Mutant Mayhem director promises Shredder in the sequel

While Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael will have plenty of mutants to take on in the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, one thing they won’t be doing is making coleslaw, as Shredder won’t be featured in Mutant Mayhem despite being the most recognizable villain in the franchise. But you can bet he’ll be in the sequel.

Speaking with SFX, director Jeff Rowe promised, “We’ll Dark Knight it,” referring to the fact that the primary villain of the Batman universe, The Joker, wasn’t properly introduced until sequel The Dark Knight, as Ra’s al Rhul and Scarecrow were the antagonists of Batman Begins. With such a tease from Rowe, one wonders if Shredder will have a cameo at the end of the movie in a similar way that Joker did.

Rowe expanded on the themes of the movie, which might hint to more reasoning for not featuring Shredder, saying, “When you’ve grown and you’ve become confident as a teenager, to then go up against a foe that is three times scarier than anything you’ve ever seen before, that’s interesting and dramatic…We wanted a teenager to watch the movie and feel seen by it and understood.” So, while Mutant Mayhem will evidently give teens that confidence boost, the appearance of Shredder in the sequel would suggest a sort of representation of real challenges that we face as we get older.

As it turns out, Shredder was part of the original conception for Mutant Mayhem. “We had Shredder for a while…He is such a special character in the lore. As a character, he takes up a lot of space in the story. And in this movie, it felt like we needed the villain to be another mutant, we needed it to be someone that could relate to the Turtles, and that the Turtles could also relate to and be somewhat tempted by. They needed to have more of a parallel story. And that’s what Superfly gave us.” Superfly, the mutant fly voiced by Ice Cube, is described as brimming with muscles and madness, with a goal of mutant domination.

Shredder appeared in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies from the early ‘90s as well as the reboot movies from 2014 and 2016. But just because Shredder will sit out Mutant Mayhem doesn’t mean there won’t be familiar TMNT baddies, as Bebop (Seth Rogen), Rocksteady (John Cena), Baxter Stockman (Giancarlo Esposito), and more will be featured. The movie has also received a standing ovation at its festival debut last month.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem skates to theaters on August 2nd.

Do you think Shredder should have been in Mutant Mayhem or did the filmmakers make a good decision by saving him for the sequel? Are you looking forward to the movie? Let us know in the comments section below!