The Big Picture

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a brand-new take on the beloved turtles, with actual teenagers voicing the heroes and facing real-world problems. The film explores the turtles’ desire to live normal lives and be accepted by society, challenging their secret savior status in New York City. The creative team took big swings in both the story and art direction of Mutant Mayhem, creating a unique and exciting iteration of the ’80s classic franchise.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem made its theatrical debut on August 2, 2023. The film reintroduces the Heroes in a Half-Shell in a brand-new way. For the very first time, Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael are voiced by actual teenagers and facing real-world problems on top of a mutant apocalypse. The creative team behind Mutant Mayhem took some big swings both within the film’s story and its art direction.

The TMNT are notoriously the secret saviors of New York City, using their ninja skills to stay hidden, with only a few humans even aware of their existence. Mutant Mayhem confronts this head-on as the turtles’ only desire is to live normal lives and be accepted by society. In this interview promoting the release on Paramount+ and home video, director Jeff Rowe (The Mitchells vs the Machines) breaks down what went into making this new take of an ’80s classic as well as the future of the franchise moving forward.

MICHAEL THOMAS: I wanted to start with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. It’s coming out on physical media on December 12th. It’s been a long journey from the start of production to now, and you guys created one of the best movies of the year, in my opinion. What was your favorite moment from the start of production to now working on this movie?

JEFF ROWE: That’s a great question. There’s so many, like recording Jackie Chan was insane, recording Ice Cube was hilarious, recording all four kids together was delightful. The mix stage was like a tired, fun dance party, just listening to Trent and Atticus tracks on the big speakers and dancing and being delirious from lack of sleep. It was so fun. The first time our production designer, Yashar Kassai, showed us a 3D test of our style in 3D, we were like, “That’s the coolest thing we’ve ever seen. Oh my god! Can the movie look like that?” I’ve been really lucky to have had three years filled with amazing, memorable moments.

That’s fantastic. I’m glad you mentioned the art style and everything that went into this. This feels like the 40th iteration of the Ninja Turtles. It’s been a lot, but you somehow manage to make it feel new and exciting, but it still harkens back to the classic comics, the classic series. When you were approaching the Turtles themselves—we all know Donatello does machines, Michelangelo is the party dude—in this version, it feels like they’re more well-rounded characters. There’s more to their personality, so what went into that approach to making a new version of the Turtles?

ROWE: That was important to me. I think it just kind of comes from my taste in art, which is like relatability, naturalism, realism. You know, I was a nerd in high school, I was a Donatello, and I was nowhere near close to building machines or making robots or ever saying, “By my calculations, if we mix this chemical with this, this will happen…” My nerdiness expressed itself as going on discussion boards on the internet to try and find episodes of Dragon Ball Z that weren’t available in the United States yet. It was this intense fan obsession with anime or roller coasters or music or different things that ate up a lot of my brain power, and we kind of conceived of Donnie as that, the specific version, the relatable version, someone you know of the archetype. We tried to do that for each of the characters just to ground them and make them relatable to audiences.

That leads me to another question. We know you have a sequel series and another movie in the works; are we gonna see Donatello start making his giant robots?

ROWE: I mean, I have no idea what’s happening with the series, but I think it’s a thing for Donnie to start exploring. I think he needs to come at it with a very realistic, grounded teenage aptitude for robot building. But he can get there. He’ll learn fast.

Yeah, he seems like he’s a quick learner.

ROWE: Yeah, he’s a quick learner.

Image via Paramount Pictures

This is something that I’ve been dying to ask you. We had this character in this film, now that we can talk spoilers, Cynthia Utrom. Turtle fans recognize the name, and her character design is very distinct. What’s her deal? Why is she obsessed with these turtles and the secrets of the Ooze? Can you tell us?

ROWE: I don’t think I can tell you, but I think people might know. I think people might be on to something. I would say the name is not an accident, and Cynthia might be hiding a lot of secrets and might be more than what she seems. That’s just something to look into in the next film.

Awesome. Jackie Chan played Master Splinter and I really enjoyed this version of Master Splinter. He usually has one of two origins: he’s Hamato Yoshi turned into a rat, or he is the pet of Hamato Yoshi who gets mutated, right? This one, he’s very much self-taught. It’s very different from the classic interpretations of Splinter. What led to radically changing Splinter and his relationship with the Turtles? It’s more of a family dynamic than ever, I think.

