Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem - Turbine Collector Series 3D Blu-ray

As I already reviewed this film on 4K a mere two years ago, I won’t waste much space reiterating further what I already said once: I had a blast with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. In the interim, I’ve watched it many more times thanks to my little boy who gets a kick out of the hip-hop-infused soundtrack (the kid has taste, what can I say?). From comics to cartoons to video games to films, the Ninja Turtles have gone through countless iterations, TMNT: Mutant Mayhem and its subsequent spinoff animated series is just the latest iteration. Hell, we’re even getting a live-action TMNT: Last Ronin film! The point is, this isn’t going to be the last franchise refresh we see for these characters, but I’m grateful it’s this good and I can’t wait to see what happens in the sequel. 

Now here’s what I had to say back in 2023

Why does Hollywood love to revisit its beloved franchises again and again? As we’ve seen many times in the last few years, when it goes wrong, the “new” version can suck on toast. But as we’ve also seen (perhaps less often), when it goes right, it can be genuinely amazing and fans eat it up like a fresh-baked double cheese and extra pepperoni. So how do you reignite the aged Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise after six films and countless video games, a live-action television series, and too-numerous-to-count cartoons? Apparently, all you needed was writer/producer duo Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg with co-writer and director Jeff Rowe and Kyler Spears to rock our favorite Shell-Shocked Pizza Kings. 

For Michaelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello (Shamon Brown Jr, Nicholas Cantu, Brady Noon, and Micah Abbey respectively), life in the sewers can be a pretty big adventure. You get a lot of privacy. Virtually every tunnel is a rock’n halfpipe waiting to be shredded, and you can even get a pretty good Wi-Fi single. While everything is fine and good down in the muck, the brothers long to rise to the surface and live among the humans. Maybe I didn’t mention that part, these boys are turtles. Teenage, mutant, ninja, turtles to be precise and they’ve lived underground with their mutant rat father Splinter (Jackie Chan) their whole lives. Through a chance encounter with the burgeoning school reporter April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri), the boys will have their chance to become heroes when the giant mutant Superfly (Ice Cube) and his gang of critters threaten all of New York City. 

At 41, I’ve been a TMNT fan going on 36 years now. I remember being wowed by every episode of the classic series every day after kindergarten. After hunting every toy store in town for ages, I remember finally finding my first actual Turtle figure (Leonardo) in a toy bin at a mom-and-pop hardware store, of all places. I remember going to Pizza Hut and hearing that classic theme song blast over the restaurant from the giant four-player arcade machine where I lost uncountable numbers of quarters. I still remember opening that NES arcade port on Christmas morning (I’d asked Santa for the actual arcade machine but I guess that didn’t fit on the sleigh). Through every movie, through every series reincarnation, I’ve been right there for it. Okay, well maybe not the live-action show, which just got weird when they gave Venus turtle boobs, just the same I never stopped being a Turtle fan.

After the last two live-action films produced by Michael Bay that ranged from “pretty damn bad” to just “alright,” I only hoped for a “decent” TMNT movie to come along. I didn’t expect or even want it to cater to my nostalgic middle-aged man-child want for those badass Jim Henson puppet suits. I just wanted it to feel true to the characters Eastman and Laird birthed in Dover, New Hampshire so many decades ago. Thanks to Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and co-directors Jeff Rowe and Kyler Spears, I got what I wanted to see in a new Ninja Turtle adventure with Mutant Mayhem. 

The film was a blast from start to finish with a new take on the classic origin story for our half-shelled heroes and a big new villain with Ice Cube’s Superfly. The voice cast of actual teenagers is a huge highlight. Shamon Brown Jr, Nicholas Cantu, Brady Noon, and Micah Abbey make each turtle their own giving the sibling teenage dynamic plenty of vigor. After years of Shredder and the Foot Clan, it was a big breath of fresh air for the franchise to not rehash old ground right out of the gate. Superfly and his cohorts Rocksteady, Bebop, Leatherhead, Wingnut, Mondo Gecko, Ray Fillet, and Genghis Frog (John Cena, Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Natasia Demetriou, Paul Rudd, Post Malone, and Hannibal Buress respectively) have a real mission that’s a threat to the city giving our boys their best hope to become heroes.

We see a new Baxter Stockman (Giancarlo Esposito) as the catalyst for our heroes’ creation with a malevolent corporate overlord Cynthia Utrom (Maya Rudolph doing her best Helen Mirren) lurking in the background. The film even offers up a hilariously brilliant switcheroo for how Splinter and the boys became sewer-dwelling martial arts masters. Recasting Ayo Edebiri’s April O’Neil as a high school-aged student reporter was a fun move making her friendship with the Turtles more impactful and relatable as a gang of social misfits. Not to leave everything to character development, the action sequences are exciting and the final showdown is a true hoot. Throw in an excellent Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score and you have a visually and auditorally stunning flick.

