Why Shredder isn’t in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

Trailers for the upcoming film, Turtle Teens: The Movie, feature four turtle teens, one rat man, as well as a team of baddies voiced by celebrities. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem haven’t been lean on characters. But there’s one Ninja Turtle mainstay you won’t see in Mutant Mayhem: The team’s traditional arch-nemesis, Shredder.

Instead, Mutant MayhemThe heroes of a half shell are pitted against their fellow mutant Superfly. And there’s a reason for that, director Jeff Rowe told Polygon when we chatted in June.

It’s not at all because Rowe and his co-writers, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, didn’t try to fit Shredder into the story. If asked whether there was ever a version Mutant MayhemRowe replied immediately when asked if Shredder were the main antagonist.

“Absolutely. Shredder? This was the first thing we thought of; OK, yeah, the villain is Shredder, it’s got to be Shredder. We were all like “What? Who is Shredder, and how do these kids relate to him? And it’s like, Well, he’s… an adult? Why does he cross paths with our team?Just writing it was a real challenge. It didn’t feel organic.

“And then we introduced, like, Maybe we can also get Baxter Stockman. [he and Shredder]Working together is a good idea. That’s a tried-and-true thing; in ’90s Batman films where you have two villains, like Riddler and Two-Face, it’s great.”

Baxter Stockman is a frequently recurring Ninja Turtles character, though you may not be familiar with him if you haven’t watched the cartoons in years, or are most familiar with the turtles from their ’90s live-action flicks. Just about the only consistent thing about him is that he’s a mad scientist. He often works for Shredder. Sometimes, he’s the guy who created the mutagenic ooze that created the franchise’s mutants in the first place. And usually, these days, he’s a horrible human-fly hybrid.

Paramount Pictures

Mutant Mayhem Ice Cube voices Superfly, while Giancarlo Eposito is the voice of Stockman. Rowe points out that this split allowed for the Mutant Mayhem team to crack the movie’s story.

“We ultimately found ourselves needing to make the villain a mutant, like the turtles — someone that could relate to them over that. It was important to find someone who shared a backstory with them. Someone that felt the same way, alienated from humans and mistrustful of people. That is what led us to Superfly, and once we once we had that, and that started connecting, everything else had to drop out to support that.”

So don’t expect to see much of Shredder at your Mutant Mayhem screening. You’ll have to wait for a sequel — which, fortunately, is on the way. Paramount announced a sequel movie and a Paramount Plus animated series for two seasons called The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that will reportedly serve as a “bridge” between the two flicks. Better luck next time, Shredder — but at least there’ll be a next time!