Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Andrew Sanford | News | July 23, 2026
I love watching movies with my kids, and because they’re five, I see a lot of movies made specifically for them. I’ve also taken the opportunity to show them things I hadn’t seen before, but that I know will likely interest them. At the end of the day, watching a movie with my kids is something I cherish and want to do for as long as I can. But now and then, I find myself watching something that is a real slog, and that was the case with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.
My kids are TMNT crazy, which is great. They got to see the original 1990 film recently, which holds up incredibly well, but I wanted to show them something I hadn’t seen before either. I had avoided the Michael Bay Turtles films like the plague when they came out, but had always heard the second one was at least kind of fun, so I popped it on, despite the PG-13 rating. Luckily, the most inappropriate thing my kids witnessed was some very bad storytelling.
But I will admit that there was some fun goofiness to the overly serious outing, and some of the more absurd elements really shined. Beebop and Rocksteady are brought to life by Gary Anthony Williams and pro-wrestler Sheamus, and are having a blast to the point that they feel like they’re in a different film. Tyler Perry has a lot of fun as Baxter Stockman. And the movie ends with a fight against a cartoonish Krang. Also, it didn’t LOOK bad. And I credit all of the things that worked about the movie to director Dave Green.
Green was a music video director who made his bones in Hollywood with the sci-fi film Earth to Echo. From there, he was hired to direct Out of the Shadows, seemingly brought in to make the film more fun than its dark predecessor (hence the title). Then, in 2019, he was hired to direct a little film called Coyote vs. ACME. The movie was made, announced, shelved for a tax break, and now, this August, it will hit our screens.
I did not expect to leave a decidedly mediocre Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie feeling even more excited about Coyote vs. ACME, but that is definitely what happened. Green blends live action with animation very well in the TMNT movie he made, and that was a decade ago. But I think I’m still mostly excited because I can’t believe this movie is actually getting released, and I will definitely be taking my kids to it.
