Spoiler warning: The below story contains some spoilers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.
IGN was having a casual X Space (which you can listen to in full here) about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem when there was a surprise: co-writer Dan Hernandez crashed the chat, answering any/all questions we had about the film and providing insight into the creative decisions that helped elevate the project. (Editor’s Note: while the Writers Guild of America is currently on strike, including promotional work, the WGA’s rules allow for members to "talk about your projects on your own accord on your own social media,” which Hernandez did on his own X account).
Barely a week into its theatrical run, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem has already scored big with critics and fans alike. IGN’s Tom Jorgensen praised the Jeff Rowe-directed, Seth Rogen-produced animated adventure for its “confidence, energy, and heart” before claiming it “represents a new high for the Turtles on the big screen. “
And Hernandez, who also worked on 2018’s Detective Pikachu, had a lot to say, so we’ve distilled his many, many insights into a quasi-Q&A attempting to encapsulate what it was like penning one of the summer’s biggest surprises. See his full quotes below.
His favorite Turtle changed after he wrote the script
“Well, I can tell you that I entered this traditionally as a Raph kind of guy, and by the end of working on the screenplay with everyone, I kind of was a Donnie guy and I didn't expect that evolution. I think probably in my personal life that I am still the Raph, because my emotions are not very far from the surface most of the time. But I really gained an appreciation for Donnie and writing Donnie… in a more kind of modern way. And so much was brought by the actors to the movie... Yeah, he really cracked me up. So I kind of am like, I don't know. I'm having an identity crisis a little bit.”
He took lessons he learned from Detective Pikachu and brought them to Mutant Mayhem
“Detective Pikachu was an extremely challenging script to write for a lot of different reasons, one of which was that because it was Detective Pikachu and not Ash and Pokémon tournament battling and things like that, you kind of had to be creative in the way that you were honoring the franchise and things of the franchise, but at the same time, saying, ‘We literally cannot do what people are expecting.’ So we have to give ourselves a little bit of license to do things that we think are true to the spirit of it without being literally the same thing that everyone has seen and been familiar with for decades. And I think that that feeling of experimentation and that feeling of ‘how do you calibrate what still feels like Pokémon into this different sort of delivery system’ I think, was a real lesson for Turtles, because as for people who've seen the movie, it does deviate from sort of the, quote, ‘canonical’ source material in some significant ways.”
Superfly was the scariest — and most rewarding — character to tweak
“I can only speak for myself, and obviously I co-wrote the movie with my partner, Benji Samit, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jeff Rowe, and Brendan O'Brien, who all would maybe have different answers to this question. But for me, I think that the entire development of separating Baxter from Superfly was, I think, to me, the biggest creative risk and one that I felt really, for me, was successful and different, but not so different that it felt like we were not honoring this thing that we all love. But at the same time, I felt that there was a creative risk there.
“And then when you see Ice Cube's performance and Giancarlo Esposito as Baxter, I think it was really moving and really good. And I think it deepened that character and both of those characters and sort of the origin of the turtles. But I don't think it was necessarily an obvious place to start because it does deviate, at least for me, from at least what I grew up with. And so I think that I was one of the people that said, ‘Oh, can we really do this?’ And then after thinking about it was like, ‘Yeah, we can. Why not? Let's try.’ “
He doesn't think it leaned too heavily on references
“It was different references, but I think there's a shorthand in a reference. And I think that when you get four brothers who all have a shared media experience on some level, they all are watching the same things and they're experiencing the same things and they're processing them through their different individual personalities, but they have this shared frame of reference. I think that it felt very naturalistic to me. And so I think that in 2045 when this film is entered into the National Registry of Historic Films and shot into space, will the aliens understand every reference? Maybe not. But that's okay. It's a document of its time and place and an authenticity of its time and place. And I think that that's one of the exciting things about turtles is that this is a movie that came out in 2023. It always will be… Yes, it's steeped very much in the ‘90s, but it's also of its time, I think.”
He’s confident the Turtles aren’t going anywhere
[Continuing to talk about the use of references]: “It's true to itself. And so I don't think the turtles are going anywhere. I think they're going to long outlive me anyway. And so when someone else takes a crack at this in the future, they're going to have their own references and they're going to have their own way of speaking and being. And it's like these archetypes I think will endure because that is, I think, in my opinion, ultimately the power of the turtles more than anything. But I think that the way that they express themselves, it's constantly evolving. It's constantly evolving. And that's good. That's actually a good thing.
“So to me, it felt like a very organic way of them communicating with each other in this current landscape where every kid has a phone. Everyone has a phone. Everyone is being constantly inundated with media and you can curate your own media experience. And what Donnie is watching, he's the most online of them, and so he has a certain frame of reference. I think that to be true to kids of that age, you had to lean into that. So to me, that's why I think it ultimately made sense, I guess.”
Many of the movie’s best lines were improvised
“Tons, tons and tons of lines. I mean, I don't know the full iteration of the evolution of it, but, I mean, Seth, because he's a comedic genius, he loves that improvisational style, and getting those Turtle actors in the same place at the same time to be able to be kids together, to be able to actually develop a relationship. I mean, so much of it came from those kind of riffing sessions. And I know the other actors also added a lot.
“I know Ice Cube improv'd the ‘6 in the mornin' police at my door,’ sort of that reference to the Ice-T song, which is unbelievable, and how it's just true to that Superfly character. And it just suggested a whole other... It suggested an interior life for Superfly where he's listening to rap and he has favorite songs. And I think that that really dimensionalizes these people. They're not just arch fiends. It's like, ‘Oh, also, Superfly really likes music.’ That's cool, that's different.”
The score blew him away
“It's honestly incredible. I love Nine Inch Nails, so for me, I still can't believe that that really happened. That was one where I really, this is going to sound maybe a little new age-y, but my theater teacher in high school had a belief that an audience decided whether something was fundamentally good or bad within one second of the curtain opening. That's really stuck with me for many years, which is, when something opens with confidence, there's a psychological thing that happens, I think, where the audience feels like oh, I'm in good hands here. I feel like these filmmakers or these artists know what they want to do. At least for me, watching that opening scene, I had a sense of, ‘Oh, okay, this movie is good. This movie is going to be good.’ I say that as a fan, not just as someone involved with part of the creation of it, but just in watching the completed product, I said, ‘Oh, wow, this really sets a great tone.’ I was really, really thrilled with how it came out in the finished product. I thought that was awesome."
For more, check out our chat about the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie with TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman.
