and you're not sure what this podcast is, hello, it is a film history podcast. I do talk about the history and legacy of a movie every episode.

And this is an especially exciting time to join this podcast because I'm in the middle of the sixth annual animation season and this is something that I do on the podcast every year so far this season. So this January I've done episodes on Monsters, Inc. K Pop, Demon Hunters, and Paprika. And I'm a huge fan of animated movies.

I want to use this podcast to celebrate animation in all of its forms.

So that includes traditional 2D hand drawn animation, stop motion animation, CGI animation, and pretty much every single type of animation that there is out there. Because I genuinely believe that animation is the perfect art form.

The verbal diorama Animation season mantras are that animation is not just for children and animation is not a genre, despite what many streaming services will tell you. It is capable of depicting anything anyone.

And I think the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a wonderful example of yes, we've had live action turtles movies, but nothing like this. This is completely unique and so brilliant and so visually aesthetically pleasing.

And this movie doesn't have the limitations that a live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie does have.

And this is why Animation Season remains so important to me and to this podcast because it highlights these incredible animated films that you may not have seen, you may not know about, or you may have seen, or maybe you saw it a while ago.

But I genuinely believe in the medium of animation and the incredible storytelling that can be within animated movies that a lot of people do miss out on. And that's why I love to do animation season every January and February. And as I mentioned, this is an episode on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

And if you've been asleep for like the last almost 40 years, you might not know that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been around that long. They've been ubiquitous, actually, for almost 40 years. In comic books, on toy shelves, on TV screens.

As I mentioned, in live action movies and video games. Everyone knows who you mean when you mention Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello. Everyone knows they love pizza.

And a few years after their last cinematic outing, it was decided to reboot them and bring new ideas to the sewer with one of the most unique looking animated movies of recent years. Here's the trailer for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.

Em: 00:09:23

Techno Cosmic Research Institute executive Cynthia Utrom sends a squad to hunt down rogue scientist Baxter Stockman, who has created a mutagenic ooze with which he intends to form his own mutant animal family. Starting with a house fly, Baxter is interrupted by Cynthia's strike force and killed in the resulting explosion.

While the mutagen falls into the sewers of New York City and the mutant housefly escapes, the mutagent turns four Turtle brothers, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and Donatello and a rat named Splinter into humanoid mutants.

Splinter teaches his boys to fight, and 15 years later, the Turtles reveal themselves and their origins to aspiring journalist April o', Neill, who has been investigating a series of robberies of TCRI technology by a criminal known as Superfly. Let's run through the cast of this movie.

We have Nicolas Cantu as Leonardo, Micah Abbey as Donatello, Shamon Brown Jr. As Michelangelo, Brady Noone as Raphael, Jackie Chan as Splinter, Ayo Adebiri as April o', Neil, Maya Rudolph as Cynthia Utrom, Seth Rogen as Bebop, John Cena as Rocksteady, Rose Byrne as Leatherhead, Natasia Demetriou as Wingnut, Giancarlo Esposito as Baxter Stockman, Ice Cube as Superfly, and introducing Paul Rudd as Mondo Gecko. Teenage Mutant Ninja Mutant Mayhem has a screenplay by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jeff Rowe, Dan Hernandez and Benji Sumit.

A story by Brendan o'Brien, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Jeff Rowe, was directed by Jeff Rowe and based on the characters Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman. So, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, as they were known here in the uk, is a story that starts with humble origins.

they formed Mirage Studios in: 1983

It was just their shared house. While working on another comic series, Eastman, wanting to make his friend laugh, randomly drew a masked Nunchuk wielding turtle.

He showed it to Laird, who did indeed laugh, and then proceeded to draw his own version. Eastman retaliated by drawing a team of four turtles posing. He named them Ninja Turtles.

Laird inked over the pencil drawings and preceded that with Teenage Mutant.

The idea of Turtles being some of the slowest creatures actually being ninjas really grew on the pair, and with their fugitoid comic book story coming to an end, they decided to make Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles their next project. Fujitoid would actually end up being a character within the TMNT universe.

in Gobbledygook number one in: 1984

Instead, they would create their own and draw, no pun intended, inspiration from Marvel Comics Daredevil as well as Frank Miller's Ronin to develop the Turtles. Daredevil has the young Matt Murdock blinded by radioactive substance while saving an old blind man from the path of the truck carrying it.

