While 1993’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III didn’t do well enough to warrant a fourth film, the heroes in a half-shell continued unabated in various forms throughout the rest of the 1990s and the 2000s, both in comic books and on screen. The most successful was the animated series, which ran from 1987-1996. That was followed by a live-action series called Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation in 1997, which only lasted a season; a 2007 animated sequel to the three live-action films called TMNT; and two new animated series, one from 2003-2009 and another from 2012-2017 (another would debut in 2018). Plus the Turtles continued to be published in comics from Mirage, as well as Image and more recently IDW.
And then in 2014, a new film was made.
In 2009, Nickelodeon purchased all the rights to the Ninja Turtles, lock, stock, and bo staff. This included an announcement of a new movie in development that Nickelodeon’s parent company Paramount would distribute, and they brought in Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes production company to put the movie together.
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The film was wracked with controversy from the moment Bay’s involvement was announced, as Bay’s reputation for big ‘splosions and spectacle wasn’t entirely compatible with the goofy fun of a TMNT movie. That controversy then blew totally up when details of the planned movie were revealed, including that the Turtles and Splinter would be aliens, and that the movie would just be called Ninja Turtles. Then one of the drafts by Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec was leaked, and it included not only that the Turtles and Splinter were aliens from another dimension (which was full of turtle warriors), but that April O’Neill and Casey Jones were both teenagers, and Shredder was instead Colonel Schraeder, the leader of a black ops unit called “the Foot.” The massive (and completely justified) fan backlash to these reveals caused Bay to backpedal so fast it broke the speed of sound. Evan Daugherty was hired to rewrite the script, and later uncredited drafts were done by Jacob Sullivan and Darius Jackson. The new drafts dropped Jones (saved for the 2016 sequel), returned Shredder and the Foot to their proper selves as an armored samurai warrior and his army of ninjas, made O’Neill an adult, and kept the heroes’ origins as being an actual rat and four turtles who were mutated.
With the march of technology, Bay et al decided to render the Turtles and Splinter with motion capture and CGI rather than animatronics as the previous live-action films did. Pete Ploszek, Jeremy Howard, Alan Ritchson, and Noel Fisher did the motion-capture for, respectively, Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo, with all save Ploszek also providing the voices—Leonardo was voiced by Johnny Knoxville. Danny Woodburn did the motion capture for Splinter, with Tony Shalhoub providing the voice.
Megan Fox played O’Neill, with Will Arnett playing her camera operator Vern Fenwick (a nicer version of the rival reporter from the 1987 animated series), and Malina Weissman playing O’Neill as a child. Whoopi Goldberg, whose daughter is a huge TMNT fan, had been wanting to appear in one of the movies for ages, and finally got to here, as Bernadette Thompson, a gender-flipped version of O’Neill’s boss at Channel 6, also from the 1987 series.
The villains are played by Tohoru Masumune (Shredder), William Fichtner (Eric Sacks), and Minae Noji (Karai).
“Have you seen that video where the cat is playing ‘Chopsticks’ with chopsticks?”
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Written by Josh Appelbaum & André Nemec and Evan Daugherty
Directed by Jonathan Liebesman
Produced by Michael Bay, Andrew Form, Brad Fuller, Galen Walker, Scott Mednick, & Ian Bryce
Original release date: August 8, 2014
An opening voiceover has Splinter telling the four mutated turtles that they must keep training until the time is right, and then they may go out into the world and become heroes.
April O’Neill of Channel 6 is investigating crimes committed by the Foot Clan, a gang of ninjas who have singlehandedly spiked New York City’s crime rate something fierce. O’Neill’s investigation has to be cut short because she’s filming a puff piece in Madison Square Park about a fitness expert. Afterward, she bikes to the docks in Brooklyn to where she thinks the Foot may strike next.
Sure enough, they do, but they’re stopped by a single figure who is strong enough to throw shipping crates around. O’Neill gets a picture, but it’s fuzzy. The vigilante also leaves a Japanese kanji character on a crate.
