Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem's Superfly Kinda Has A Point, Right?

When it comes to villains in any sort of superhero movie, there are two main directions the writers can take: They can have the villain be an evil, irredeemable menace, or they could make it so the villain sorta has a point. Magneto from "X-Men," Killmonger from "Black Panther," Ozymandias from "Watchmen," are all at least a little bit right, and the movies they're in take little joy in their eventual downfall. (Assuming their downfall even happens at all.) 

In "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem," it originally appears like the main villain would be Cynthia Utrom (Maya Rudolph), who'd fall squarely in the mean, love-to-hate group of villains. She takes a backseat fairly quickly, however, because the terrifying Superfly (Ice Cube) is actually the film's primary antagonist. Superfly has fairly sympathetic origins — he was turned into a mutant against his will at a young age, and he had to deal with humanity's rejection of him, much like the turtles. But the movie has no redemption in store for him. The final act revolves around Superfly being transformed into an even bigger, more grotesque monster who stomps around New York City trying to kill as many humans as he can.

While it's certainly fun to see our heroes gang up to fight a gnarly, Cronenberg, kaiju-esque villain, there is something a little depressing about the lack of sympathy extended to Superfly in that final act. He's treated as an ugly, simple-minded monstrosity that needs to be taken down, which is disappointing considering he's right about a couple of key things. Mainly, he was transformed into a monster by humans, and now humans have rejected him. It doesn't quite excuse the whole genocide plan he's got going on, but a little more awareness of the tragedy of his situation from the movie would've been nice.

Instead, Superfly's characterization follows a rich tradition of comic book villains who mostly have a point, before they inexplicably take things too far and now need to be taken down. "Black Panther" seemed to realize that Killmonger's motivations were a little too reasonable, so it had him callously kill his girlfriend halfway through to make sure viewers wouldn't take his side. The Riddler in "The Batman" had motivations nearly indistinguishable from Batman's, which was a cool revelation, but then he randomly decided to flood the city and kill a bunch of innocent civilians. It took what would've been a groundbreaking new Batman film that ended on an unprecedentedly dark, morally gray note, and brought it back to a comfortable, familiar "good vs bad" finale. 

Likewise, most audience members would be pretty on board with Superfly's backstory and motives, right up until that "kill and enslave all humans" part. It's a moment that takes a compelling, complicated situation and makes it simple again. It brings us back to a final act that's largely indistinguishable from any other generic final act in a superhero movie. 

Of course, it's hard to give the movie too much flak for the treatment of Superfly, considering it's a light-hearted kids' movie with a tight 99-minute runtime. Sometimes you just gotta have a big silly villain for the heroes to kill without feeling guilty. 

The movie also seems to anticipate this criticism, because it makes sure to clarify that at least Superfly's minions aren't on board with his plan. Although they were originally down to destroy the world, they change their minds the moment the turtles give them hope that peace and acceptance from humans is possible. Despite Superfly's characterization, the movie still largely follows through on its message on not judging a book by its cover. Like Superfly, these mutants aren't particularly pleasant to look at, but they're still treated sympathetically and given a happy ending.

All in all, Superfly's a perfectly acceptable villain. He's scary, funny, and his evil plan is reasonably well-connected to the movie's themes and our heroes' character arcs. It's just that he's definitely not going to be anywhere close to what fans remember most about this movie. He wasn't an iconic villain like the Joker or Magneto or Thanos, but maybe that's not what the first movie in this "TNMT" series needed.