The Turtle story suggested the baby Turtles, then just pets in a fishbowl, fell down a sewer grate during the accident along with the radioactive substance or ooze, only to be discovered by a rat, the former pet of an exiled ninja warrior, Hamato Yoshi, who had been blamed for the death of ninja leader Oroku Saki's brother and murdered for it. A rat in New York sewers makes a lot of sense. A rat with ninja skills? Well, he would have had to watch his owner perform them.

Daredevil would fight the hand, so the Turtles would find themselves in conflict with the Foot, a clan of ninjas whose leader was none other than Oroku Saki the Shredder, whose design was based on a metal cheese grater. Because nothing strikes fear into ninjas more than coagulated milk protein.

Using Len's copy of Janssen's History of Art for inspiration, the pair chose names for the Turtles from four of their favorite Renaissance artists. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo di la Viccio Buonarroti, Simone Donateno di Nicole di Betobadi, and Raphael Sangio di Urbino.

The latter three were known mononymously as Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael. Thankfully, because at least da Vinci is easy to pronounce, the names would be shortened to Leo, Mikey, Donnie and Raph.

Their first stories were published in black and white, and the four Turtles were virtually identical in appearance. So Eastman and Laird differentiated the four through their choice of weapons.

Leonardo would wield a pair of cortana blades, Michelangelo used nunchucks, Donatello mastered the bo staff, and Raphael favored the knife.

Like says Master Splinter, who took credit for Naming the Turtles in the very first issue, however, didn't use a spell checker, as Michelangelo was misspelled Michael as in the name Michael and Angelo together, something that took years to be officially corrected. Those first stories were also gritty and darker in tone to what would eventually come.

mic book which debuted in May: 1984

llector's items. By September: 1985

Because of Laird's background in newspapers, the two created a four page press kit that contained artwork and story ideas. The press package was distributed to United Press International, the Associated Press, and 180 radio and TV stations.

As a result, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mirage Studios received extensive media attention, which increased demand for the comic.

Eastman and Laird's Turtles comic quickly gained popularity with its second issue selling 15,000 copies in advance, five times the previous issue's print run. As a result, Eastman and Laird made a profit of $2,000 apiece, enabling them to work as comic book artists full time.

What started out as a joke between friends was actually starting to come together for them as a career, and they were so surprised at the sudden success. It took them a year to create issue two, but it would take someone else to bring the Turtles out of the Shadows log and into the mainstream.

And that was Mark Freedman, who noticed the success of He Man, GI Joe and Transformers and realized the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were ripe for something similar.

He discovered the comic book and pitched the idea of licensing the Turtles to Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird for merchandising specifically as a toy line. Eastman and Laird agreed, as long as they retained complete creative control.

It was that toy line and the resulting animated series that gave us the color coded masks, the distinctive personalities, the catchphrases, Cowabunga, heroes in a half shell and Turtle Power, as well as their love of pizza. Freedman went to Richard Salas of Playmates Toys and with the executives of Playmates, minted a deal for $150,000 to start a toy line.

The Playmates insisted on producing a cartoon show to debut before the toys hit shelves. It was a known strategy but it was a strategy that worked.

animated series premiered in: 1987

And yes, it was called Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles here because politicians didn't like ninjas. But seriously, they thought it would encourage children to to be ninjas.

Turtles toys was sold between: 1988

tion TV series which ran from: 1997

Now that's a story for a future episode.

inja Turtles, the live action: 1990

, The Secret of the Ooze in: 1991

In: 2000

es on the IDW comic series in: 2011

the live action TV series in: 1997

cted release date sometime in: 2012

hour of it and its sequel in: 2016

been on the big screen since: 2016

er of Paramount Pictures from: 2021

vies from three studios since: 1990

He consulted with Nickelodeon Animation president Ramsay Naito and their first thought was Seth Rogen. So Robbins called Rogan and asked him the question, was he ever a Turtles fan?

definitive answer and in June: 2020

The Machines, which shares a lot of DNA with this turtles movie, especially in the realm of slightly dysfunctional families, overbearing parents and finding yourself. He was recommended for the directorial gig by his previous colleagues Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

Rowe met with Rogan and Goldberg and they connected about wanting the same things out of the movie and and caring about naturalism and character and emotion first and foremost. And Ro was a huge Turtles fan. He would say that growing up he was a Donatello who wanted to be Michelangelo.

Ro was also responsible for the mutant side characters, having loved the classic toy line and that being the place that many of these side characters had come from. Kyler Spears had worked with Rowe on his prior film the Mitchells versus the Machines, and joined this movie as co director.