O’Neill’s boss at Channel 6, Bernadette Thompson, is uninterested in the story. Later, O’Neill covers an event co-hosted by the mayor and by Eric Sacks, head of Sacks Industries, and a former associate of O’Neill’s father before he died. Sacks gives her some encouragement.
Shredder, the head of the Foot Clan, is not happy about the vigilante, who has disrupted their jobs before. His lieutenant, Karai, brings a team of ninjas to take hostages at the Broad Street station in lower Manhattan, hoping to draw the vigilantes out. O’Neill is one of the hostages, and she sees four six-foot-tall talking turtles wielding edged and blunt weapons and making short work of the Foot Clan ninjas.
O’Neill follows them to a rooftop and takes their picture. The Turtles are not happy about that, as they’re supposed to be covert, and they frighten her—but she also is stunned to hear them referred to by their names, which are those of Italian Renaissance painters. Donatello erases the picture from her phone, and they leave.
Going home quickly, O’Neill digs up some old files in her closet. Her father was part of a scientific endeavor called Project Renaissance. They were experimenting on four turtles, and also a rat, in an attempt to perfect a serum that would cure all ills, using an alien substance they’d obtained. But there was a fire that killed O’Neill’s father and destroyed all the research. O’Neill herself was able to rescue the four turtles—who’d been nicknamed Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael—and the rat and send them into the sewers where they’d be safe.
The four turtles were color-coded to identify them, and the four big-ass turtles she just met were each wearing masks the same color as their paint splotch when they were baby turtles. O’Neill is stunned, and manages to put it together that these are the same turtles, all grow’d up, and they’ve been fighting the Foot covertly. The kanji has been left at several crime scenes, and it means “family.” However, when O’Neill tries to explain this to Thompson, she’s met with overwhelming skepticism, and is eventually fired.
Her camera operator, Vernon Fenwick, offers her a lift, and she asks to go to Sacks’s mansion in the mountains. (Fenwick is skeptical with regards to her story of ninja mutant turtle teenagers, but at least he doesn’t laugh at her.) She tells Sacks what she’s learned, and Sacks explains what he and O’Neill’s father were trying to do. He gives her a business card and says to call him if she finds the Turtles, as he’s been unable to replicate her father’s work.
We then learn that Sacks is working for the Foot, a revelation that comes as absolutely no surprise because he’s being played by William Fichtner. He has a tracker on his business card, so as soon as O’Neill finds the Turtles, they’re his.
Splinter catches the Turtles sneaking back into the base, and he’s livid, as he told them not to go out. At first they don’t tell him what they were doing, but eventually Michelangelo gives in, tempted by 99-cheese pizza.
Initially Splinter is upset, but when he finds out that O’Neill is the one who saw them, he instructs them to find her and bring her to him. They do so, and Splinter explains that she rescued them from the fire, and that they grew very quickly to sentience and maturity underground. Someone threw away an instruction book on martial arts that Splinter found, and so he taught himself and then the four baby turtles, in order to give them discipline. The Turtles are astounded that the hogosha, the great guardian spirit who rescued them from oblivion, is O’Neill.
The Foot Clan attacks the headquarters, having traced Sacks’s business card. Splinter is badly injured by Shredder, Raphael is buried under rubble, and the other three Turtles are kidnapped. They’re taken to Sacks’s mountain mansion where he will drain their blood to remove the serum that gives them their strength. Sacks monologues to the Turtles, saying that the Sacks Tower in midtown has a ton of a deadly virus in its rooftop spire. He will release it, tons of people will die, and Sacks Industries will provide the cure—which he’s extracting from the Turtles’ blood.
Raphael and O’Neill need to get to Sacks’s mansion, so she calls Fenwick, who thinks it’s an excuse for a date. He’s rather gobsmacked to meet Raphael, belatedly realizing that O’Neill isn’t crazy and she really did meet a six-foot-tall armed talking turtle.
