Although the results of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Age of Mutants" in 2014 were mediocre, for Paramount Pictures, which has no more cards to play, it is already one of the few IPs that can be put on the table. Therefore, a sequel was soon approved.
This movie is "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows" released in 2016.
bad grades
As a commercial film, "Out of the Shadows" did very poorly.
The production cost of the previous work "Age of Mutants" was 125 million US dollars, and the total box office score of 485 million US dollars was only slightly profitable, while the cost of "Shadow Out" was 135 million US dollars, but the total box office was only 245 million US dollars , which has shrunk considerably compared to the first movie. 1/2,.
Judging from the data, "Out of the Shadows" not only failed to make any money, but also caused the filmmaker Paramount to lose a lot, and the reputation of this film is also very low. arrive.
Also because of such poor results, Paramount later terminated the movie plan of the IP of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
So the question is, "Out of the Shadows", as the second movie after the reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, what are the areas that are not good enough?
The cycle of old fans-new blood-old fans
In 2014's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Age of Mutants", the producers put the film's positioning on absorbing new blood, so some feelings of old fans, such as the origin of the turtles and the setting of BOSS Schreider, are all great. change.
However, due to the fairly general results of "Age of Mutants", the filmmakers doubted whether to adhere to the path of "disregarding old fans for new blood" in the sequel. In the end, "Out of the Shadows" chose to focus on new Audiences shift to old fans.
Therefore, in "Shadow Out", you can see many characters from FC Turtles games and animations appearing in childhood, such as the BOSS rhino head and pig head in the game, the villain Lange in the animation, and the man with the mask of justice messenger. Casey Jones and more.
Moreover, the ending song is a remake of the theme song of the animation of the Turtles, which can indeed evoke the memories of many old fans.
However, the producers overlooked several important points.
First, although the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is an old IP, its audience is not so wide .
Second, there are 4 turtles, and the heroine Aiple has 5 people. In this case, there are so many characters, and then the boss of the previous work, Shredder, also continues to appear. The main The more characters there are, the more difficult it is to perfect the script.
It is precisely because the filmmakers attach too much importance to these so-called sentimental points that some of the creative problems left over from "Age of Mutations" have not been resolved or improved, and are even more enlarged than the previous work. The final result is "Out of the Shadows". The overall finish is really worrying.
visual pollution
The rebooted version of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie is so-called "realistic" in the design of the characters, so most of them look quite ugly. This shortcoming has been criticized by many audiences as early as "The Age of Mutants".
But what is frustrating is that when most people finally got used to this "real horror" style after being baptized by the previous work, "Out of the Shadows" has carried out a series of intensified operations.
The newly added characters in this work, such as BOSS Krone, the rhino head and the pig head are two living treasures, and the shapes are not pleasing. The point is that these three monsters are often given a big close-up in the whole movie.
It stands to reason that these monsters are ugly in appearance, and the audience can choose to focus on other places on the big screen. However, due to the frequent close-ups of them in the film, the whole screen is directly filled with horror faces. Even the right to escape has been exploited , which is equivalent to letting people spend money to go into the cinema to watch visual pollution. If you want to rest your eyes, you can only directly ignore the screen, but the question is, if this is the case, why do audiences pay for it? Find guilt?
In addition, the producer also specially designed a lot of "personality" operations for Krone, rhino head, and pig head. For example, Krone's mouth must be flying when he speaks, and the pig's head likes to pick his nostrils, etc. These behaviors are considered a good-looking person. It will make people feel uncomfortable to do it, let alone this group of monsters?
Still the old saying, as a commercial entertainment film, it is the most important thing to let the audience watch what they want to see . Everyone wants to go to the theater and watch a popcorn movie to have a good time, but when they see a group of people whose appearance is not flattering The monsters are doing all kinds of disgusting behavior. In this case, can the audience still eat the popcorn in their hands?
If there is no conflict, forcibly create a conflict
The group portraits of the previous work "The Age of Mutants" are quite ordinary in themselves, and "Out of the Shadows" has not perfected this point, so that there are quite a lot of "no fuss" in the whole story script.
The design of the scenes between the four tortoises in this work is an old-fashioned Hollywood routine---the team was infighted and divided, so it lost to the villain for a while, and then left all opinions and worked together. In the end, everyone in the team exerted their own strength to defeat the villains.
But unfortunately, this routine is not suitable for the team of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Take the team movie "Avengers" , which is also a superhero of comics, for comparison:
First, most of the members of "Reunion", except for a few such as Black Widow and Hawkeye, do not know each other, and it is precisely because they do not understand that there will be emotional expressions of unwillingness to admit defeat, which will lead to the division of the team. .
The four tortoises are brothers who have lived together and fought together since childhood. They know each other's personalities quite well, so the precondition for splitting does not exist.
Second, because the members of "Reunion" basically met for the first time, they didn't know what abilities they had with each other. They were also always looking for their position in the team, and the friction between them also occurred.
The division of labor among the turtles is quite clear. The eldest blue turtle is the leader, the second red turtle is the warrior, the yellow turtle is the living treasure responsible for adjusting the atmosphere, and the purple turtle is the technical house responsible for the mind. The filmmakers are afraid that the audience will not know. It was even written with large subtitles directly at the beginning of the movie. You must know that the areas that the four turtles are good at and responsible for do not overlap at all with each other, so there is no conflict at all.
If it is said that the turtles only grew up as brothers before, and did not act as a team, it would not make sense. Otherwise, how did the previous work "Age of Mutants" defeat the villain Shredder in the end?
It is precisely because the above two conditions are not met but this routine has to be forcibly put into the film, so the group portrait scene is extraordinarily awkward and awkward.
For example, in the second scene of the movie, the tortoises failed to confront the rhinoceros head and pig head, but they forced each other to shirk their responsibilities afterwards. However, in that battle, the four tortoises had already completed their respective responsibilities, and the props were finally taken away because each Uncontrollable factors, such as plane crashes and rapid currents, and failure to blame teamwork.
Obviously the turtles have existed as a team for a long time, but they have to use this kind of team story template that is only suitable for the first part in the sequel. How can it be good?
Although the IP of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles should not appear on the big screen for a long time due to the poor performance of "Shadow Out", it is not a bad thing from a certain point of view.
After all, if these inconsiderate works are repeatedly shot to damage the IP, it is better to keep the good memories of the old days in everyone's heart.
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