TMNT: Mutant Mayhem Director Teases The Mystery Of Cynthia Utrom And Rise Of Krang [Exclusive]
This post contains spoilers for "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem."
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" follows the long tradition of reimagining the long-running franchise with every new adaptation, each new film and TV series changing character backstories, motivations, and relationships. In the case of "Mutant Mayhem," we get a brand new origin story for Master Splinter that's more meta and quite hilarious, a completely different Baxter Stockman, a redesign for the Turtles that highlights the teenage part of "TMNT," and a radically different dynamic between the Turtles and classic villains like Bebop and Rocksteady.
The film also introduces new characters, such as the villainous Cynthia. She leads the Techno Cosmic Research Institute (TCRI) that hired Baxter Stockman to develop a mutagen that could create mutant creatures to be used as weapons. Played by Maya Rudolph, Cynthia is cool, funny, very weird, and threatening. Of course, arguably the most curious part about the character is in her name. No, not Cynthia, but Utrom, which longtime fans of "TMNT" will recognize as the name of the alien species classic villain Krang belongs to. Cynthia's character design, her head specifically, also shares a similarity with the classic design of Krang, while her entire wardrobe calls to mind that character.
Speaking with /Film's own Turtles expert, Ethan Anderton, director Jeff Rowe teased a connection, which could be explored in the already announced "Mutant Mayhem" sequel.
"You might be onto something. Yeah, she's not named Utrom by accident. It gives us things to explore later, but I think there's questions to be asked about where did she come from? How did she end up in her role? What is TCRI? Why doesn't she age? There's mysteries to be uncovered."
A great joke
Granted, it is unlikely Cynthia is actually Krang. It's more likely that she will be revealed to be some Utrom lieutenant doing experiments and readying the planet for Krang's arrival. But she is still wonderful as a villain even without some connection to a better-known character. This is in no small part due to Cynthia delivering the single best joke in the movie.
For the entire film, we've followed and understood the Turtles' longing for the human world, and also understood Splinter's hesitance to let them go outside the sewer thanks to some very bad experiences with humans. Splinter fears that humans will not only kill his sons but specifically milk them for their blood, a terrifying thought despite the fact that — as the Turtles repeatedly explain — they don't have nipples to be milked.
And yet, at a crucial moment when the Turtles are defeated by Superfly and his gang of mutants, they are found and captured by Cynthia's strike force. Desperate to retrieve the ooze that created the mutants so she can use it to create biological weapons, Utrom orders the Turtles connected to the machine that will drain the ooze from them — literally a milking machine, named The Milking Machine.
Thematic resonance
The scene works like gangbusters (getting one of the biggest laughs at the three screenings this writer has attended) because it is a long pay-off to arguably the most absurd bit in the movie, while still making it resonate with the film's themes. Splinter being specifically afraid of his boys being milked of their blood is goofy and silly, sure, but it just shows how extremely paranoid and scared he is of the prejudice and hatred he's felt from humans — which is very relatable.
That Splinter would be proven right to such specific detail, not just in the attempted murder of his sons, but the milking, is hilarious, and it justifies Splinter's fears. But he also realizes that he should learn to trust his sons to be safe in the outside world after seeing how much fear twisted Superfly, and also after seeing how much April genuinely cares for the Turtles.
Besides, the milking machine may also be our biggest hint that Cynthia is an alien, because who else would come up with that depravity of a device?