Josh Hayes
  • Home
    • About Josh
  • My Stories
    • The Valor Trilogy >
      • Edge of Valor
      • Echoes of Valor
      • Enemy of Valor
    • Stryker's War
    • Terra Nova Chronicles
    • The Second Star Series
    • The Explorations Series >
      • The Lost Colony Audible Sample
    • SO:W Flash Fiction
    • Short Stories
  • Keystroke Medium
  • Subscribe!
    • Contact Me!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

12/1/2014

1 Comment

 
Picturecourtesy of Paramount Pictures
Where do I start? 

We’ll start with the good…

…

…

…okay, on to the bad. 

I've only done one other movie review on my blog so far, and that’s because I felt the movie was fantastic, but after watching the new TMNT movie today, I felt compelled to write another. (For a completely different reason)

First of all, let me just say that I loved the first movie, Secret of the Ooze was okay, and TMNT III was…well, yeah, moving on. The original TMNT was fantastic, bad lip-syncing and all. 

This new movie (2014) wasn’t as much a reboot as it was a complete remake, that failed in every way to present a plausible (as much as turtles that are ninjas that are teenagers can be plausible) movie. Honestly, did a sixth grader write this movie? How does this stuff even make it into theaters? 

But I digress…

Horrible Acting, atrocious CGI, and a plot pulled straight from the “this has been done 1000 times before, let’s try it again and see if no one notices” box. All things that add up to a really terrible movie.

So, I’ll skip over the acting, because everyone knows what bad acting is. (Like David Caruso taking off his sunglasses, every five minutes acting.)

Picturecourtesy of Paramount Pictures
I’ll quickly rant about the CGI. This is one thing that really gets me; I mean come on, we’ve had CGI in movies dating back 20-30 years. (Can you believe Jurassic Park is 21 years old!?) I bet when you watched T-Rex tear down that fence and snap that dumb lawyer off the john your first thought wasn’t: man this is a really great CGI dinosaur. Why? Because, the animation was so good, you didn’t make the CGI connection. AND THAT WAS 20 YEARS AGO!

The CGI in this movie was, in a word, terrible. There wasn’t a time during this movie when I wasn’t telling myself, “Man, that’s a really horrible-looking turtle.” And when Splinter appeared, I laughed. A lot. That was the first time I contemplated just turning off the movie and calling it square. Well, the second time, the first time was the exposition during the beginning credits. 

The people that write these things are professionals right? Doesn’t everyone know that exposition at the beginning of any movie is a no-no? Maybe it’s just me. 

Okay, on to the plot. (And why I really hated this movie)

I’ll try not to give it away completely, for those of you who decide not to heed my warnings and watch it anyway. 

This movie is your basic; guy wants to create a horrible situation that threatens society, that only he is able to save them from. It’s been done. OVER-done. Not to mention, that this movie really doesn’t give any reason for it, other than said baddie wanting to be rich.  (Yeah, that’s it. I’m telling you, grade school stuff here.) 

And, the bad guy is a nobody!

But, but…Shredder?

Yes, Shredder was in the movie, but he wasn’t anything more than a token. He contributed nothing to the plot, and really wasn’t even that cool; just some dude in a metal samurai suit with sword-hands. (Honestly, people were paid to sit in a room and think this stuff up) 

Shredder was always this mysterious baddie, who was badass, smart and calculating. In this movie, he was nothing more than a placeholder, a punching-bag for the Turtles to beat up on.

They also fundamentally changed the story of the Turtles and their origins. Yeah, sure, Splinter is still their sensei and they’re still ninja’s, but the “how they became” is dumb. There is absolutely no way anyone (much less a rat—even a smart rat) can read one (1) book and become a martial arts master. Mutant turtles I can suspend belief for, not learning advanced sword play from a “Ninja for Dummies” book.

Picture
courtesy of www.teenagemutantninjaturtles.com
Picturelens flares courtesy of J. J. Abrams, I mean www.teenagemutantninjaturtles.com
(SPOILER ALERT)

Also, the movie expects you to believe only person concerned with discovering who is fighting against the Footclan, and that person (April) is also the same person who saved the Turtles from a fire when they were just little turtle babies. Oh, and she named them all. And her dad created the Ooze that created the Turtles. And her dad’s evil partner is the same one who is now threatening the city with destruction by unleashing a deadly toxin into the air and killing everyone. And the only cure for the toxin is found in the Turtles blood. 