The movie's initial idea was sold to Paramount and the team set about writing a script that was essentially Turtles and Superbad, which makes sense when you have Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg involved because the pair also wrote Superbad. In the very first draft of the film, Shredder was the main villain and they saw him as a Vince Vaughan type.

According to Jeff Rowe and the Turtles got to high school on page 30 of the script, and the last 2/3 of the movie was set around them in high school, dealing with high school problems. But all the Turtles wanted to do was go to high school and be accepted, and they thought this happened too early in the script.

By July: 2022

Them going to high school would be the final scenes of the movie, and the criminal gang would instead be linked to Stockman's experiments on various animals with the new Big Bad Superfly, a mutated fly who's also the leader of a gang syndicate.

The gang who steals April's moped are dealing with Superfly, which draws the Turtles into the world of the Mutants, who at first seem on their wavelength that Superfly actually wants to dominate the human race. Teen coming of age films like Stand By Me and Lady Bird were cited as inspiration for the authentic confidence of teenagers.

The idea to cast actual teenagers would be the first time the characters would be accurately portrayed by age appropriate actors. And it was Seth Rogen who actually came up with the idea to hire teenage boys, but also to encourage them to rip off each other in the sound booth.

Cast in the movie was crucial. With a raft of big names like Jackie Chan, Maya Rudolph, Ice Cube, Ayo Adebiri and John Cena, along with Seth Rogen.

The introducing Paul Rudd credit was intentional and Rudd stipulated the credit in his contract because clearly the guy is going places and eventually he's going to become a big Hollywood name and become totally ageless Turtles. Co creator Kevin Eastman is credited as Good Human, a citizen who helps Splinter at the climax.

Rowe wanted the role to be voiced by someone meaningful to the franchise and chose to cast Eastman as a homage to Stan Lee's cameos in the mcu.

Jackie Chan was actually in China at the time of recording, and while everyone else recorded in person, Chan would record his lines in China in online recording sessions with Seth Rogen and Jeff Rowe at 4am U.S. time. And while no one wants to wake up at 4am to direct someone, they were both Just so stoked they got the legendary Jackie Chan in their movie.

They were delighted to wake up at 4am to direct Jackie Chan. Having that mix of famous names versus relative unknowns was the trade off to get the movie made.

The studio wanted some big names in there for marketability. And so that helped with casting relative unknowns for the Turtles.

And they did a big casting search working with Rich Delia and hundreds of boys auditioned with Nicholas Cantu, Brady Noon, Micah Abbey and Shamon Brown Jr. Gelling so well as a group and becoming firm friends.

Of the four, only the then 16 year old Brady Noon had had a notable acting career prior, having appeared in Boardwalk Empire as well as the films Good Boys, Marry Me and the lead character in two animated Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies. They needed a group of kids who could easily have been raised together.

When asked in an interview with Slash film about the kids growing out of the roles, Jethro said they would lean into the changes and those changes would also make the Turtles change. The four boys would record together. They would improvise their dialogue and insult each other in character.

They weren't grown adults pretending to be teenagers saying cowabunga dude. They were just teenagers allowed to be teenagers. And every single scene required the four co stars to be in the room at the same time.

That's not common practice at all in animation, but Jeff Rowe liked the idea of all four characters talking over each other, which is very naturalistic in everyday life, but very uncommon in movies and especially in animated movies because usually lines have to be separated out for the sake of clarity. What's more, their movements were filmed giving the animators a physical basis on which to form the characters. Animated performances.

The four boys generally stuck to the rules for what they could and couldn't say. Ice Cube, not so much. This is a PG family movie. Cube.

Apparently they do have some good outtakes of Ice Cube that are not suitable for children, shall we say? Jeff Rowe was skeptical about making April Puke Girl, thinking it might be a little too puerile for a teenage animated Turtles movie.

But they needed a way of making April a social outcast in her own right.

And anyone who's done anything embarrassing in high school knows that doing something like puking in public is a really quick and easy way to ostracize yourself from your peers. And test audiences loved it too, with the audience really embracing April as a character. Mutant Mayhem was animated by Mickros animation.

They have 230 crew in Montreal and 320 in Paris. And Joining them in animating was Cinesite in Vancouver and Montreal.

Mickros was hired in: 2022

And once again, it was Sony Animation Studios pushing the envelope for moving away from CGI photo realism to something looking more like concept artwork. Jeff Rowe had already tried something different with the Mitchells versus the machines, and they wanted to be even less compromising with the Turtles.