They drive up the mountain, trashing Fenwick’s Channel 6 van in the process. Raphael, O’Neill, and Fenwick are able to deal with the Foot soldiers (ahem), but Sacks escapes with the serum in a helicopter. O’Neill manages to free the other three Turtles by hitting them with a ton of adrenaline. They steal a truck and drive it down the mountain—not down the mountain road, mind you, but straight down the mountain—at least part of the way being chased by Karai and the rest of the Foot Clan. At one point, Fenwick is too busy staring at O’Neill’s ass (she’s leaning out the window taking pictures) that he crashes into a snowdrift.
However, our heroes manage to find a tunnel that will lead through the sewers to Manhattan. They arrive just as Shredder is about to kill most everyone in Manhattan. The Turtles head to the roof while O’Neill and Fenwick confront Sacks. Sacks shoots Fenwick in the shoulder, but eventually, they are able to take Sacks down and grab the serum. Sacks also admits to killing O’Neill’s father himself.
Meanwhile, the Turtles try to stop Shredder, and aren’t successful until they use teamwork. However, their battle breaks the spire, and it takes all four of them to hold it up. Shredder, who is badly beaten, but not yet defeated, is about to attack them when O’Neill arrives, threatening to destroy the serum—which means Shredder and the Foot Clan will be just as susceptible to the virus. Shredder goes after O’Neill, the Turtles try to save her, and the spire falls, crashing onto another roof. They manage to knock Shredder and the serum off the spire and he falls to his doom. The city is saved.
They bring the serum to the underground HQ and give it to Splinter, who is also saved. He admits that he was selfish in wanting to keep them underground, and gives them his blessing to continue fighting for justice. They now have a tricked out car and everything…
“We’ll drain every drop of their blood, even if it kills them”
It has to take some kind of skill to do a movie about four ambulatory talking turtles with martial arts skills fighting an armored samurai and his ninja warriors and make it boring, but Michael Bay, Jonathan Liebesman, and the army of screenwriters managed it.
This isn’t even a bad movie—it’s just kind of there. There are almost no memorable lines of dialogue, the action is perfunctory, the villains are obvious, and the whole thing is just dull as heck.
It doesn’t help that it’s retreading old ground. There’s no qualitative difference, plot-wise, between this and the same-named film from 1990. Hell, some of the callbacks are deliberate, like O’Neill fainting when she sees the Turtles. But it does everything worse than the ’90 film.
CGI had, by 2014, been advanced sufficiently, especially in conjunction with motion-capture, to make the Turtles realistic enough. The problem is, honestly, they’re too realistic. The Turtles are supposed to be a little bit goofy. Indeed, allegedly Bay sent the movie back for reshoots because there wasn’t enough lightheartedness in it, and so they put in things like the beat-music bit in the elevator as they’re riding up fifty-plus flights to confront Shredder. Out of context, that bit is actually a lot of fun, but it feels crowbarred into the story there, since it’s horribly out of place as they’re about to confront a guy who’s trying to poison an entire city. And indeed, the hyper-realism of the Turtles makes them too nasty-looking for the comedy bits to really work right.
The whole movie is like that, shifting from a silly movie about goofy evolved adolescent martial artist testudines to a dark, violent action movie about vigilantes trying to stop a crime wave. The two tones never mesh and are regularly at odds with each other.
The CGI Turtles are hit-and-miss as well. Mostly, the detail work is excellent—I like that each Turtle has a distinct look beyond the color of their mask, from Raphael’s full bandana rather than a domino mask to Michelangelo’s surfer-dude shell necklace to Leonardo’s button that has the old NYC token logo on it to Donatello’s steampunk-ish accoutrements for his gadgets. But the movements are a little too over-the-top. The fight scenes are more like watching a videogame than actual physical living beings jumping and hitting and kicking and swinging. By this point, CGI had evolved to the point where computer-generated images had mass, but the 1990s movies (especially the third one, where the animatronic turtles used actual martial arts moves) felt more tactile.
