Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem‘s director likened the tone of their film to Stand by Me and Lady Bird. Empire Magazine sat down with Jeff Rowe to preview this fresh take on the beloved franchise. One thing was absolutely necessary for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, the heroes needed that teen movie spirit for the film to work. Rowe said his ambition was to bottle their energy recording and craft “the ultimate teenage coming-of-age film.” Now, that’s a pretty high bar to clear, but the initial reaction to the project have been positive.
“We wanted it to be like Stand By Me and Lady Bird. But, you know, with Ninja Turtles,” director Jeff Rowe described. “They’ve got a lot of that inauthentic confidence that teenagers have: when you’re a teen, you don’t know any better, so you operate with this hyped-up sense of, ‘We can do anything!’”
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“That’s something that [they] are great at,” added Rowe, “that Superbad thing where they’re best friends, but they’re kinda losers who make fun of each other, but you never doubt for a second that they truly love each other.”
Making The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Actual Teens Was A priority.
Back at CinemaCon, Seth Rogen talked about how important it was to have the turtles be “actual teenagers.” When you see the young actors interact or hear their characters together on-screen, it really all clicks into place.
“I love these characters — they were weird, noble, brave and smart,” Rogen said of the decision to go a bit younger for the heroes this time around. “When I got the opportunity to put my own stamp on it, I knew the versions that had come before had never leaned into the teenage element. We thought: ‘What if we cast actual teenagers and we capture their insane teenage energy?’”
“On Ninja Turtles, it was lovely because we were able to control the process a lot more. For every session, we lumped people together. So every time the four turtles recorded, they were together,” Rogen prevuiouisly explained to The Hollywood Reporter. “Me and John Cena were Bebop and Rocksteady, and we recorded together. Ice Cube has a bunch of scenes with the kids, and they recorded together. So we really went out of our way and bent over backwards on Ninja Turtles to try to capture that improvisational energy that you get when a lot of people are in the same place at the same time. I actually saw how helpful it was from doing Lion King, and if that’s the tone and style you’re going for, then it is a great thing to chase.”
Are you looking forward to TMNT: Mutant Mayhem? Let us know down below in the comments!
