The Most Bizarre Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Plot Still Bothers Me 10 Years Later

Summary The 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie confused fans by initially casting William Fichtner as Shredder, then changing to Tohoru Masamune.

Recasting Shredder in the 2016 sequel added to the confusion and showed a lack of direction in the handling of this iconic character.

The Shredder character change could have led to a better story, but the mishandling of the villain hurt the movies in the long run.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-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. When Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arrived 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 numerous Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles adaptations. With not all created equal, I'm still baffled by a few things about the Michael Bay movies.

As The Boys proves, the most powerful superhero stories are sometimes the least serious. Leaning into the innate silliness of the genre to make satire-tinged content is part of what made the comics work, and is what made 2023's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem so good. Despite its jokes, the live-action 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie took itself quite seriously. This wasn't necessarily its downfall, but its treatment of Shredder mystifies me to this day.

Related 20 Most Powerful Turtles in TMNT Canon (Ranked) The original Ninja Turtles are the most iconic in the franchise, but they're not the only ones in TMNT history. Here are the most powerful, ranked.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Shredder Actor Confusion Could’ve Been Avoided

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Could Have Cast Masamune Originally

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There was a lot of confusion over who would play Shredder in the 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, which definitely could have been avoided. In June 2013, William Fichtner, who played evil scientist Eric Sacks, told Huffpost TV Canada that he would be playing Shredder in the upcoming movie. Fichtner was reported to be playing Shredder in other casting news too, and there 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 to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is 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 to news 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. The Shredder casting confusion that 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 movie and 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, titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin, is 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 company Platinum Dunes squandered this opportunity to 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 sequel to Teenage 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's new Shredder costume was 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 that this team never knew what to do with Shredder. Masamune's relatively unknown status could have been what prompted Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to 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.

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That's a lesson that future adaptations of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics would do well to learn. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem used 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 (2014) Where to Watch stream

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buy Not available Not available Not available *Availability in US 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. Director Jonathan Liebesman Release Date August 8, 2014 Studio(s) Nickelodeon Movies , Platinum Dunes , Gama Entertainment , Mednick Productions , Heavy Metal Distributor(s) Paramount Pictures Writers Josh Appelbaum , André Nemec , Evan Daugherty Cast Megan Fox , Will Arnett , Jeremy Howard , Johnny Knoxville , Alan Ritchson , Noel Fisher , Tony Shalhoub , Tohoru Masamune , Minae Noji Runtime 101 Minutes Expand

Sources: Huffpost TV Canada