TMNT picks up the story of the shelled foursome after they’ve defeated The Shredder. According to a synopsis provided by Warner Bros, their rat sensei – Master Splinter – is trying to keep them together as a family while worrying about strange happenings in New York City. Max Winters, a tech-industrialist, is plotting to take over the world using an army of monsters. Since this is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, it’s easy to figure out which fighting foursome will be called into action to keep the world safe.
Interview with TMNT Writer/Director Kevin Munroe
Bringing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie Franchise Back to Life: “It’s awesome. It’s really fun. It’s been a little bit of a wait but it’s a fun wait because being a fan myself, I just want to do the movie [right]. I was saying earlier that there’s the Turtles that you have in your head when you think about the first movie. A lot of fans think about reading the comic for the first time. It’s just this visceral experience. It’s just big and fun and when you look at it, the memory’s probably stronger than the actual story. It’s like anything. You go back to whatever, the original Adam West as Batman and it was a lot more fun. You watch it now and you go [said in a disappointed tone], ‘Wow….’ It happens with anime all the time. I go back to Speed Racer and I’m like, ‘I thought this was so much cooler.’
This movie’s all about going back and having that memory and then chasing that memory with the way that we’re doing this movie, and delivering the way that everybody remembers it being. Just like this big action, big adventure, with this really great core story of a family at the center.”
The Tone of the New Turtles Movie Versus the Previous Films: “I wouldn’t say that we’re going more serious than the original films, but my big thing is that I really wanted to go for believability. And believability doesn’t mean realistic. To me it’s establishing this world – because at the end, it still immediately gets yanked out because you’ve got these four talking turtles. But if you play your cards right, by the time you see that first turtle you’re like, ‘I buy it. I know that he can exist in this world.’ And so that’s really what we’re chasing after with this.”
Kevin Munroe’s Been with the Project for Years: Asked when he first became involved in TMNT, Munroe said, “I was the first one in the room. A lot of times with feature animation especially, I’ve spoken to executives and they buy an idea, they develop a story, they develop a script, they develop visuals and then once they have all the approved then they go and get a director and they bring him in. It’s the most frustrating thing. I mean animation is just like – they just don’t know how to treat directors. PIXAR does a beautiful job with it. They’re like bar none the exception for everything. But with this, Imagi [Entertainment] took a really great step in that they said, ‘Just bring in the creative seed,’ and that was, I guess, me at the beginning. And it was just me in a room and I brought in an old friend who I’d worked with for years. The both of us started hammering out the story with Peter Laird. We developed the treatment in October of 2004. We developed the treatment for like maybe six months and then went to script. At the same time, we did the teaser trailer that we used to go out to the studio to sort of set it up. So yeah, it’s been since October 2004. I’d say we’ve been working solid.”
Article Continued on Page 2: Kevin Munroe on His Favorite Turtle and the Target Audience
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Kevin Munroe Interview Video #1 - The Rebirth of the Turtles Movie Franchise and the Film's Tone
Kevin Munroe Interview Video #2 - The Audience, the Rating, and His Favorite Turtle
