★ NOW STREAMING ON PARAMOUNT+
Heroes aren’t born. They’re mutated.
Jeff Rowe’s Mutant Mayhem is the best-reviewed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film ever made: a sketchbook-animated coming-of-age story that finally leans into the “Teenage” in the title. This is the deepest record of it anywhere: every score, every character, every secret, and the long road that got it to the screen.
★ THE VERDICT
Critics did not just like it, they called it the best Turtles film ever. The crowd agreed: a 95 percent Tomatometer, an A from CinemaScore, and broad audience approval across every aggregator.
Inventively animated, giddily funny, and a surprisingly authentic take on the outsider experience: it is virtually impossible not to be charmed by these reptilian bros.
Not only a great introduction to the iconic franchise, but a fantastic film in its own right, and one of the best-looking movies of the year.
An unexpectedly delightful challenge to the critic’s reflexive antifranchise mentality.
It oozes confidence, energy, and heart, and represents a new high for the Turtles on the big screen.
Peppy, anarchic, doesn’t talk down to teens, looks scrumdiddlyumptious, boasts an impeccably laconic soundtrack and gives us April O’Neil as we have never seen her before.
The montage set to Blackstreet’s No Diggity might be one of the most beautifully animated sequences of the year so far.
Rogen has made his mark on a franchise that still finds new ways to smartly entertain amid all that mayhem.
The animation is a highlight, but the story and characterization can lack depth.
The screenplay is wildly original in places, a recycled glob of tired cliches in others.
Considering Rogen’s participation as both a writer and actor, it is surprising that Mutant Mayhem plays it so safe, not merely in terms of plot but with regards to its comedy.
On a 70 million dollar budget, a fraction of a Pixar film, Mutant Mayhem opened to 28.0 million over three days and 43.0 million over five, finished its run near 180.5 million worldwide, and Deadline ranked it the fourth most profitable film of 2023. A clear hit, and a sequel was greenlit before it even opened.
★ THE STORY
A spilled vat of mutagenic ooze turns four turtle brothers and a street rat named Splinter into something new. Splinter raises Leo, Raph, Donnie and Mikey in hiding, terrified of a world that fears them, but fifteen years on the boys want only one thing: to walk among humans their own age and be accepted.
When they help a teenage journalist named April O’Neil and decide to win the city over by stopping a mutant crime lord called Superfly, they find the family they always wanted and the temptation to give up on humanity entirely. The film’s real subject is belonging: what it costs to be seen, and what it means to choose people who fear you anyway.
“We wanted it to be like Stand By Me and Lady Bird. But, you know, with Ninja Turtles.” Jeff Rowe, director
★ INTERACTIVE CHARACTER EXPLORER
Tap any character for the voice actor, the backstory, and our read on how faithful the design and role are to the comics, the cartoons and the classic Playmates toys.
★ THE FILM, MOMENT BY MOMENT
The beats the film is built on, walked in order. Click any still to enlarge. Everything from Meeting Superfly on is a spoiler. Tap any scene to play its two-minute clip; where no clip plays, click the still to enlarge.
TCRI sends a strike squad after rogue scientist Baxter Stockman, who has brewed a mutagenic ooze to build a mutant family of his own. The raid goes loud, Baxter dies, and the ooze spills into the New York sewers.
One spill of green goo starts everything.
The ooze mutates four turtle brothers and a street rat named Splinter into something new. Splinter adopts the boys, and after one cruel brush with humanity he raises them in hiding, deep below the city.
A found family, fifteen years in the dark.
Leo, Raph, Donnie and Mikey are teenagers now, and all they want is to walk among humans their own age. The film leans hard into the Teenage in the title: this is a coming-of-age story first, a superhero film second.
The most neglected word in the franchise, finally the point.
The Turtles recover a stolen moped for a high-school journalist named April O’Neil, blowing their cover in the process. She is chasing a tech thief called Superfly, and the Turtles see a way to be loved instead of feared.
Win the story, win the city.
