TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS (2016)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

I liked this sequel better than the 2014 iteration with some, though far from all, of the same cast and crew. Now, as stated elsewhere I'm far from being deeply versed in the Ninja Turtle mythos. It doesn't precisely excite me to see the movie introduce various characters from the comic and the animated cartoon, though the film does get a lot of mileage out of the alien warlord Krang (for drama) and the goofball mutant stooges Bebop and Rocksteady (for humor). 

Rather, I appreciated that this time the writers not only included some interpersonal drama between the Turtle Teens as well as the standard hyper-kinetic banter, but also an "existential crisis." The heroes-on-the-half-shell confront a better version of the conflict that X3: THE LAST STAND thoroughly botched: to wit, "if you could change the thing that makes others consider you 'different,' would you do so?"

The mutation-chemical called "The Ooze" is the proximate reason for the conflict in the latter part of the film, but the problem is prefigured at the start. In the first film, the Turtles save New York City from the forces of the Shredder, but they don't want their existence to be known, so they let screwy newsman Vern Fenwick (Will Arnett) take the credit. Yet even though they do the right thing, keeping under cover because of their monstrous appearances, they're young enough to want the credit, and they take pleasure in puncturing Fenwick's ego when possible. Leo tells the other three that it's their nature as ninjas to move only within the shadows, but the title prefigures that this won't stand.

I remarked of the first film that evildoers Shredder and Eric Sacks seemed to be relying on the Super-Villains Playbook, given how little resonance their schemes had. For the sequel, Sacks is jettisoned in favor of prideful scientist Baxter Stockman (who has only minimal scenes in the first movie), who helps Shredder tap into the alien tech from another dimension. Shredder makes a devil's deal with the aforementioned Krang, thinking he will gain power thereby-- though of course the grotesquely gooey ET is concerned only with turning the planet Earth into scorched earth.

The perfidious plan is exposed thanks in large part to detective work by April O'Neil (Megan Fox once more), while she also manages to show off her more physical assets to good effect. She also places the mutation-muck in the hands of the Turtles, at which point big-brain Donatello figures out that if the Ooze can be used to change humans into a humanoid warthog and rhinoceros (the aforementioned stooges), the same sludge might change four teenage terrapins into ninja humans. And so they might be able to get out of the shadows and into the light of the human world.

Of course, such a transformation would have undermined the entire franchise. But the writers make the Turtles' acceptance of their destiny ring true, even in the midst of all sorts of carnivalesque commotion. Most of the humor worked well enough for me, though I could have done without the bit where the Turtles' attack van sprouted gigantic nunchucks (!) 

Unfortunately, the 2016 audience wasn't primed for any more Turtle-games, and SHADOWS became known as a box office bomb. Far more tragically, the vastly inferior animated entry MUTANT MAYHEM used aspects of SHADOWS' theme but did so in a thoroughly blockheaded manner. Sadly, in Hollywood as elsewhere, sometimes virtue is the only reward of virtue.