“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” the live-action reimagining of the 30-year-old comic book franchise in theaters this weekend, features a completely computerized version of the four sewer-dwelling superheroes, a take more akin to Gollum from “The Lord of the Rings” films or Caesar from the recent “Planet of the Apes” movies than the rubbery renditions from the 1990s live-action “Turtles” films.
The revitalized reptiles were fashioned at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) by blending computer-generated imagery with several motion-capture performances by four actors. It’s a radical departure from the original ’90s film trilogy, when Jim Henson’s Creature Shop crafted puppety suits for actors playing the half-shell heroes.
For the reboot, the performers physically portraying each Ninja Turtle donned skintight grey getups and shell-shaped backpacks, while helmets equipped with cameras captured their facial expressions. The actors’ bodies were replaced on screen by their counterparts — massive talking turtles who know kung fu — and their facial expressions were grafted onto the Ninja Turtles’ green noggins.
Despite the effort to construct Ninja Turtles for the digital age, die-hard fans didn’t initially deem the makeover of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello totally tubular. Instead, many were shell-shocked to see in early teasers and trailers that the filmmakers added nostrils and lips to theturtles’ faces, a different anatomy than the one from the previous comics, cartoons, toys and films.
“This whole gritty, doofy, straight-out-of-‘Avatar’ look is not working for the iconic cartoon turtles,” Jason Schreier wrote on the blog Kotaku last May. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has never exactly been cool — Leonardo and crew were always dorky and cheesy in a loveable sort of way — but they have never had ridiculous zombie nostrils and gaping mouths like this before. It sure looks dumb.”
Pablo Helman of ILM defends the humanlike faces because it allows the computer-generated characters, who he said are onscreen for about two-thirds of the movie, to be more expressive.
“You’re never going to please everybody because what you’re fighting is that magical moment when, in this case, someone first discovered the Ninja Turtles,” said the Academy Award-nominated visual effects guru. “It’s not possible to convince someone that these are the Ninja Turtles they fell in love with 30 years ago. The idea is that you have to take the original intent and make it your own.”
“You can’t win, so we’ve just tried to present the best version of what we’re doing,” said “Ninja Turtles” producer Brad Fuller, who previously worked on “The Purge” films. “The movie speaks for itself. I wonder if all the discourse about the film is a good thing or a bad thing. I don’t know if there’s actually a way that you can determine whether it’s good or bad.”