Can I just say, that they odds of just one of those things happening is astronomical, much less the entire movie. (Did I just give the plot away…damn it, that’s my bad.)

There was no character development what-so-ever, and the amount of exposition…well…they should have just handed out brochures: “Here’s what happened, why it happened and what’s going to happen,” enjoy the 20 minutes of pointless fight scenes. 

Even the youthful joking and juvenile interactions between the Turtles seemed forced. They tried so hard to make them funny and witty but went overboard and completely missed the mark. Yeah, the original was goofy, it was supposed to be, the Turtles were goofy. The Turtles in this movie aren’t goofy, they’re just stupid

I wanted so bad to like this movie and was really excited to see it up for early release on Amazon, now I just wish I could give it back.

There’s my thing, if you’re going to do a remake, go for it, make it your own, but don’t change the fundamentals of the story. Even then, if you’re going to change the story, give something to the characters, write a good story, make people care about the characters. Don’t just use them to sell your crappy, half-assed story you wrote to make a few dollars on the franchise name.

And for the love of Pete, if you’re going to use CGI for all of your main characters, spend the money to do it right. I know it can be done, I’ve seen Avatar about a hundred times.

I give Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) a whopping 1 out of 5. (And only because I had to give it something) 

Don’t waste your time. Order a pizza and watch the original instead. 


Cow-a-bunga, dude!

Josh
Picture
1 Comment

Authors Anonymous

5/1/2014

6 Comments

 
Picture
This week for my review page I decided to do something a little different and talk about a movie, rather than a book. I just watched “Author’s Anonymous” on Amazon and I absolutely loved it. Man, these guys really can do everything. Soon they’ll be delivering food and selling cars, hell even the good old stork may be out of business soon...but I digress…

“Authors Anonymous” is a fictional documentary about a writers group, learning about their lives and process. While the movie wasn’t groundbreaking in any way, it gave the old napkin-to-manuscript-to-published-author-tale a clever and quirky twist.

The characters are likable, even though some slightly annoying, but I feel like the film did a great job in portraying several different kinds of writers. Of course, as with every facet of life, stereotypes exist and this collection of writers is no different. They are all awkward and funny and they all share a common dream: becoming famous writers.

Picture
Hannah is a young woman, who never attended college and doesn’t know who Ernest Hemingway is, but she loves writing. In fact, her motto is “Writing Always Comes First”. She has written a book “Sleeping on the Moon” which at the beginning of the movie is picked up by an agent. This, of course, makes the other writers in the group jealous. “Sleeping on the Moon” is picked up by a publisher and later picked up for a movie deal. 

Throughout the movie, she is nice and caring and doesn’t let the fact that she landed a book deal change who she is. (Mostly.) She continues to attend the writer’s group meetings, reading her friend’s work and offering criticisms. She meets a successful author at a book signing and the two hit it off, much to the dismay of another author in the group, Henry. (Which actually turns out to be a good thing for him.)

Of course, after the group finds out she lands a 6-figure deal the jealousy continues and ultimately leads to the break up of their once tightly knit group. 

Henry is a normal everyday guy who is well read in the classics and dreams of becoming a published author. He sits in front of a wall covered in rejection letters and never once lets that get him down. Unfortunately for him, writer’s block has hit hard, preventing him from writing anything on his current novel. He works two jobs, delivering pizza and cleaning carpets, which comes in to play at the end of the movie. He’s always focus on what other famous writers have accomplished, always focused on what they have done, not what he is doing. 

Unbeknownst to the other members of the group Henry has a crush on Hannah, and is in the process of working up the courage to ask her out on a date. Of course, when he actually does, she tells him that that “writing always comes first.” That is until she meets the author at the book signing.  So, one night while Henry is out delivering pizzas he delivers to the author’s house and guess who has the cash...that’s right, you guess it.

