Freshly formed opinion of Next Mutation

[neatoman]

So I just watched Next Mutation in entirety for the first time. I knew it was going to be bad, I just didn't know it was going to be so fascinating in it's badness.

The typical trappings of bad TMNT are there, the annoying take on the turtles, the frequent non-jokes and the generic stories. What really sets it apart though is that I didn't expect the production value to be so awful, especially in the sound mixing. The lip sync is so bad you frequently see the characters taking with gaping or closed mouths. The Sound mixing includes cartoon sound effects in almost every shot, doesn't matter wheter or there's even a joke to prop up, the sound effects just never stop. What's even weirder is that these sound effects often don't match the actions on screen and just seems to have been put in there because the poor bastard given the job to put them in wanted variety, I especially like the strange inclusion of Donald Duck screaming (no, really, that happens).

As for the characters, not much to say. Most of the previously established characters were just less defined versions of what they were in the movies, Dragon Lord and Wick seems to be an attempt to recreate Shredder and Krang from the FW cartoon or Dregg and Mung (not sure which), Silver is pretty lame despite the gimmick, Queese seems like the writers were unsure if they wanted a good guy or bad guy, Vam Mi is just sad and Pathetic.

I honestly don't have much to say about Venus despite the hate from Laird and the fanbase, most of what she does is being clumsy and having a hard time understanding American expressions. She's just a joke that isn't very funny, not really much to hate aside from the idea of a fifth turtle being pointless, sorry. The characters that are the most interesting to talk about are Shredder and Bonesteel. Now Shredder is the most dignified villain of the show, he is never associated with any jokes and seemed like he was going reclaim his role as main villain in a second season. The problem is that his role seems... odd. The reason he's disposed of so early on if that Venus purifies him of his evil and no longer being he can't lead the Foot which causes them to dissolve, yet when we see him later on as a hobo he's still evil and was already in possession of the item that would allow him to return to power, so why was he even out of the game in the first place? Bonesteel is interesting because he's the only character that has something amusing shining through the bad jokes and ill-fitting sound effects, there's something genuinely amusing about a crazy hobo hunter, not that I ever want to see this character ever again but it was nice to see something that could work through all the nonsense.

And then there's the story, it starts off by establishing Venus and the dragons, after that it's mostly episodic stories about the Dragon Lord wanting to capture the Turtles so he can eat them in hopes of mutating, more so than actually wanting to take over the world. If an episode isn't about that it's about Bonesteel wanting to turn the Turtles into trophies, Silver trying to get rich at the Turtles' expense or Vam Mi trying to reclaim her heart. Structurally speaking, it's not that different from many other shows' storylines, it's just that it doesn't end conclusively since it seemed like they banked on a getting second season which resulted in unresolved plot threads. Was Queese going to turn good? Was "Good Dragon" ever going to start a revolt? Was Shredder going to come back? Who knows? It just ends on a clip show after a pointless vampire arc with little connection to the main story.

Then there's the matter of continuity, was it a continuation of the movies? I honestly don't think so, I think they just used the movies as basis for the status quo because they assumed it was the most well known version at the time (which in all fairness, might have been true). I didn't catch direct any reference to the movies aside from Yoshi's murder, Shredder is alive without any mutation, Splinter mentions a long-standing rivalry with him despite how short-lived it was in the movies, Yoshi seems to have been murdered over a magic shuriken rather than Tang Shen and there's no mention of April or Casey. It seems to mostly be it's own thing.

In short, I see why it's considered the "worst" but I can't really say I'm that down on it. It's too short and divorced from anything else in the franchise to really rub me the wrong way, and it's too inept and bizarre to not be entertaining in some kind of "so bad it's good" sorta way.