ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Co-Creator Kevin Eastman about the newest film in the franchise, Mutant Mayhem. Eastman spoke about the new take on the Turtles and the series’ legacy with video games. The film is now available to buy or rent on Digital.
Tyler Treese: We’ve seen so many variations of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles over the years, and you can really feel Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s hands all over this, and it really leans into the teenager aspect. What stood out the most about this new take on the characters for you?
Kevin Eastman: So many things on so many levels. Not only the grassroots sort of feel of going back to some of the most basic components of what co-creator Peter Laird and I put in the original series, whether it be the inexperienced, naive, weighted, and organic drawing style of what the characters look like, how they moved… this gritty sort of spatter, dirt is prevalent and an important part of the whole thing to the attitudes and attention to the action sequences, which was always important to me. But the humor aspect and paying attention to the family first aspect, because the family side of it was always the heart and soul of the concept, I feel.
But having the right amount of humor. So, I felt that with this new approach, it was not . . . I would say it’s not a new approach, but it was just a very sincere and passionate approach from Jeff Rowe, especially, who he grew up with it as a fan. [Seth Rogen], he’s a big comic geek like me, and I know he is a fan of the series. So I feel like they took elements and things they loved about the series and about the concept from different Turtle universes and put them into this blender, but I think took it back to the basics and just nailed it on every level.
I love that you brought up the family because I really liked what they did with Splinter. The origins are changed from the comics a bit, but I thought it really fit the film well and he had a really nice character arc, especially since Jackie Chan’s great throughout. How did you feel about how they handled Splinter throughout this movie?
Perfect. To me, it was because the elements that Peter and I applied to the original concept were a Pat Morita/Karate Kid aspect and Yoda. It was this fatherly, wise sage that cared about his sons and his people, but also had this wisdom and advice to help them navigate and come into the world. I feel like the aspect of that plus the goofiness … like my dad was kind of goofy and had a lot of dad jokes and things, but I feel like the love is there and the love comes through.
When he has a little party for them with all the different Chrises, with the little cardboard standup things, there were so many elements that were just very sincere and very endearing as a character and a fatherly character that just loved his sons and wanted to protect them and overly protect them. I’m a huge Jackie Chan fan, so to have him voice a character that Peter and I created was just like, “Holy smokes.” Goosebumps, you know?
By the end, we get to see all the mutants come together, and that includes Bebop and Rocksteady. We usually see them as the henchmen. What did you like about seeing this other side of them, working with the Turtles?
It was the creation of Bebop and Rocksteady and the different forms of the cartoon series and stuff … it was creating mutants specifically to be bad guys to combat with the Turtles and fight with the Turtles. That was more of an evolution out of what we did originally in the role-playing game, and then evolved into a much larger expansion in the cartoon series. But I love that they had this idea that they were born at the same time.
That moment when the Turtles see the other mutants and go, “There’s more of us. We’re not alone,” I thought that was so incredibly clever, and it just really created a bond to those characters in a way that I had never thought of. And I thought it was a totally unique and original idea of them. That shared origin was fantastic. Then it also gives you a nice foundation to move things on from there and tell other stories, not only within that context, but what you could do with them down the road, which is fantastic as well.
A Mutant Mayhem video game was just announced, and games have been a huge part of TMNT’s legacy. Can you speak to the franchise being able to work throughout all kinds of different mediums and what all the video games have meant to you?
Well, to me, it was from the very beginning, you know? When we first started working with Nintendo and Konami on that very first game that I’ve never been able to beat — even back in the day, never got through the water level. But the fact that that was such a revolutionary part of technology, the console game, and what it meant to so many kids — and even the older kids that we were at the time — was an important part of the Turtles’ history and has been a constant throughout the Turtles’ history.
So, when you have the opportunity to develop a unique game based not only on Mutant Mayhem, but also, with Paramount and Nickelodeon, we’re developing a game for The Last Ronin comic series, which is an older audience graphic novel that I’ve been working on with IDW and Nickelodeon. So, I love that you can have that environment play and work to this audience as well. It’s been part of the history since the beginning.