Under the Brooklyn Bridge the Turtles finally meet Superfly, and the shock of their lives: he is a mutant too, leading a whole gang of them. For one giddy night, the brothers belong somewhere.
For the first time, they are not the only freaks in the room.
Bebop, Rocksteady, Leatherhead, Wingnut, Ray Fillet, Genghis Frog, Mondo Gecko and Scumbug. Superfly’s crew is a deep-cut toy-aisle roll call, pulled from decades of comics and cartoons onto the big screen at last.
The whole Playmates shelf, alive and bickering.
The bond curdles fast. Superfly wants to mutate every animal on Earth and let mutants rule over humanity. The Turtles refuse, the gang turns on them, and a TCRI tracker leads straight to the brothers.
Belonging has a price, and Superfly names it.
Captured at TCRI, the Turtles are strapped to Cynthia Utrom’s mutagen-extraction rig. April and Splinter break in to save them, and the family the film has been quietly building finally pulls together.
The rescue that turns four kids into a team.
At the hideout, Splinter and the Turtles convince the other mutants that domination would make them no better than the cruelest humans. The gang turns on Superfly and smashes his machine.
The thesis, said out loud and then earned.
The ooze hits the harbour and fuses Superfly with marine and zoo animals into a city-sized whale-kaiju. The public sees only monsters, and lumps the Turtles in with them.
The price of being seen, paid all at once.
Leonardo steps up as a leader and April beats her own stage fright, commandeering a news broadcast to tell New York the truth about the mutants. The city, at last, decides to help.
Two scared teenagers grow up in the same minute.
With citizens and mutants alike pitching in, the Turtles drop a canister of retro-mutagen down Superfly’s blowhole and turn him back into ordinary animals. New York throws its arms around its heroes.
Accepted, at last, as exactly what they are.
The Turtles reconcile with Splinter and enroll at April’s school, named Eastman High for co-creator Kevin Eastman. For the first time, four mutant brothers get to just be teenagers.
The happy ending is a normal Tuesday.
Mid-credits, Cynthia Utrom watches Leo and April vow to investigate TCRI, decides the Turtles are a bigger threat than she thought, and issues the order that sets up everything to come: bring me the Shredder.
The franchise’s biggest villain, summoned from the dark.
★ THE ROAD TO MUTANT MAYHEM
Seven years from reboot impulse to release, including a total rewrite a year out. Scroll the timeline.
An early draft played more like a straight high-school film and stalled. In July 2022, a year before release, Rogen texted Rowe that it was “fundamentally broken,” and they rewrote and re-boarded the whole thing over four months.
★ CRAFT & ANIMATION
Production designer Yashar Kassai set the brief as draw like you are 15: exaggerated features, spikes, scribbled effect lines. Director Jeff Rowe called the teenage-sketchbook look the film’s North Star, the way the comic-book look was for Into the Spider-Verse.
Mikros built a custom toonshader on top of Arnold so light could be isolated per source and treated with scribbles, cross-hatching and stepping. Pencil lines were 3D ribbons in Maya. Rowe’s rule: if a still frame looks like a 2D painting, we are good.
Classic CG blur and glow were banished and replaced with hand-scribbled motion blur and flares. Cinesite’s supervisor flagged shots that looked too pretty, once telling a right-handed artist to animate fire with her left hand to rough it up.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross wrote their first animated feature score for the film, an acid-bathed industrial sound built to match the gritty sewer setting and the teenage energy of four brothers.
Animation by Mikros Animation and Cinesite; production design by Yashar Kassai; lead character design by Woodrow White; cinematography by Kent Seki; edited by Greg Levitan; score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
★ THE SOUND OF THE SEWER
It was the duo’s first animated feature score: thirty tracks on Reznor’s own label, The Null Corporation, with a deliberate garage-band roughness and song titles like “Murder the Shreks!” and “Better Than Mark Ruffalo.” Around it, music supervisor Gabe Hilfer loaded the film with classic East Coast hip-hop, a playlist Rowe likened to a Tony Hawk soundtrack.
Original score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the full album via YouTube.