All of the great action, story direction, and writing in Mutant Mayhem wouldn’t be worth a gallon of pizza grease without a talented team of art designers. Woodrow White, Julez Itzkoff, Adel Sabi, Justin Runfola, and Garrett Lee under the art direction of Arthur Fong and Tiffany Lam Almack did an amazing job bringing this new iteration of the Turtles to life. An homage to the gritty unpolished vibe of Eastman and Laird’s original comics, the film also feels like the kind of drawings and doodles my friends and I would do when we were kids. When we should have been paying attention in class, we’d be creating our own new mutant characters with stubby worn-down-tooth-marked pencils.

Sure, the greatness of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem could be endlessly debated among the legion of fans out there, but for this OG fan, I was more than satisfied with it. In fact, it’s in my top three Turtles movies next to the first two live-action films. At my age, it starts to feel a little weird catching these films alone in theaters (in 3-D too) without my son in tow. He’s in a Godzilla phase right now and the Turtles aren’t his thing, yet. Essentially, this is a kid's movie but the 40-plus-year-old fans that spawned said kids can enjoy it too. A modest success in theaters, I hope Paramount really does get to work on a sequel so this series doesn’t prematurely die out. We didn’t need a third Michael Bay-produced film - we needed this. Give us more of this! Also, I wouldn’t mind a Sony Spider-Man-styled video game for this version of the Turtles. Just saying, I’d play the hell out of that game. 

Vital Disc Stats: The 3D Blu-ray 
At long last, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem comes home to 3D Blu-ray as a single-disc release from Germany’s Turbine. The 12th entry in their growing Turbine Collector Series 3D Blu-ray run, the film is pressed on a Region Free BD50 disc and housed in a clear case with reversible artwork. The disc loads to an animated main menu with a basic navigation system letting you switch between language options or just start the film. If your setup is 3D ready, the 3D kicks in automatically. There is no anaglyph option. 

Hot damn, I’m so glad this day is here where I can reexperience this film as I saw it in theaters in all three dimensions. Given the stylized “sketch-book” quality of the animation and characters, there was plenty of opportunity for some exciting three-dimensional visuals. At home, not only has that quality carried over, but I have to say this disc offers an even more effective 3D experience than what I enjoyed in the theater! The problem with a lot of theaters is if their projector bulbs start to fade, it can impact the 3D experience. The worst time I ever had of that was Thor: Ragnarok, which was so dark I had to get my money back. In the theater I thought Mutant Mayhem looked pretty damn good, but this is even better! The trick for this film is that it already is a pretty dark-looking flick. Dark muddy brown is kind of a prevailing color scheme, so if your screen or projector isn’t at optimal brightness, the 3D experience might suffer. As soon as I popped this disc in, I felt like that deep depth that was pretty darn good in the theater was working on a whole different level. Even the simplest moments felt like they displayed more depth and space than I remembered. The depth of various locations and big city-wide establishing shots really kicked! During the big action sequences and the big third-act climax, the 3D effect was layered beautifully for a lot of visual excitement! Colors weren’t impacted by the glasses. Details in the animation were still sharp and clear. For my kid’s sake I’ll probably keep to 2D viewings, but I’m very happy to have this disc in my 3D collection. Another excellent transfer for this series.

On the audio side we have what sounds like the same Dolby Atmos mix from the 4K release two years ago. The German track is default, but it’s no big issue to switch over to English either in the main menu or during playback. The voice work, action sound effects, the slick Reznor/Ross score, the banger soundtrack all hit with the same vibe as the 4K disc. Doing a little disc flipping, I really didn’t notice any difference, at least nothing that was immediately perceptible or noteworthy, so I’ll let my old thoughts stand. 

On the audio side, Mutant Mayhem works up some sonic mischief with a dynamite Dolby Atmos audio track. This is a BIG-sounding film letting those front, side, rear, and height channels get plenty of attention. At times the soundscape feels pretty front/center focused but the side, rear, and height channels kick in to give the Reznor/Ross score room while adding some extra ambient atmospherics. Between echo effects and dripping water sounds in the sewers to punching up the great classic and contemporary funk songs, heights are almost always engaged in some function. When the action starts, there’s plenty of hyper-active pin-point activity throughout the soundscape. LFE also puts plenty of rumble in the subs. I mean, it has a score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross so that’s expected, but explosions and big heavy impact effects really land. It might not be on the scale of something like Top Gun: Maverick but if you want a damn fun flick to show off your audio system for, this is a good candidate.

Nothing here, which is par for the course for the Turbine Collector Series discs. The point is to get these films in 3D in the best quality possible and that’s the case here. Also, it’s not like the standard 2D Blu-ray and 4K discs offered a plethora of interesting content to start so not having those slim few featurettes isn’t a huge loss.

Leo, Donny, Mikey, and Ralph have gone through a number of crazy redesigns and concepts over the years. Mutant Mayhem is just the latest version but it works like gangbusters! The animation style feels alive and vibrant, like the kind of drawings I used to do in my own art books as a kid. The voice actors are in excellent form as the story reintroduces audiences of all ages to the heroes in a half-shell. Thanks to Turbine and their Collector Series of 3D Blu-ray discs, we finally get to enjoy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem at home in all three dimensions. The 3D transfer was better than what I remembered from my theatrical outing for an impressive home experience complete with that absolute banger of an Atmos audio mix. If you’re a fan of the film and 3D - Highly Recommended! 

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