Just looking at the box office numbers again, I think I'd have to disagree with you; the movie dropped down to $9.2 million in the second weekend, which is a pretty steep 61.9% decline, and fell out of the top ten after three weeks. It's now estimated to gross about $55 million, which is closer to the perceived failure of the third Turtles movie ($42m) than either the original ($135m) or its first sequel ($78m)...and that's not even factoring in inflation, or the fact that the new film opened in the largest number of screens and had the highest budget of the four. Again, the film
did make a profit, but I do suspect that the studios will have been a little disappointed with the take; or at least, not impressed enough to consider taking the franchise revival further.
In terms of my comments on the film itself: let me first say that I'm a big fan of Jeff Matsuda's character design on WB's The Batman TV show, but I felt they lost something in translation to 3D. The likes of Casey Jones and Karai could pass for "stylised", but April in particular just looked sparse to me, without much to distinguish her aside from her large eyes and thin frame, whilst Winters just looked like a blander version of Mr Incredible.
Story-wise, I broadly agree with you. I feel the film made the mistake a lot of action/adventure movies do these days, namely trying to cram too many characters and plot strands into too short a running time, and ending up not doing any of them justice. As a result, we got a rushed, compromised central plotline that lacked even internal logic (where have the monsters been for the last 3000 years, and why do they all show up in New York at the exact same time?), backed up by similarly malnourished and ultimately pointless subplots. Don't get me wrong; both the Karai/Foot and April/Casey plot strands had some nice moments, but at least in terms of the scenes that were actually left in the final film, they felt far too undercooked to resonate on their own merits, and added next to nothing to the main narrative itself. It seems harsh to say, but unless they were willing to make the movie at least 30 minutes longer, it might have actually been better to cut those character arcs completely, and focus on fleshing the far more important (plot-wise) characters of the Turtles, Winters and the generals. As it was, the double-crosses and payoffs pof the finale had little impact, mostly because we didn't really know who these characters were.
It might sound like I'm really putting the boot into the film here, but that's not my intention; like I said, I actually really liked TMNT, because what it got right it got spectacularly right. The mood and look of it were just perfect, Klaus Badelt's score was really quite stirring, and, disappointing lack of Mikey nunchaku action aside, the action sequences were the best that the Turtles have ever been in. More importantly, the Turtles themselves were brilliantly characterised with some great writing, excellent casting and a great brotherly dynamic. Mike and Don were a little sidelined, to be sure, but they made their mark in thetime they had, and left the stage clear for a Raphael-Leonardo that was played to perfection, from the Nightwatcher subplot through to
that rooftop fight sequence where every good point about the movie came togther in one flawless scene. When I criticise the other aspects of the movie, I hope I'm being constructive, because I do believe that if they fixed those elements, they could indeed make a sequel that's everything a Turtles fan could want. I just hope they get that chance.