‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’: Megan Fox, heroes get their kicks

“Heroes are not born. They’re created.” That’s one of the lessons of a new teaser trailer for the Michael Bay-produced “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie — although in this instance, one might say they’re re-created.

Based on the Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird comic books of the early 1980s, the new “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie represents the latest incarnation of the four anthropomorphic reptilian vigilantes, who over the years have appeared in animated and live-action TV series and movies, and spawned countless toys and other merchandise.

From the looks of the trailer, which you can watch above, director Jonathan Liebesman (“Wrath of the Titans,” “Battle Los Angeles”) is hewing closer to the dark, gritty tone of the original comics.

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The clip opens with a voice-over from William Fichtner, who is rumored to play the villain Shredder, lamenting, “Crime, violence and fear have run rampant. Our great city is being destroyed.” Meanwhile, masked men fire automatic weapons in a subway station and an explosion rocks a skyscraper.

Fichtner then teases a different origin story for the turtles, who in most depictions are the result of an industrial-waste accident. In Liebesman’s telling, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

After that brief setup, the teaser offers a few flashes of the turtles in action, taking out the gunmen as April O’Neil (Megan Fox) tries to snap a shot of them on her smartphone. Later, the green-skinned heroes chase bad guys down a snow-swept mountain.

While the new “Ninja Turtles” looks to be more forbidding than previous film and TV portrayals, the teaser also includes a few injections of humor, as when Michelangelo (Noel Fisher) tries to calm O’Neil by removing his face mask — and proves quite unsuccessful.

The film also stars Alan Ritchson, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek and Danny Woodburn.

Paramount Pictures will release “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” on Aug. 8.

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