It’s funny, the first scene I saw from this movie was a YouTube clip of the final confrontation with Shredder on the roof of the Sacks Tower, and I thought the CGI was awful—once I saw the whole movie, I only felt that way about that bit. Every other scene with the Turtles is in the dark, whether at night outside or in the tunnels beneath the city, or surrounded by precipitation of some kind (either rain or the snow of the mountain). That climax is the only scene in broad daylight without rain or snow, and it does the CGI no favors at all.
It doesn’t help that the script is just awful. While only three writers were credited, at least four other people worked on this, from the original screenwriters hired back in 2009 to the script doctors brought in later, and it’s exactly as awesome as you’d expect a script-by-committee to be. (Not that all scripts-by-committee are like that, of course, but this is a particularly poor example of the breed.) The only intentionally funny lines that land are those uttered by Will Arnett’s Fenwick, leading me to think that perhaps Arnett did a certain amount of ad-libbing.
The acting ranges from decent to mediocre. Arnett’s fun, and Whoopi Goldberg is obviously having a great time just being in a Turtles movie. Tony Shalhoub is perfectly adequate as the voice of Splinter, but I found myself missing Kevin Clash’s stentorian tones from the 1990s movies. The four Turtles are also perfectly adequate. Johnny Knoxville is much easier to take when you don’t have to look at him, and—just as with the previous three—Raphael (here voiced by Alan Ritchson) is the most compelling. All the villains are clichéd and boring, and Megan Fox reads her dialogue competently and stares wide-eyed at things a lot.
While the film was critically panned like whoa, it did well enough at the box office to greenlight a sequel two years later, subtitled Out of the Shadows, which we’ll cover next week.
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest novel is A Furnace Sealed, the debut of his new Bronx-based urban fantasy series “The Adventures of Bram Gold.” Ordering information and an excerpt can be found here.
I found the fact that April had backstory with them as a child and then was the first human to really discover them without any connection between the two interactions just too convenient, even for the heavy suspension of disbelief a movie about teenage mutant ninja turtles requires going in.
I never saw these, thus my childhood is still intact.
MY favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will always involve Up + Up + Down + Down + Left + Right + Left + Right + A + B + Select + Start. Although I preferred the Arcade version. My buddy and i dropped $25 on that game to beat it playing alternate turns. One of the only times in my arcade experience we actually drew a crowd.
I’ll always have a fondness for the Heroes In a Half Shell. This movie seems more like Heroes in a Half-Assed Script.
I love your analysis, Keith! I agree that the 2014 Turtles film was essentially a hot mess, but there were moments where my academic brain lit up a little. The cat playing chopsticks bit served as an interesting commentary on animals doing people stuff, and instances where we think it’s cute (cats) vs. instances where we think it’s bad ass (turtles). Also, the Turtles’ inability to see themselves as basically just bigger versions of the cat is striking because we, as people (and, therefore, animals in our own right), also find a need to separate us doing stuff from “animals” doing stuff because that hierarchy allows us a certain dominance. I also liked how, cinematographically, orange, blue, red, and purple popped up in flashes and flares throughout the film. I dunno. I thought it was a nice nod to the central focus of the movie. None of this is really “in the text,” but, in a movie where I expected to have absolutely nothing to think about, I found I had *nearly* nothing to think about.
Funny thing is the plot point I found most implausible in this whole movie was the fact that Splinter became a ninja master and taught the four turtles out of a freaking book he read. That was the part that really broke my severly-abused-by-then suspension of disbelief.
@@.-@:
Yeah, what happened to Splinter and Shredder having the same master?
I liked this movie a lot more than I expected to (faint praise, but still).
It helps, probably, that I haven’t seen the other movies or the cartoon since I was a kid.
jmhaces: given the superhuman (super-rat? super-turtle?) qualities that the serum gave them in this version of the story (the Turtles are super-strong and bullet-proof here, for one thing), I’m a bit more willing to accept that they could pick up martial arts from a book. Besides, it explains why they know the moves but not the discipline. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Keith, you left out the two most recent animated series — the excellent 3D-animated series that ran on Nickelodeon from 2012-17 and the newest, younger-skewing Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that began in late 2018, also on Nickelodeon.
