The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise on the big screen has been a mixed bag, at best. The newest entry, the stylized CGI film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, is a brand-new take on the iconic franchise that introduces the turtles to a younger generation of potential superfans. And this time, the cast and creatives of the film got nearly everything right.

The first live-action film in 1990 captured the Ninja Turtles in a way that it's hard to believe would be possible, had 1989's Batman not paved the stylistic way. It was dark, gritty, dirty, and incredible. The sequel, Secret of the Ooze, lightened things up by remembering that the Ninja Turtles are first and foremost comic book characters aimed at children. Things swung too hard toward the silly in the third live-action movie, ending that trilogy. From there, we got the animated TMNT, which was a pseudo-sequel to the original trilogy and was pretty decent, plus the two Michael Bay-produced films in which the titular terrapins looked like actual monsters.

With Mutant Mayhem, producers and writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have done the best thing anyone could have done to the franchise, which is nearing 40 years old: They made the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles actual teenagers. They are not only voiced by teenagers but also act like them. They're vulnerable, they're inexperienced, and they're thirsty to see what the world has for them after being kept sheltered from it their entire lives.