There are so many baffling choices in this new trailer for the Michael Bay-produced reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that my head is spinning. I honestly can't tell if whoever cut this thing together is trying to make me laugh or not. Like the moment when Splinter warns the turtles that they're about to face their most dangerous threat to date, and then it cuts to a shot of a dapper looking William Fichtner. Hilarious! I also can't tell if Shredder, with his giant Freddy-esque knife hands is actually supposed to be Fichtner inside some kind of Iron Man-style armored suit, or if he's actually just a nine foot tall robot. Will Arnett definitely refers to robotic samurai, so is he talking about Shredder or the Foot Clan? If we're gonna go back to the cartoon canon where all the Foot Soldiers were actually androids, well I'd be VERY okay with that. Mostly because, in my head, it paves the way for Krang to show up in the sequel. If we're really lucky, it'll turn out that Whoopi Goldberg was secretly Krang the whole time!
I do like the crack about the turtles not being aliens, but by the time the dubstep kicks in, it becomes clear that this movie simply isn't built for me and that's fine. The original live-action movie is one of those things that I can still recite word for word with all the right inflection in place ("Regular? Or menthol?") and I'm perfectly fine revisiting my DVD box set every few years and reveling in the nostalgia. But I also can't begrudge today's youngsters from having the opportunity to enjoy the sublime pleasures of talking karate reptiles in a way that might be more accessible to their own sensibilities.
Somebody call me when Baxter Stockman turns into a giant talking fly.