Malina Weissman would go on to play the child version of another comic-book heroine, Kara Zor-El, on The CW’s Supergirl.
I got the impression somewhere that Fichtner’s Sacks character was originally Schraeder/Shredder, and that the backlash against the whitewashing led to reshoots where his character name was changed and the Japanese Shredder was added. I don’t know if my recollection there is accurate.
It’s not as fun as the original movies, but I had fun watching this one. Totally forgettable, though. Oh, and I too was tempted by the 99-cheese pizza.
I haven’t seen this one, because I couldn’t talk my then-13-year-old into seeing it in the theater. If the teenage target market isn’t interested, something is badly wrong.
Christopher: Thanks for that. I don’t know how I missed those two other animated series. The post has been edited.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Speaking of the 99-cheese pizza, a TMNT fan in Australia was inspired by this movie to actually create a 99-cheese pizza…..
https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/99-cheese-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-pizza/story?id=27647064
I love fandom, man….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
That’s beautiful.
I caught this one on TV about a year ago. I fell asleep part of the way through, and woke up right around where they were making their escape from the mountain. I felt like I hadn’t missed a single plot point (in fact I felt like the movie would have been interminable if I had actually sat through the whole thing). It wound up feeling like a bad episode of a new live-action Turtles TV series. I’ll keep my 90s trilogy, thank you very much.
Yawn. When’s the next real comic book movie review? Something mainstream in Marvel or DC.
@15 in two weeks the first Deadpool movie will be rewatched. If that doesn’t count, in four weeks the rewatch will cover a Flash TV movie
I never saw this movie, and had no idea Will Arnett was in it. I’m not surprised he managed to be funny even in a bad movie, I think he’s amazing, but I’m not sure if my love for him as a comedic actor is enough to overcome everything else wrong with the movie. I doubt I’ll ever actually watch it.
I think the fan backlash is what caused this to be so boring. They tried to do something different, and the fans threw a hissy fit so they backpedaled so hard in trying to pander to the fanbase that they didn’t have any time to put any actual substance in it. (IIRC, the 2K3 Shredder ended up being an alien in a robot suit, basically making him both Shredder AND Krang)
There are a lot of cool ideas that end up going nowhere. April actually knowing them before they mutated, being the one (I think) who actually gave them their names, then being reunited years later, and the movie treats it the same as if this was the first time she ever met the turtles.
Eric Sachs (an obvious Westernization of Oroku Saki) being the Shredder would make more sense with the way they present him than trying to shoehorn some Japanese guy into the role like they did. Despite the claims of Whitewashing, it still could have worked because they established that Sachs has a love of all things Japanese, and his Foot Ninjas are imitating/drawing inspiration from what he learned over there. They could even have kept a Japanese Karai and have her be an adopted daughter.
@18/LazerWulf: “Despite the claims of Whitewashing, it still could have worked because they established that Sachs has a love of all things Japanese, and his Foot Ninjas are imitating/drawing inspiration from what he learned over there.”
Umm, that still is whitewashing, even more than if they just dropped the Japanese elements altogether, because it’s blatant cultural appropriation. Remember the controversy over the new Marvel editor-in-chief, the guy who’d written comics under a Japanese pseudonym and then turned out to be just a white guy who’d lived in Japan? That wasn’t harmless. Something that was celebrated as a step forward in inclusion just turned out to be another entitled white dude appropriating someone else’s culture for his own ends.
And it’s not about whether it “works” in the story The reason whitewashing is bad is because it deprives Asian actors (or writers, in the Marvel case) of employment — it’s a real-life job discrimination issue, so it doesn’t make one bit of difference how the casting is justified in the narrative. It’s not about the intentions of the white guy, it’s about the opportunities available for everyone else.