Picture
They have a brief exchange, at the end of which Hannah says some pretty mean things about Henry’s writing, which ultimately push him to succeed. (Isn’t that how it always happens?

Colette is a rich housewife who writes cheesy novels that are nothing more than a collection of sexy adverbs and one-liners. She sees herself as the next big thing in romance fiction but her prose is, shall we say, lackluster at best. She is extremely jealous of Hannah’s success and is so convinced that she needs to be an author that she will do anything in her power to become one. Her need to become published defines her and until that happens she feels that she isn’t complete. This drives her to an agent, who suggests her spiritual advisor write a book on his life, and Colette pushes her way into co-author.

Compromise yourself much?

Alan is Colette’s middle-aged husband, an optometrist, who makes more voice memos on a recorder that actually writing. He is completely devoted to his wife and will go to great lengths to see her succeed. Until, she cheats on him with another, younger, member of the group, William.

Picture
William is a poser. A young man who plays the part of a writer, he carries a notebook and listens to people in restaurants but doesn’t do any actually writing. He rewrites the same three pages over and over again and by the end of the movie is calling everyone else in the group fakes as he leaves to find success elsewhere—after sleeping with Colette that is.

And now we come to my favorite character…

John K. Butzin. John is a veteran, and always refers to himself in the third person “John K. Butzin writes high quality fiction.” His idol is Tom Clancy, and he believes his writing is on par with the famous author. He has decided to self-publish his novel, Roaring Lion, becomes completely focuses on his Amazon “ranking” compared to Clancy’s. After some screw-ups on the publisher’s end, and failures in self-marketing, John K. Butzin takes the book on the road for his very own book tour.

I like John K. Butzin, because he is forever the optimist and where other people might have stepped back and thought, maybe I’m not supposed to be a writer he continues marching forward, undeterred. …like me.

The movie makes an small issue with him paying $250 to publish his book, and when he gets the book back from the overseas publisher the cover is horribly wrong (it has a barking dog instead of a lion) and the back cover is in Chinese. There is even a chapter about women and their periods mistakenly added to the book.

I really enjoyed this movie. Of course, my own personal bias toward Indie publishing made me a little resentful of the way the film portrayed self-publishing, but what can you do? Sure John K. Butzin was obsessed with his work and constantly compared it to Tom Clancy, but so what? Why can’t a writer love his work? The only thing that I didn’t like about his tale of self-publishing was the fact that the company messed up the book. It could have been a great book, but because of the quality of the publisher John chose worked with, the book he got back was complete crap—the book, not the story.

Of course, the movie plugged Amazon, how could they not when talking about self-publishing? But they neglected to show how well Amazon and CreateSpace actually work together. Not to mention that the quality of most CreateSpace books is on par with, or better, than most traditionally published books. But the “Big Guys” have to get their jabs in somewhere. I’m actually glad they went after the publisher and not the writer, very classy in my opinion.

I loved the enthusiasm of John K. Butzin, because no matter what, he was extremely positive about his work and regardless of having a tiny yipping dog on the cover of “Roaring Lion” he was undeterred and continued pushing forward.

Picture
Every writer should be excited about their work, no matter which route they choose to go. (Just be sure you do your research and choose a reputable company.)

Okay, the whole point of the movie—and this post—is to say one thing: there’s only one thing that can make you a writer: writing. 

Ideas don’t make authors. Hopes and dreams don’t make authors. Finding an agent doesn’t make authors. Reading about writing doesn’t make authors.

WRITING MAKES AUTHORS.

As always, you can hop over to My Movies to check out this film and many others on Amazon.com. Please check out my Writer's Blog and join in the conversation!

Josh

6 Comments

    Books I Love

    Here you'll find reviews on just a fraction of the books I've read and enjoyed over the years.

    If any of these reviews peaked your interest click the button below to go to my bookshelf and grab your own copy!

    My Bookshelf
    My Movies

    RSS Feed



    Archives

    December 2015
    June 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014

    Categories

    All
    Collections
    Comedy
    Dystopia
    End Of The World
    Film
    Indies
    Mashup
    Movie
    Reviews
    Sci Fi
    Sci-fi
    Shortstories
    Superheros

Proudly powered by Weebly