ROWE: I think part of it was we needed to give some logic to the story mechanisms, and it’s like, ooze, does it turn humans into animals or animals into humans? Because in the original series, it does both. It takes a human man and makes them into a rat man, and it takes baby turtles and turns them into humanoid turtles, and we’re like, “It should just do one thing. It turns animals into humanoid animals. That’s simple. We can follow that. That logic tracks across the film. That’s what we’re committing to. Therefore, Splinter has to start as a rat.” So that eliminates one category of options right there.

Then we’re like, “Well, we get a lot of emotion out of him having just lived as a rat in New York…” not being a pet rat, not having a loving Sensei father; he’s just the most hated creature on the planet. For him to carry a lot of trauma from that and animosity towards humans, it really started to give us an arc in a conflict between him and his sons, who love the human world and want to be in it. It was just so valuable from a character standpoint that we took a swing and we tried it, and we’re like, “This really works.” We hope fans will forgive us the chances that we’re taking.

Image via Nickelodeon

I think those chances ultimately paid off. It does make Splinter this very sympathetic character because you understand where he’s coming from the entire movie. He’s not just this stern father figure who doesn’t want his sons to be happy. He’s trying to protect them from the hardships he’s faced, so I thought that was really great touch. That kind of does lead me to this question, though, because you just mentioned that you made that big swing. There’s another big swing at the end of this film; we get our first look at the Shredder, and we know Splinter and Shredder’s history. So what’s it gonna be like introducing this character to this new universe where the Turtles are in high school now, so many things are different. What’s your approach next?

ROWE: That is exactly what I am trying to figure out and what my next meeting will be about. That is what we are in the thick of now. Shredder is just a great character. He’s an iconic, classic, loved character. He’s like the Joker. You know who he is, even if you’re not a fan of the source material. I think we definitely wanna do a villain-forward film. We’re currently trying to make decisions about that, but those decisions for us as filmmakers are always going to come from the place of what tells the best story, specifically about our main characters, the Turtles.

I’m excited to see what you do as somebody who’s been, again, a fan of the Ninja Turtles my entire life. This film radically changed so many things by the end of it. The core of it is still very much what we’re used to, but having it be about acceptance and that journey of self-discovery and them being accepted, and then we actually got the payoff of that happening. What led you down that path of, “Yeah, they’re gonna actually be high schoolers and accepted in society in a way that they’ve never really been before?”

ROWE: It’s so interesting. The very first version of the film was sold to Paramount as a high school movie. The Turtles used to arrive in high school on page 30 of the script, and then they were in high school through most of it. We had a whole version of that film that was pretty decent, but we’re like, “It’s just Turtles in high school. It’s kind of boring.” And also, they wanted to be normal is the number one thing that they wanted, and they got it, like, way too early in the movie, and we’re like, “Wouldn’t the story be way more compelling if we just put that at the end, and it’s a thing that they’re just working so hard to get to the entire time?”

I think acceptance is a very teenage thing to want, or when you’re a teenager, you want that more than anything. You just want to feel like you belong and people aren’t judging you and making fun of you, and you just want to feel like you have a community. So it was like a universal, relatable want that also felt quintessentially teenage. I think that’s kind of why we settled on that. Also, it was a thing that, like, yeah, realistically they’re mutant turtle monsters. That’s difficult for them to believe that they can find…

That sense of community. It’s very hard when you’re a mutant creature. Splinter is having trouble in the dating apps for that very reason.

ROWE: [Laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Image by Annamaria Ward

I think I’ve got, like, 40 seconds left, so I’m gonna ask you a very simple question. What is the best Ninja Turtles theme song?

ROWE: Classic. I’m, like, all about the classic, “Teenage, Mutant, Ninja, Turtles…” It’s iconic.

It is.

ROWE: Wait, what do you think? What’s yours?

It’s definitely iconic. I love all of them. I like the 2012 remix of it, where it’s kind of like a hip-hop beat to it. But again, that’s just riffing off the original anyway, so you can’t beat the classics.

ROWE: Yeah, exactly.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem After years of being sheltered from the human world, the Turtle brothers set out to win the hearts of New Yorkers and be accepted as normal teenagers through heroic acts. Their new friend, April O’Neil, helps them take on a mysterious crime syndicate. Release Date August 2, 2023 Director Jeff Rowe, Kyle Spears Cast Rose Byrne, Seth Rogen, Giancarlo Esposito, Jackie Chan, Paul Rudd Main Genre Animation Genres Animation, Adventure, Action
Watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem on Paramount+