And come on, what possible reason other than racism could there have been to change Oroku Saki to Eric Sacks in the first place? To make him American? There are millions of Japanese-Americans, so that’s no excuse.
@19 A quick google search gave me the number 1.4 million for Japanese Americans so millions is an exaggeration. I don’t really have a point to make here, but your comment made me Google it because you made me curious since I though millions sounded high based on what I know to be US population and the relative small size of Japan as a country. Carry on.
@20/John: In fact, Japan is roughly the size of the entire US Eastern seaboard states from Maine to Georgia, and has a population nearly 40% the size of the US population. It’s not as small as Americans think.
@19 CLB: “And come on, what possible reason other than racism could there have been to change Oroku Saki to Eric Sacks in the first place? To make him American?” Maybe to just do something different? To try something new and maybe take it in an interesting direction (i.e. 2K3 Utrom Shredder)?
And I’m not saying Cultural Appropriation isn’t wrong, that’s why you have the Villains do it, then you can make it a plot point and point out how wrong it is, making it a teaching point, as well.
But, while we’re on the subject, wasn’t Master Splinter whitewashed, as well? He was *originally the pet of a Japanese Ninjutsu Master (or, as in the case of the original cartoon, he was Master Yoshi, himself), but here he’s being played by a Jewish-American (who thankfully didn’t try to do a Japanese accent), and the character literally appropriated the teachings of the book he found to raise the turtles.
*Edited to add
The Sachs-as-American is probably a good thing though, because the alternative is all the “good guys” being white Americans and turtles who are completely immersed in white American culture, and the “bad guys” being Japanese. What happened here is not in any way comparable to the travesties of the live-action Ghost In The Shell, where a character who is meant to be non-white both physically and culturally is made white just so they could stick an A-list actress in the role (although often the reason for this is also the more condescending “mass audiences can’t understand another culture”). And more succinctly, there’s really no reason for this in a mass-appeal action movie, considering that the market for Hollywood movies is global, and in many cases the asian box office will outperform domestic, particularly if you make sure to have actual asian actors who those audiences know (although I guess it doesn’t help struggling young Asian-American actors if you hire a real Japanese person for your movie). And I don’t think any actor could have saved this movie regardless.
Still, there’s always going to be people looking to find something to offend them.
I watched this when it finally aired on TV and my expectations were so low based on all the criticism it received that I actually thought it was not that bad.
Michael Bay is the new Joel Schumacher. Both have a knack for creating spectacle, both somehow get projects made based on nostalgia for pop culture icons, and both are completely crap at understanding the *heart* behind those icons. And they both have a tin ear for dialogue too.
@22/LazerWulf: “Maybe to just do something different?”
Except that making a character white is the exact opposite of doing something different. It’s doing the same thing that the overwhelming majority of movies throughout American history has done, i.e. telling stories about white people. Doing something different means casting more nonwhite actors, not fewer.
“But, while we’re on the subject, wasn’t Master Splinter whitewashed, as well?”
I don’t think that a mutated rat can be identified with any human ethnicity. If it had been the version of Splinter that was a mutated Hamato Yoshi, as in the 1987 and 2012 series, it would’ve been preferable to go with an Asian actor, but it doesn’t really matter for this version. Although it would’ve been nice to have an East Asian actor doing Splinter’s voice anyway. To date, the only productions that have done that have been the 2007 TMNT (Mako), the 2012 series (Hoon Lee), and the current Rise series (Eric Bauza, who’s also playing Leonardo in the just-announced Batman/TMNT animated movie).
Anyway, there seems to be more acceptance of white or black actors playing Asian characters in animation than in live action (e.g. most of the Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra casts being white, or Samurai Jack being played by Phil LaMarr) — perhaps because Asian-American voice actors like Bauza or Ming-Na Wen get to play non-Asian voice roles as well as Asian ones, so it’s more balanced.
