Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a 2014 American superhero film based on the characters of the same name created by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman.

A reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film series, it was directed by Jonathan Liebesman and written by Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec, and Evan Daugherty.

The film stars Megan Fox, Will Arnett, William Fichtner, Danny Woodburn, Abby Elliott, Noel Fisher, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek, and Alan Ritchson, with the voices of Johnny Knoxville and Tony Shalhoub.

The plot follows the Turtles, who, with the help of their new ally April O'Neil, face the evil Shredder and his Foot Clan, as well as protect their New York City home.

In late May 2010, Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies brought Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes partners Andrew Form and Brad Fuller on to produce the film.

In New York City, news reporter April O'Neil investigates a crime wave by a group of criminals called the Foot Clan.

April returns to her apartment and remembers "Project Renaissance", her father's science experiment, which involved four turtles named Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, and a mutated rat called Splinter.

Sacks believes her and reveals that he and April's father had been experimenting on a mutagen created to cure disease, which was thought lost in the fire that killed her dad.

Believing they are about to die, the Turtles confess their secrets, while Raphael gives an impassioned speech about his love for his brothers before they land harmlessly on the street.

Laird also stated that he felt the "ill-conceived plan" could be a "genius notion", as it would allow fans to have the multitude of bipedal anthropomorphic turtles that they have been asking for.

He would point out that while the concept of a turtle-planet backstory made for a great run-of-the-mill science fiction story, it had no real place in the Ninja Turtles universe.

[20] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman stated that he had been invited behind the scenes of the film, and concluded that he was officially on board with the project and that, although he could not say much, he believed it to be "awesome".

[25] Eastman revealed some more information about the film, stating that April would not be 16 years old like in the 2012 cartoon series, he feels Ken Watanabe would make a great Shredder, he would like to bring Reyes back as a Foot lieutenant, and martial arts wise they are looking at Fist of Legend and The Raid: Redemption.

[31] In August 2012, an early version of the script, dated January 30, titled "The Blue Door" and written by Appelbaum and Nemec, was leaked online.

[45] Alan Ritchson, Pete Ploszek, Jeremy Howard and Noel Fisher were cast as Raphael, Leonardo, Donatello and Michelangelo respectively the following month.

[50] In early May, William Fichtner was cast in the film as "a lead with iconic stature in the Turtles' mythology", marking his third collaboration with Bay following Armageddon and Pearl Harbor.

[52][53] At this point in production Sacks was intended to be the film's version of the Shredder, but that idea was subsequently abandoned in favour of casting actor Tohoru Masamune as an authentically Japanese incarnation of the character following widespread whitewashing accusations.

[71][72][73] The visual effects of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were handled by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), who had previously worked with Michael Bay and Nickelodeon, doing the visual effects for The Island, the Transformers film series, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and the animation for the 2011 film Rango.

[77] Prior to that, a single to promote the film and separate from the album titled "Shell Shocked" by Juicy J, Wiz Khalifa, and Ty Dolla $ign, and featuring Kill the Noise and Tyler (credited as Madsonik) was released on July 22, 2014.

The site's critical consensus reads: "Neither entertaining enough to recommend nor remarkably awful, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may bear the distinction of being the dullest movie ever made about talking bipedal reptiles.

[135] Justin Lowe of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, writing "Liebesman relies on his genre-film resume to keep events moving at a brisk clip and the motion-capture process employed to facilitate live-action integration with cutting-edge VFX looks superior onscreen".

Club gave the film a C+: "What the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lacks is not fidelity, but a spirit of genuine boyish fun -- the sense that anyone involved saw more than a very specific shade of green in the freshly digital scales of these 30-year-old characters".

[139] Drew Hunt of Chicago Reader wrote that "the light, comedic tone is weighed down by unimaginative pop-culture references and half-witted one-liners".

[140] Bill Goodykoontz of The Arizona Republic gave the film two out of five stars, saying: "It's just kind of a mess, as unfocused and immature as the four mutant turtles at its core.

[141] Alonso Duralde of The Wrap gave the film a negative review, writing "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a movie that takes its characters and its premise seriously, until it doesn't, and that operates at two speeds: tortoise (ponderous) and hare (head-spinning)".

[142] Adam Graham of The Detroit News gave the film a B−: "There's enough turtle power to please kids and fans of the original series".

[143] Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer gave the film two out of four stars: "The kind of clichéd, misfit crimefighters-versus-demented villains scenario that Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird happily parodied when they came up with the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic books way back in the 1980s".

[145] Cliff Lee of The Globe and Mail gave the film one and a half stars out of four, writing "for having gone to the trouble of making a self-descriptive movie called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, its producers seem ultimately unsure about its most basic concept".

[146] James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film one and a half stars out of four: "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles doesn't so much provide brainless enjoyment as it pummels the viewer into submission.

[158][159][160][161][162] Several new actors appeared for a sequel: Victoria's Secret's supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio was cast as herself and a love interest to Vern, also Los Angeles Clippers and Charlotte Hornets players DeAndre Jordan, Matt Barnes, JJ Redick, Austin Rivers and Spencer Hawes made cameos in the film.