Today, Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon released the first trailer for the upcoming animated film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. And it’s not only a cute trailer that promises a fun, teen-focused TMNT story, but it also looks amazing. Just ignore the weird Seth Rogen stuff.
Originally created in 1984, TMNT started out as an indie comic book series parodying superhero tropes of the era. However, it quickly exploded into a massive franchise with hundreds of comics, shows, movies, toys, books, games, and more. And while the series has had some popular animated outings, the last fully-animated TMNT film was released over 15 years ago in 2007. So it definitely feels about time for another big-budget animated TMNT film, especially now that we live in a world where 2018’s Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse showed studios that animated flicks don’t have to look like Pixar knock-offs.
TMNT: Mutant Mayhem features an ensemble cast, including big names like Rogen, Jackie Chan, John Cena, Paul Rudd, Maya Rudolph, and Ice Cube. However — and I think this was the right choice — all four of the turtles are played by younger, lesser-known actors. They sound perfectly cast in the new trailer released by Paramount, which also shows off just how gorgeous and rad this film looks.
According to the director, Jeff Rowe, the film’s look was inspired by sketch drawings he did back when he was in high school. And I imagine Spiderverse also helped the team feel more confident to go in a wilder direction. The end result is fantastic as everything in Mutant Mayhem has a hand-painted look and feel, with lots of detail scribbled into each scene and set. I love that the clouds in sky are just pencil squiggles, for example. I recommend you pause the trailer a bunch and just look at all the details and how much of the movie truly looks like doodles from a teenager’s notebook.
TMNT: Mutant Mayhem is looking very, very good. And I didn’t even mention that the soundtrack will basically just be songs from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. I’m not even a big TMNT guy and even I can’t wait to watch this movie when it hits theatres August 4.
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