★ OFFICIAL TRAILER
Official trailer via Paramount Pictures on YouTube. Embedded with youtube-nocookie for viewer privacy.
★ THE CAMPAIGN & THE PREMIERE
A work-in-progress cut screened at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June 2023 and drew a reported six-minute standing ovation, the loudest early signal that this Turtles film was different.
The flagship tie-in revived a partnership dating to 1990s Turtlemania: Pizza Hut tested deliveries to NYC subway drop zones, ran co-branded spots and built an AR game, Pizza Power, where players delivered pizza under virtual manhole covers.
Extended footage at CinemaCon in April 2023 drew strongly positive reactions, and the official trailer landed May 31. Promotional partners included Xbox, Old El Paso and a fully Mutant-Mayhem-liveried Gol Airlines plane in Brazil.
The world premiere was a family screening on the Paramount lot on July 29, 2023, but the SAG-AFTRA strike barred the voice cast from attending or promoting the film. Director Jeff Rowe carried most of the press tour himself.
★ STAY SEATED · MID-CREDITS
The mid-credits scene opens on a montage: Leo, Raph, Donnie and Mikey settle into Eastman High, try out for musicals, skate and finally go to prom, the dance their heroics made possible.
Woven through the montage, Leo and April record a video declaring their next mission: to dig into the Techno Cosmic Research Institute and whatever it is really hiding.
TCRI’s Cynthia Utrom watches that broadcast, decides the now-public Turtles are a bigger threat than expected, and gives the order that lights the fuse for the sequel: bring me the Shredder.
★ EASTER EGGS & DEEP CUTS
Tap a card to flip it.
★ COLLECT THE MOVIE
The Playmates movie line and the Funko wave, each linked to its full page in our toy catalogue.
Mutant Mayhem 4-Pack Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo in their movie-accurate Playmates basic-figure styling. View & buy → 
Leonardo: The Leader The blue-masked leader as a 4.5-inch Playmates basic figure with katana and accessory rack. View & buy → 
Raphael: The Angry One Raph with his twin sai, in the lime-green movie deco of the Mutant Mayhem line. View & buy → 
Splinter: Master Sensei The self-taught rat sensei, in the Playmates Mutant Mayhem basic-figure scale. View & buy → 
Pizza Fire Delivery Van The Turtles getaway ride with room for all four brothers and a pizza launcher. View & buy → 
Funko Pop! Superfly The movie’s fly-guy crime lord as a numbered Pop! Movies vinyl from the Mutant Mayhem wave. View & buy → ★ THE GALLERY
Official character one-sheets and stills, grouped by chapter. Open a section, then click any frame to view it full screen. Built to take the full screencap set as it grows.
★ FREQUENTLY ASKED
Yes, one mid-credits scene. It runs a montage of the Turtles starting at Eastman High and ends with TCRI’s Cynthia Utrom giving the order: bring me the Shredder, setting up the sequel.
About one hour and thirty-nine minutes, rated PG.
For the first time all four are played by teenagers: Nicolas Cantu as Leonardo, Brady Noon as Raphael, Shamon Brown Jr. as Michelangelo and Micah Abbey as Donatello. Jackie Chan voices Splinter and Ayo Edebiri voices April O’Neil.
Largely in spirit. It roots its look in the gritty Mirage comics and pulls a deep bench of classic mutants onto the screen, while taking big swings with Splinter’s origin and aging April down to a teenager.
Yes. On a 70 million dollar budget it grossed about 180.5 million dollars worldwide, opening to 28 million over three days and 43 million over five, and Deadline ranked it among the most profitable films of 2023.
Yes. A sequel was greenlit before the first film even released, with Jeff Rowe returning and the Shredder as the lead villain, currently dated for 2027. A bridging Paramount+ series, Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, ran in between.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, in their first animated feature score, released on Reznor’s own label The Null Corporation. The film also leans on classic East Coast hip-hop needle-drops.
It played in theaters in 2023 and now streams on Paramount+, with digital purchase and rental available.
★ WHERE TO WATCH
Streams on Paramount+, or own the steelbook 4K.
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