@23/Dedic8ed: “The Sachs-as-American is probably a good thing though, because the alternative is all the “good guys” being white Americans and turtles who are completely immersed in white American culture, and the “bad guys” being Japanese.”
Then surely a better solution would be to include a Japanese good guy, rather than just finding excuses to stay focused on white characters.
And again, American culture does not automatically equal white culture, especially not in a multiethnic, nonwhite-majority city like New York.
“Still, there’s always going to be people looking to find something to offend them.”
It’s not about me, since I’m a privileged white male and have nothing to worry about. It’s about recognizing that the world shouldn’t revolve exclusively around the interests of people like me. That’s not being offended, it’s just listening to people who aren’t like me.
Haven’t seen this version, but the summary makes it sound like an April O’Neil movie instead of a Turtles movie…
Austin: Um, this is a real comic book movie review. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics have been published since 1984.
More to the point, I’ve been doing this rewatch since August 2017. In that year and a half up to last week, I’ve rewatched 30 movies that weren’t either Marvel or DC (out of 111), so I’m not sure why you waited until the 31st to complain. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
For those of you reading #28 and wondering what the 30 non-Marvel and non-DC movies I covered were, they include the four Crow movies, the first three TMNT movies, The Rocketeer, The Phantom, Barb Wire, Tank Girl, the two Judge Dredd movies, the two Mask movies, Mystery Men, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Spawn, the two Spirit movies, the two Hellboy movies, Witchblade, V for Vendetta, the two Kick-Ass movies, Dick Tracy, and the three Men in Black movies. (And yes, DC published V for Vendetta in the States and Marvel published Men in Black after they bought Malibu, but they originated with Warrior magazine and Malibu, respectively, so they don’t count.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Let’s see, just how many publishers does that represent? Going by the Wikipedia entries…
The Crow: Caliber Comics
TMNT: Initially Mirage Studios, but also Archie Comics, Image Comics, and IDW Publishing
The Rocketeer: Pacific Comics, but also Eclipse, Comico, Dark Horse, and IDW
The Phantom: King Features Syndicate
Barb Wire, The Mask, Hellboy: Dark Horse
Tank Girl: Titan Comics
Judge Dredd: Originally IPC Media/Fleetway, currently Rebellion Developments
Mystery Men: Renegade Press, later Dark Horse and Image
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: America’s Best Comics/Wildstorm (a DC subsidiary), later Top Shelf (US) and Knockabout Comics (UK)
Spawn: Image
The Spirit: Register & Tribune Syndicate, but also Eisner & Iger, Kitchen Sink Press, DC, IDW, and Dynamite Entertainment
Witchblade: Top Cow Productions
V for Vendetta: Quality Communications (UK), DC/Vertigo (US)
Kick-Ass: Icon Comics (a creator-owned Marvel imprint), also Image
Dick Tracy: Tribune Content Agency
Men in Black: Malibu, later Marvel
Wow, that’s more publishers than I expected. Dark Horse and Image are the ones with the most entries, though all the Image ones were originated elsewhere.
@27 A common complaint with Michael Bay movies. He always seems to put too much emphasis on ancillary characters. I think it is a side effect of him going all in on the CGI, possibly he thinks he has to put too many scenes in with non-cgi characters to defray costs. He has the same problem with his Transformers movies.
@22: Tony Shalhoub is a Lebanese-American, not Jewish.
@32, possibly conflating the actor with his most recent role, Abe Weissman on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
I have to say that it is a credit to your writing that I enjoy reading a review of a movie even though I have absolutely no interest in it whatsoever, and wouldn’t have even if you’d liked it. I don’t object to goofy. After all, Bob Burden’s Flaming Carrot is one of my favorite comic book characters. Someone will do a Flaming Carrot movie around the time that the sun turns into a red giant, but if someone did while I was still alive, I’d go see that.
@34/BillReynolds: Well, there is Mystery Men, based on supporting characters from Flaming Carrot.
@34 – Bill: Never say never, there’re so many comic book properties being adapted to TV and movies these days…