Posted in: Movies, Paramount Pictures | Tagged: Paramount Pictures, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Chrome Alone 2 – Lost in New Jersey, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, tmnt

TMNT: Chrome Alone 2 Producer on Revamping Chrome Dome's Design

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Chrome Alone 2 – Lost in New Jersey producer discusses Chrome Dome's revamped look in the upcoming short.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are heading back to theaters this holiday season in a new animated short, and producer Jeff Rowe is already opening up about how much freedom the team gave themselves to play with the canon.

Titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Chrome Alone 2 – Lost in New Jersey, the short continues the recent Mutant Mayhem continuity in a seven-minute story that follows the brothers to New Jersey after a mysterious toy company starts cashing in on their newfound fame. For anyone wondering how to watch it, the short will screen exclusively in theaters ahead of The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants starting December 19.

Ahead of that release, Rowe is revealing that the short's villain, Chrome Dome, went through a major redesign before the team landed on his final look.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Chrome Alone 2 – Lost in New Jersey Producer Talks Chrome Dome Visuals

Speaking with Screen Rant, the Mutant Mayhem director and Chrome Alone 2 producer explained how they tried to balance nostalgia with what this specific story needed. "He used to look a lot more like Shredder. He used to have a lot more Samurai elements in his design, and we're like, 'That doesn't necessarily make sense for our use of him.' So this is the thing we did on Mutant Mayhem all the time is we tried to respect the canon as much as possible, but then when we think we can tell a better story, if we just change a few things, we give ourselves permission to deviate."

Rowe's comments also reinforce the well-received Mutant Mayhem approach, which treats both big-name villains and some of the less recognizable ones as opportunities to tweak the formula while still feeling like classic TMNT. The character of Chrome Dome first appeared in the 1987 animated series as a towering Foot Clan robot with armor that almost echoed Shredder's samurai silhouette. In Chrome Alone 2, he is still a hulking robot, but his look and role have been updated to fit the short's toy industry plot and its light AI-themed angle. Fortunately, for fans of the recent TMNT, the redesign is also handled by returning Mutant Mayhem character designer Woodrow White, keeping the new take visually consistent with the feature.

Sure, Chrome Alone 2 may be short, but it does function as the next chapter in this continuity, offering fans a quick return to this version of Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael (along with an updated spin on Chrome Dome), all while setting the stage for Shredder's long-awaited entrance in the 2027 sequel.

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