Summary
TheTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtleslive-action movies brought something new to the franchise, but there is one addition to the story that should have stayed on the cutting room floor. WhenTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesarrived in comic book form in 1984, I don’t think anyone could have said that it would be the phenomenon that it is today. Four giant turtles don’t scream breakout success, at first glance. But the franchise’s popularity led to numerousTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesadaptations. With not all created equal,I’m still baffled by a few things about the Michael Bay movies.
AsThe Boysproves, the most powerful superhero stories are sometimes the least serious. Leaning into the innate silliness of the genre to makesatire-tinged content is part of what made the comics work, and is what made 2023’sTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhemso good. Despite its jokes,the live-action 2014Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesmovietook itself quite seriously. This wasn’t necessarily its downfall, but its treatment of Shredder mystifies me to this day.
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Shredder Actor Confusion Could’ve Been Avoided
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Could Have Cast Masamune Originally
There was a lot of confusion over who would play Shredder in the 2014Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesmovie, which definitely could have been avoided. In June 2013, William Fichtner, who played evil scientist Eric Sacks, toldHuffpost TV Canadathat he would be playing Shredder in the upcoming movie.Fichtner was reported to be playing Shredderin other casting news too, andthere was a growing public concern that a white actor would play the traditionally Japanese character. I also wasn’t sure about this casting.
A sequel toTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhemis in the works for a 2026 release.
Eventually,Fichtner was recast as Sacks, who worked with Shredder in the movie. This was likely impacted by the public reception tonews of Fichtner’s Shredder casting. Oroku Saki as Shredder was the original story’s critical rooting in Japanese Samurai tradition. Having Fichtner play a scientist called Sacks, who turned out to be Shredder, would have been as good as creating an original character and giving him Shredder’s name. Shredder was the iconic villain that helped popularize the franchise, so I don’t know why Bay and his team initially considered this huge retcon.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Shredder Change Hurt The Movie
Masamune Was A More Popular Shredder
The first mistake of the Jonathan Liebesman-directed movie was retconning Shredder’s whole character; the second was going public with this, and the third was backtracking on their retcon and recasting Shredder to be Oroku Saki after all. TheShredder casting confusionthat led Liebesman and Bay to recast Fichtner as Sacks saw them instead employ Tohoru Masamune as Shredder.I am a fan of Masamune’s portrayal in this movieand tentatively glad it went with the original Shredder, but this change hurt the movie.
A new live-action movie based on a 2020 comic miniseries titledTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Roninis being worked on.
While I think that Shredder’s heritage was important in his character and the eventual recasting of Shredder could have led to a better movie overall, production companyPlatinum Dunes squandered this opportunityto make a glorious entry to the franchise. The recasting led to ample replanning and reshooting, which wasted the movie’s resources and muddied the waters of its vision. Including both Sacks and Saki diluted the potential power of what could have been a focused story about the scientist Sacks or a story about Oruki Saki, the Foot Clan leader.
TMNT: Out Of The Shadows Didn’t Know What To Do With Shredder Either
Shredder Was Recast For TMNT: Out Of The Shadows
As if this mishandling of the series' main villain wasn’t enough,Bay and company then recast Shredder again for the sequeltoTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Liebesman and his crew, while planning for their 2016 sequel,Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, saw fit to replace Masamune with Brian Tee in their next iteration of Shredder.Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2’snew Shredder costumewas a little more true to the source material and the villain that most fans knew, but it didn’t explain this change.
I don’t make a habit out of complaining about recasting. It’s a necessary evil, sometimes actors leave, sometimes they’re unavailable, sometimes it just makes sense. But miscasting Shredder and subsequently recasting him hurt the 2014 movie enough, then the sequel’s casting of Brian Tee showed thatthis team never knew what to do with Shredder. Masamune’s relatively unknown status could have been what promptedTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesto hire the better-established Brian Tee. And I like Tee and his work in this movie, but handling this villain right from the start would have been ideal.
That’s a lesson that future adaptations of theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtlescomics would do well to learn.Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhemused Superfly for its villain, leaving Shredder out of most of its plot. This actually worked. The movie wasn’t trying to manage through an awkward compromise between two characters that it had wrongly scripted out, plus it allowed this movie to build towards having Shredder in its sequel. This logical progression toward an even more epic villain points to a Shredder I’m looking forward to seeing.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Cast
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a 2014 reboot of the classic superhero franchise by director Jonathan Liebesman. When Channel 6 reporter April O’Neil begins to track the activity of the elusive and dangerous Foot clan, she stumbles upon four humanoid turtles who fight to protect the city from the shadows.
