Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may have plenty of action and humor... but this movie holds nothing back with its strong emotional beats.
- The movie starts this way, with future Leo heavily injured and likely on his last legs. He and Mikey are the last of the brothers left alive, and their situation is so hopeless that their last option is for Casey to enter a time portal to stop this all from happening. Already sad enough, but to open said time portal, Mikey has to sacrifice himself, and both he and Leo know it. There's something crushing about Leo and his baby brother both aware they're about to die but having no other option. Leo can only smile sadly as he watches the last of his brothers perish, and after he throws a tearful Casey through the portal, he too meets his fate at the hands of the Krang. Yes, the movie opens up by showing you two beloved characters dying on-screen.
- Also, Raph and Donnie are nowhere to be seen. Only their bandanas are tied around one of Leo's katanas.
- About 1 minute into the movie, after Future Mikey's Big Damn Hero moment, the camera zooms out into the battlefield to show off just how powerful his mystical powers are as an adult. On the left side of the carnage is Big Mama, in her Yokai form, her dead body held aloft by a pike. On the right side of the carnage is a woman's dead body, face down, with her hair styled into two afro puffs. Who's the most prominent character in the cast with that hairstyle? April.
- A little distance away, in the middle foreground, is a baseball bat broken into splinters, meaning that April had went down fighting.
- Easy to miss, but when Casey is talking about the future Turtles with their present selves, he's able to talk about Future Leo and Future Mikey in the present tense, despite them dying right before his eyes, like, an hour ago. When talking to Donnie about his future self, he uses past tense.
- As soon as Future Mikey dies, Leo goes from a look of sad and anguish, to a solemn smile. Why? Because he knows he's about to die as well, so in a way, he's happy that he will be reunited with his family again in death.
- Leo gets put through the wringer in this movie, as it shows constantly that his attitude and laziness are going to get everyone killed...and for a moment, it almost does. And throughout the film, Leo's actions make the situation almost entirely worse, and each time Leo breaks down a little bit more. Break the Haughty has never been more depressing.
- When Leo stays behind to get the Key to close the portal, he ends up leaving his escape pod as it takes off without him. He grabs the key, but the Krang are almost immediately on top of him and lunge to skewer him...before Raph jumps in and takes the blow (thankfully, it's not fatal as the tentacle only pierces the top most corner of his shell). He then gives up his escape pod to get Leo to safety. Leo begging and pleading for Raph, combined with a lovely POV shot of Leo being yanked away as Raph is dogpiled by the Krang only adds to the tragedy of the situation, especially knowing it's all Leo's fault.
- After the disastrous fight against the Krang in the subway leaves them separated from the rest of the team, Casey rips Leo a new one for his reckless behavior and refusing to listen to reason, then gives him the cruel, sobering reality of what happens to his brothers and him in the future. You can see it leaves Leo very shaken.Casey: What the heck was that?
Leo: Some kind of drippy, crazy Krang monster.
Casey: No, I mean you! Why weren’t you listening to anybody?!
Leo: Because I was trying to get us to the other side of the fight and into the building!
Casey: Well, that sure worked out well!
Leo: But I was doing everything right. How could it go so wrong?
Casey: Because you weren’t listening to your team! You don’t have all the answers all the time!
Leo: But I’m the greatest ninja the world’s ever seen! You said that!
Casey: (sighs) …I was wrong.
Leo: What?
Casey: You’re impulsive, you’re arrogant, and you don’t see that every decision you make could cost someone their life! You wanna know what really happens to your brothers in the future?! …They die. Everybody dies fighting the Krang. The world needs Master Leonardo, and all we got is this guy. - The expressions of all the characters when they realize what Leo's plan to stop the Krang is. Raph and Casey beg him not to go through with it, and one can only imagine the helplessness Raph feels when he's always tried so hard to protect his brothers.
- When Leo traps himself with Krang One in the mystical prison, he doesn't try to fight back when the monster starts beating him to death, he knows he's about to die but the thought that his loved ones... his family are safe is just enough to accept his fate and give one last smile in front of the villain.
- Leo tearfully clutching the picture of his family and friends to his chest, knowing he's about to die, is just heartbreaking.
- Casey, Splinter, and April are all devastated over Leo's apparent demise, as they're led to believe that a master (again), a son, and a close friend, respectively, has died. But the saddest reactions are from the brothers themselves.
- Raph's despair of losing his little brother is especially potent considering how much of the movie was spent on Leo realizing that Raph's perceived anger at him was actually just him being terrified of his death. And now he's helpless to stop just that.
- After a whole movie spent emphasizing how much he does not like to deal with emotions, Donnie just stands there in shock, not even realizing he's crying at first.
- As for Mikey, he can only sob as he desperately tries to get his powers to work so that he can bring Leo back, insisting, "Leo never gave up on us—I'm not giving up on him!"
- Weirdly enough, a comment below this YouTube video
discusses how even Krang's situation is pitiful in some way:"My favorite part about this is how Krang almost seems... close to tears, in these clips. He's been trapped in this desolate wasteland for a thousand years, most of his species is gone, and once he's tasted freedom for just the barest moments, it's ripped away from him. He's once again stuck in this place, alone and without his ship.
He did this to himself and deserves what's happening, but you cannot deny the absolute heartbreak on his face when he realizes he failed."
