YMMV / Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Leo’s recklessness in the beginning of the movie. Was he really still riding off the high of defeating Shredder and not having any real threat to deal with since then, or was he being purposefully reckless and arrogant to “prove” to Splinter that he wasn’t “leadership material”? The cut ending to the movie can point to the latter, as he doesn’t believe he’d make a good leader and doesn’t want the responsibility.
• Awesome Art: The animation for the main series itself was already very well-received due to its slick visuals and fast pace, with the bigger budget of the movie getting to do that with more fluid character animation, more complex shading, and a broader color palette, and the results are considered even by critics as one of the strongest points of the movie.
• Complete Monster: Krang One is the brutal, unfettered leader of an alien race that assimilates and destroys planets. Krang One was exiled from Earth before the series began by a group of warriors who stopped his plans for Earth. Released in the present, Krang One sets about trying to transform and assimilate the Earth into his domain, even succeeding in a Bad Future. Forcefully and painfully transforming his minions, the Foot Clan, into mindless soldiers, Krang One uses them to begin a wave of destruction and death all across New York. Krang One mentally tortures Raphael and later molds him into his pet soldier to have him fight his brothers. Krang One later reveals that his ultimate goal is to spread across and assimilate the entire universe to make it his kingdom. Taking immense glee in others suffering, with the belief that the strong exist to devour the weak, Krang One stands as one of the Turtles' darkest and most serious foes.
• Continuity Lockout: While the film was designed to work as a standalone piece, Cassandra's cameo at the end is likely to be confusing to newcomers due to the second season finale of the show revealing she's this series' incarnation of Casey Jones, which makes The Reveal that she's the mother of this film's Casey Jones much more amusing.
• Evil Is Cool: Krang One has been very well received by fans for being much more intimidating, badass and serious than any other incarnation of the normally goofy Krang. His eloquent voice, cool mech suit and awesome Curb-Stomp Battle of the Turtles, which involved no selling their ultimate move with a literal snap of his fingers, have led to him being quite a popular villain.
• Fanfic Fuel: Due to the Bad Future being shown in the movie for only four minutes in the opening act, it leaves a lot of material for fanfic writers to cover, such as what could have happened to Raphael and Donatello (whose bandannas are wrapped around Leonardo's hilt, heavily implying both are dead), and/or the fates of Baron Draxum or other supporting castmembers. It helps that the creative crew showed off scrapped material for the sequence, which was originally intended to last ten minutes, many of which at least give fans a blueprint to work off of.
• Fan Nickname: Krang One is often referred to simply as "Krang", due to his Big Bad position and being the most prominent of the three Krang in the movie.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content:
  • The Bad Future scene in the final movie is four minutes long, but fans wish they got to see the originally intended ten minute sequence, primarily since it included much more of the show's supporting cast, such as Baron Draxum, whose absence from the film was felt to be jarring.
  • One deleted scene has Donnie catch on to Casey refering to his future self in the past tense, and fearfully asking if he dies. Many fans preferred this to the canon scene, where he instead focuses on Casey calling him smart, as they feel it gives him more character depth.
  • While the canon ending to the movie is well liked some have expressed that they would have preferred the cut ending where Casey goes to explore the world he spent his whole life trying to save after having a touching goodbye with Leo. Which is then followed by Raph and Leo having a heartfelt talk as they watch him go.
  • Upon finding out the scene was cut down, a number of fans wished that the battle against Krang One in the film's final act wasn't shortened from the animatic, simply because of how cool a lot of it is, such as Krang One dodging a Macross Missile Massacre, the Turtles continuing to fight Krang One as they set up the Mystic Hot Soup Hibernator, and Leonardo teleporting a gas truck in front of Krang One as he fires a laser.
• Genius Bonus: When talking about the tracker he stuck on Raph, Donnie calls it 'subcutaneous'. Subcutaneous is used to refer to things beneath the skin or introducing something under the skin via injection, meaning Donnie likely injected Raph with a tracker at some point. How he managed that is another question.
• I Knew It!: Due to the series finale heavily hinting that Yokai and their technology are largely a result of alien interference, and the precursor race looking very similar to Krang, fans guessed that the character was going to be in this movie. A synopsis released in January 2021 confirmed this.
• Improved Second Attempt: The 2012 series was infamously supposed to end with "Mutant Apocalypse", a Distant Finale that destroyed almost everything in the setting so the series couldn't be revived, which was controversial among fans due to how bleak it was, and seemed to suggest that the Turtles were always doomed to lose (which is likely why Nickelodeon opted to advertise it as an Elseworld story). This film features a Bad Future which Casey Jones is sent back from to prevent from happening with the help of the Turtles, and ultimately succeeds, letting Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles close off with a hopeful ending even if the series won't get renewed.
• Inferred Holocaust: We see onscreen a crowd of innocent humans being assimilated into Krang Three's Meat Moss and we are never given any reassurance that the Krang's biomanipulation abilities are reversible (either through killing The Krang or some type of retromutagen). Not only that, but the destruction of the Technodrome reaps before the Turtles thwart the Krang would make 9/11 look like Y2K.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: One criticism of the movie is Leonardo and Raphael having friction with each other, with the latter disliking how the former does things, along with Michelangelo and Donatello being left largely Out of Focus, aspects of the franchise familiar to prior movie adaptations (such as the the original film and Imagi movie) that some fans were irritated to see again.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Leonardo and Mikey's future counterparts appeared for only the first few minutes of the film before they died, but quickly gained attention for their designs and heroic yet graphic deaths.
  • Cassandra Jones only appears as a cameo at the end in photos, but the reveal of her as Casey's mother is probably the funniest or most confusing part of the movie depending on who you ask.
  • A government agent strongly implied to be this continuity’s Agent John Bishop working for the Earth Protection Force appears in a quick cameo at the end, to the delight of the 2003 show’s fandom.
• Signature Scene: The Turtles' fight with Krang One, due to its fast, very dynamic style, taking place mid-air over New York City, and culminates in the Turtles using one of their most powerful attacks, the Mystic Hot Soup Hibernator, only for Krang One to foil it with nothing but the air pressure from a finger flick.
• Squick: The Krang are horrific flesh monsters, what did you expect?
  • To interrogate Raph, Krang One sticks his tentacles under Raph's skin while he screams in pain. Later on, they capture the rest of the Turtles and insert fleshy tendrils into their skin, creating bulging, Tainted Veins that extend over Leo's palms.
  • While trying to hijack the Technodrome, Mikey and Donnie discover the control panel to be a mass of slimy tentacles and flesh and both nearly throw up when Donnie is forced to stick his hands in it. However, it turns out to be too weak of a connection so Donnie takes his battle shell off and drops himself backwards into the Meat Moss, with a particularly gut-churning shot of the tendrils burrowing into his shell.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Some fans of the show were disappointed that the film focuses primarily on Leonardo's Character Development as it basically turns Donatello and Mikey into supporting characters just like Splinter and April until the middle of the film, where their actions ultimately have an impact on the plot.
  • There's also fans disappointed with a lack of Cassandra Jones and Baron Draxum being involved as well, with Cassandra only getting a brief cameo at the film's end, and Baron Draxum not showing up in general, despite the two having performed a Heel–Face Turn in the show proper.

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