They wanted it to look like concept artwork, to feel human, not computer generated, to keep sketchy and imperfect, like someone who's not had any formal art training. In this movie, mistakes would be features, not bugs.

Production designer Yisha Kassai found working out the sketchy, unfinished style one of the most difficult parts of the production.

Because when you're working with professional artists, often with decades of experience, it's hard to go back to that messy, misshapen, imperfect drawings that you might have done when you were a teenager. The more emotionally teenaged, authentic style of animation fell in line with the story.

They wanted to tell a coming of age origin story about teenagers who experience feelings of isolation, loneliness and awkwardness as they try to find themselves. Being a teenager is hard. It's emotional, confusing, and it's a lonely time in your life.

Making these characters real teenagers voiced by real teenagers lends credence to the movie that the Platinum Dunes turtle movies, where they looked like jacked, scary creatures, just didn't have.

The designs of the Turtles themselves are straight out of the 80s cartoon, and the toy line, with attention paid to the color palette of the toys and also the chunkiness of those toys. Even the color palette of the original cartoon series was influential on this movie.

They were heavily inspired by films like Chunking Express and Attack the Block, with the Turtles taking great pains to hide from humans. Much of the scenes take place at night, and so the team had to design New York at nighttime.

The Turtles themselves would have a variety of body styles, but also not be completely jacked and look a bit more skinny and scrawny, something that lead character designer Woodrow White pushed for and Jeff Rowe agreed for the action and fighting style. It was all Jackie Chan focused, which made total sense because he's the master and he's also in this movie.

They made sure to utilize props that the Turtles could use to gain advantage in a situation and show real effort in the moves and choreography.

Mikros animation blended 2D and 3D elements to create a distinctive Hand drawn comic book style, starting with 2D layouts in Toon Boom harmony and then developing effects like fire, smoke and water, integrating everything seamlessly into 3D environments. Animating this movie in 2D meant they could actually render the content faster than if they used traditional CG animation.

Cinesite's artists worked in collaboration with Mikros animation, taking on particular sequences and scenes. But Cinesight's crew only had experience in cgi and so they had to quickly learn how to use 2D. To speed up the process.

They sought out sequences and style guides from Mikros. And they had to learn fast, because when Cinesite joined, they joined the project much later and much of the animation work had already been done.

The Cinesite team were given character models and blend shapes from Mikros, which were then rigged in house and shared with the animators.

The Cinesite team built the character of Cynthia Utrom from scratch, though Mutant mayhem is also animated on twos, where every pose is held for an extra frame to give scenes a more frantic and frenzied energy.

This meant dealing with a lot more layers than traditional cg and to do it quicker, animators were encouraged to make it less pretty, less accurate, less perfect, such as when a right handed artist was creating something a little too perfect, they would be advised to instead do it with their left hand to give the scene a more imperfect feel.

And the ending, after a huge battle fighting against huge Kaiju Super Duper Fly simply ends with the turtles finally achieving their dream of attending high school after the fear of not being accepted leads to these kids fighting the bad guy despite the fact humans may never accept them, which leads to them being accepted into school.

But the animation teams had a bit of a technical problem when it came to that final scene because they were working with the two animation teams at Cinesite and Mikros. Cinesight had the sewer backdrop and the turtles wearing masks, and Mikros were animating the school part.

And they had the turtles wearing no masks and school clothes. And the question became how to transition from one vendor to the other when one set of turtles wore masks and the other didn't.

They needed a way for the turtles to take off the masks without physically taking off the masks. Due to budget and timescale constraints, Cinesite couldn't have them remove their masks in that scene, and Mikros wasn't able to add masks.

So rather than go from one scene with masks and the next without, producer Ramsay McBean suggested a transitional shot of Raphael's mask floating down from the manhole cover, which was an excellent way to transition from one scene to another without having to spend additional time and money to generate that additional animation. And this is the perfect time to segue into the obligatory Keanu reference of this episode.

And if you're new here and you're not sure what that is, this is a part of the podcast where I try and link every movie that I feature with Keanu Reeves for no reason other than he is the best of men.

enage Mutant Ninja Turtles in: 1990

Keanu has never starred with a Turtle or in a Turtles movie, but he does wear a splendid turtleneck in Something's Gotta Give. And when I said it was tenuous, I genuinely mean it is. But that is the easiest way for me to link Keanu Reeves to a Turtles movie.

