Fanboys Anonymous

The second official trailer for the hotly anticipated, Michael Bay–produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot dropped last night. While much of the trailer is comprised of footage we've already seen (namely, the entire first half), the big reveal is our first real glimpse at all four of our favorite pizza-eating reptiles who are named after famous Renaissance artists.


The new designs for Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo are briefly shown before each fade to black, with the most screen time awarded to Mikey. As a lifelong Turtles fan, I've got to admit that so far I'm liking what I'm seeing. The costume design for the heroes isn't uniform like in previous iterations of the characters—think back to the Jim Henson live-action costumes we all know and love—but instead attempts to reflect their individual personalities. The most notable are skateboarding bro Michelangelo, with his dudetacular shell necklace and bead bracelets, and Donatello, the Turtle who's tragically famous for "doing machines," with his nerdy taped-up tortoise shell (wink!) glasses and whatever new technological wonder he's dreamed up strapped to his back.





The motion capture suits used for the CGI turtles in this go-around are working well enough against the real-life background that I'm able to suspend my disbelief, at least for this minute-and-a-half long trailer. Only time will tell if the final renderings are fluid and believable or clunky and cartoonish, as in Bay's Transformers films. Speaking of Transformers, while I was not pleased with Megan Fox's casting, I do like the costume decisions that have been made, particularly the yellow leather jacket. Fans of the original 1980s cartoon will appreciate the homage to April O'Neil's classic yellow jumpsuit (Seriously though, what was that all about?).

Remember these guys?

Just as in the first one, this second trailer hints that April's father and the Shredder are somehow involved in the creation of the Ninja Turtles. We have known for a while that some fresh tweaking of the original story was going to be done, much to the contention of fans worldwide. All in all, I'd say my interest is definitely piqued. While I'm generally not a fan of Michael Bay's work, I haven't seen anything yet that has made me give up hope in this film. Let's face it; we fans would come out in droves to see anything with the TMNT in it, and Hollywood knows that. Here's hoping they don't disappoint.