And I'm very sorry to all the Turtles fans out there that I have seriously disappointed with any other way of linking Keanu Reeves to this movie.

In many ways, this production was blessed with the talent of both the cast and crew, having movies like the Mitchells versus The Machines and Spider man into the Spider verse, giving it more of an artistic license to look different and take chances. And I genuinely believe without those movies existing, this movie wouldn't exist in the way that it currently does.

Turtles may be growing up in: 2023

The soundtrack was a way to evoke those feelings of nostalgia towards the 90s without making the movie a period piece.

And the fact it includes Vanilla Ice's ninja rap from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 Secret of the Ooze, it genuinely one of the most brilliant things that this movie could have done. And that was also a suggestion by Seth Rogen. The hardest song to get clearance for for this movie was Blackstreet's no Diggity.

That is one of my favorite songs of all time. So the fact again that it's in this movie just brings me so much joy because I love that song and it was the perfect song for that fight scene.

And there's so much brilliant music I I can't possibly list all the incredible tracks in this movie, but it has one of the most incredible soundtracks of an animated movie ever. No diggity no doubt, but when it came to the score, they went to great lengths to get two of the best in the business, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

Reznor and Ross weren't Turtles fans, but they were Mitchells versus the Machines fans. Music supervisor for Mutant Mayhem, Gabe Helfer knew their manager and they were able to get a meeting with Rezna and Ross and Ro and Rogan.

Rowan Rogan showed the pair concept art and sent them a script, but it actually pushed them to make the movie better because if there was an inkling of a chance they'd get Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to score the movie, they did a round of rewrites on the script purely to impress the potential composers. And it worked because again, this has a fantastic score.

And if you need any more proof how talented Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are, listen to the score for Challengers because that is also an incredible score and I'm just such a huge fan of their work.

imation film festival in June: 2022

By June: 2023

nd August: 2023

The Turtles jumped up to third in its second week again behind Barbie and Oppenheimer where it would peak thanks to Barbenheimer.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem would stay in the top 10 for eight weeks on its reasonably low in comparison to Disney and Pixar movies budget of $70 million. Mutant Mayhem would gross $118.7 million domestically and $63.2 million internationally for a total worldwide gross of $181.9 million.

Deadline Hollywood's list of: 2023

Despite this, the Hollywood Reporter suggested that the SAG AFTRA strike and the cast's resulting inability to promote the movie potentially impacted its box office earnings by 15%. And in China, the film bombed, making just $310,000 over its three day opening weekend and finishing ninth.

This movie is the best critically reviewed, theatrically released Turtles movie of all time, with 95% of rotten tomatoes, the website's consensus reads.

With its unique visual style and a story that captures the essence of the franchise's appeal, Teenage Mutant Ninja Mutant Mayhem is an animated treat for the whole family. The animation style was widely praised, as were the performances and screenplay.

l to this movie is due out in: 2027

imation film festival in June: 2025

It was directed by Kent Seki, who served as head of cinematography on this movie, and was written by Andrew Joustra, who was this movie's script and recording coordinator. It was produced by Jeff Rowe, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James weaver and Ramsay McBean.

December: 2025

And that's not a slight on streaming movies because they can be awesome. The Mitchells versus the Machines ended up on streaming. K Pop Demon Hunters from a couple of episodes ago ended up on streaming.

But what really sets this movie and Paramount apart from Sony and Netflix's deal for K Pop Demon Hunters, for example, is that Paramount had complete faith in this movie from the get go. Granted, it's an almost 40 year old franchise and the risk is low, but also it's an almost 40 year old franchise. There are no guarantees.

Look at the Michael Bay produced movies that is Miles apart in style and tone to this look at Transformers, which also ironically has one of the best animated reboot prequels in Transformers 1, which is also from Paramount. To their credit, Paramount and Nickelodeon were hands off on this movie. They just let the creative team work.

They put a lot of trust in them and they delivered. No studio does its finest work being micromanaged. There is nothing that looks like this movie and that's one of its biggest strengths.

Just giving teenage boys a microphone and allowing them to riff as kids was a stroke of genius too, because this feels like a real teenage coming of age movie. In that way, it also speaks to the fears parents have of their kids not fitting in.

And Splinter realising his outlook on life is a mirror to Superfly. The I know what's best, do as I say, not as I do mentality that a lot of older parents have.

Jethro has always said it was never their intention to make a story about immigration, but there are definite parallels to Splinter as a first generation immigrant parent with us born children who just want to hang out with other kids their age. This movie is fundamentally about the importance of family, found family and accepting others and also being ninjas or heroes.

Don't worry, here in the uk this movie was marketed as Ninja Turtles. Finally. And since I was a kid, my favorite turtle was Leonardo. I don't suppose that's many people's favorites, but he was always mine.

This has the DNA of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. You can see Superbad. You can see Freaks and Geeks. You can even see some of the more mature comic books like Invincible Here.

To have adult voices on these characters would feel so off putting. And these kids are so great and clearly having the best time.

And the turtles themselves aren't fully formed fighting machines, but teenage kids who make mistakes and make do with big sticks. What does it mean to be a teenager?

It's a period of time we all go through and we all think we're going to be a kid forever, but we all grow up eventually. It fully embraces all the aspects of the title. Teenage. Actual teenagers experiencing teenage things. Mutant.

This could easily be seen as a body horror movie suitable for kids because the looks are pretty grotesque. Ninja. They're obviously trained by Jackie Chan. And turtles. They may be mutants, but they're still turtles. And mutant mayhem.

There's so much mutant mayhem and the mutants themselves are so well designed and I'll say it, they're all so lovable because they actually see that Superfly's way of doing things isn't right. And fundamentally this is a movie about trying to do the right thing.

I adore this movie so much and I think the reason why I love it so much is because this is a movie that was made with a genuine, deep and sincere love for these characters.

You don't need to be a fan of the Turtles to enjoy it, but if you are, the chances are you'll love this version of the characters for giving you something new.

And there's something to be said about studios like this taking an existing IP and doing something with it that actually has love for the characters rather than we just want to make some money. You can tell when something's a cash grab and you can tell when something is made with a genuine desire to make something great.

And this movie is very much the latter. The Turtles aren't meant to be overly serious superheroes.

They're just a bunch of kids who are trying their best and they're cool and fun and love listening to east coast hip hop and eat pizza. They might argue and disagree, but they're brothers and they're trying their best to make the world a better place.

Whether you're a human, a turtle, a rat, or whatever scumbag is. Thank you for listening.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mutant Mayhem and thank you for your continued support of this podcast. If you want to show your support in multiple different ways, you could leave a rating or review wherever you found this podcast.

You could tell your friends and family about this podcast or you can find me and follow me on social media and you can share the podcast that way. I am at Verbaldiorama. You can share posts like posts, comment on posts.

It all helps really to get the word out there and to hopefully get other people to know this podcast and know what I've been doing. I genuinely love doing this podcast and anything you could do to help would be so appreciated.

If you like this episode on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mutant Mayhem, you may also like some previous episodes of this podcast, episode 32 Spider man into the Spider Verse for obvious reasons and episode 104 the Mitchells versus the machines for obvious reasons. As always, give me feedback. Let me know what you thought of my recommendations and obviously if you watch the movies and what you think.

So the next episode animation season continues into February with a movie intended to revitalize Disney's hand drawn animated features as well as its Broadway style musicals. This is a movie that had everything. A strong willed female lead, a handsome prince, talking animal, sidekicks, and a memorable villain.

And then the controversy started, firstly around the lead character's name, her job, then against the setting and the title of the movie.

But it also holds the distinction of being Disney's first African American princess movie, being directed by Disney royalty John Musker and Ron Clements, and being stunningly beautiful. It's not the Frog Princess, but it is the Princess and the Frog. It's not Disney's last attempt at hand drawn animation, but one of them.

And it's such a vibrant and wonderful movie and so deserving of more respect than it ever got. So please join me next episode for the history and legacy of the Princess and the Frog. A huge thank you to the amazing patrons of this podcast.

To Simon, Laurel, Derek, Kat, Andy, Mike, Luke, Michael, Scott, Brendan, Ian, Lisa, Sam, Jack, Dave, Stuart, Nicholas. So, Kev, Heather, Danny, Stu, Brett, Philip M. Xenos, Sean, Ryno, Philip K, Adam, Elaine, Kyle, and Aaron.

If you want to get in touch, you can email verbal dioramail.com you can also go to the website verbaldiorama.com and you can fill out the contact form. You can say hello, you can give feedback, or you can give suggestions. I would genuinely love to hear from you.

You can also DM me on social media as well. I really love to hear from people and I always try to respond as quickly as possible. I'm hugely grateful to you all for your support. And finally.

Em: 00:52:06

Bye.