Why Leo was a Jerk in the ROTTMNT Movie | Leo Character Analysis

"Ben Schwartz's turtle sona" is a golden line and I'm tired of pretending it's not.

Even after his near death experience in the dark portal, Leo is still the most cocky, arrogant, and somewhat adorable turtle we know and love, while still caring for his brothers and always comforting them when needed.💙

Everytime someone points out how Leo acted in the movie and call him an a-hole, I always have to mention that he's just a kid. A kid with the weight the world and his brothers life on the line, an inferiority complex and who is WAY too used to things just working out with half baked ideas. In the movie, he's desperate to prove himself worthy as a leader and make up for the mistake he won't admit he caused, which leads to more mistakes when his unfinished ideas take a turn. He's also panicking because, well, his older brother could very well be killed any second and he probably assumes that the more time they spend coming up with a plan, rather than just jumping in and figuring it out, the faster they'll get Raph before it's too late. A trap a lot of people fall into. Lastly, about them never letting Leo be alone again on a mission, I can imagine they're stopping some bad guys and Leo opts to go ahead, kinda like in the beginning of the movie, and immediately everyones like "NO! LEO NO!". That'll be a cool lesson to learn I guess. Leo knows that he's stronger with his family, but he's still failing to grasp that his family needs HIM, hence the sacrifice in the movie. It'd be cool to see him realize how much they care and stuff

Honestly I didn’t even think Leo was jerk until other characters pointed it out. Then i realized that I act just like him. But Leo definitely was frustrating in the beginning of the rise movie.

I remember hearing a theory that Leo wasn’t ready to be leader when Splinter kinda sprung it on him. So during the movie, Leo was acting like a little shit hoping Raph would get fed up and take back leadership.

He's very clearly pretending to be a jersey, purposefully putting up walls of sarcasm to hide his feelings. You can tell Raph's speech about the importance of being a leader is definitely getting through to him, as when Raph's turned away/when Leo's turned away, you can see it on his face. And immediately after the speech was over, the walls go back up even stronger, with him antagonizing Raph over it

Excellent analysis of his character, Rise Leo was such a welcome change of pace from the usual "serious leader" Leo most versions of the TMNT have. Honestly the entire series is a nice change, you can't just keep doing the same things over and over again and I don't understand why fans would want the same show with different art instead of it doing something new (Rise is probably my favorite non-comic incarnation at this point).

I love how much you dissected Leo's (especially flawed) actions, connecting the movie back to the show with the early examples really helped your impact! We love Leo in this house, thank you for the fantastic video! It made me love his character a bit more than I thought possible.

To be fair Leo didn't trust big mama so that wasn't really him making a mistake in that particular scenario.

Man does his inferiority complex control his actions *so much*. Which unfortunately for him, doesn't exactly end well for the people surrounding him, so his attempts to overcompensate for his lack of confidence usually lessens his brothers' faith in him even more. (that and not wanting to feed into his ego lmao) Honestly, he's the turt who needs the most therapy purely because of his emotional distance, which he really can't have if he wants to be a good leader. I hope if we get a season 3, part of it will be focused on Leo becoming more emotionally vulnerable around his family when there isn't a life threatening situation, i.e the Krang.

I feel like the writers of Rise wanted to write all four turtles as TEENAGERS, but to some degree of course they've forgotten what it's like to be a teenager. Additionally in most other series the boys have basically been home-schooled by Mr Miyaki in rat form. It also tends to be fuzzy on how much time they've spend above ground, and they come off like they're 20 or something. In the Rise series, we meet Leo at just 14 years old and frankly, he does behave like a know-it-all 14 year old boy and he and his bros have been home-schooled by the worst possible version of Danny DeVito who wants to keep them safe by hardly training them at all, kind of like teenage pregnancy statistics among home-schooled kids in the US. Raph initially takes the role of the leader not because dad designated it, but because he literally tells his bros that as the oldest and biggest brother he SHOULD lead, and for the most part they agree because being in charge is a LOT OF WORK.

7:32 reminds me of two things 1. a tiktok where Leo made a bad joke about betting the other's wished they left him in the prison dimension 2. A tumblr comic where Donnie showed Raph a recording of Leo getting beaten by Kranng in the P.D and Donnie was mad that Leo was basically going to pretend that he wasn't about to get killed. I like Rise!Leo for the fact that no matter how cocky he is it's mainly because he has full faith and love in his family . He didn't know Mikey would be able to make a portal to save him and he was ready to DIED with a smirk on his face, not because he was just ticking off kranng but because he knew Kranng wouldn't be able to hurt his family

we also have to take into consideration that leo is barely 16 and, while he has assumed the leader role twice before in the show ("Stuck On You" and "Man V. Sewer"), he's never actually been a leader. he accidentally started the end of the world by making a normal teenager mistake. plus, his whole mindset and personality seemingly changes once Casey chews him out over his actions, and, while I love Casey, that conversation could've gone differently and left less of a mentally traumatizing impact on Leo. 1.) Casey didn't take into consideration Leo's mental state throughout the missions. Instead of yelling, they could've hade a calm talk about Leo's actions, why he was acting that way, and what they needed to work on changing. 2.) Casey could've mentioned that everyone dies in the future during his introduction instead of springing it onto Leo and Leo alone while he's in a very mentally vulnerable state. 3.) Because Future Leo had years of trial and error and loss to learn how to effectively lead and cope simultaneously, Casey never truly saw the stress and mental issues Future Leo went through. Based on F!Leo's actions and the context of Casey's existence and Present Leo, we can assume that F!Leo hid any and all signs of stress and his heavy burden of being responsible for every life ever lost throughout the war in one way or another. Casey never knew how stressed and guilty Leo felt throughout the war, and so he automatically idolizes him instead of worrying and trying to help him. 4.) Casey continuously forgets that Leo isn't the same as the Leo who raised him and led him through the apocalypse, and so he constantly compares the two, which puts Leo under the stress of living up to Casey's expectations when, in reality, he can't be who Casey wants him to be. the impact of Casey's lecture combined with Raph's words "Everything's not always about you" pulls Leo out of the "I can do this, I'm supposed to be the greatest ninja" coping mindset and puts him into the "it doesnt matter if I live or die, it's not about me and will never be about me, as long as my family is safe, my death and sacrifice won't matter" its why Leo is so determined to let himself get brutally beaten and die in the Prison dimension the scene where he smiles at the photo, he's thinking, "I'm gonna die, but that's okay. My family is safe. It's worth it, it wasnt about me anyways." I love ROTTMNT movie Casey, but I hate him because of that lecture and his effect on Leo.

The reason for this is a inferiority complex as you mentioned with Donnie Mikey and Raphael's emotional issues they all connect back to splinter Raphael's older siblings syndrome Donnie craving adult recognise and Mikey wanting to fix splinter and drazums relationship all connects back to splinter same with leo splinter was EXTREMELY neglectful witch lead to leo feeling like his brothers or anyone will leave him in Minatare maze he yells "don't leave me" when they all go through the portal the cockiness isn't ment to come off like that he wants to seem cool if he seems cool or is super strong or has something he can bring to the table they won't leave him because they have a reason to keep him around he's not trying to be a jerk he just has issues like everyone else! Also great video I could tell you put alot of time and effort into it analyzing everything down to his facel expressions!

To add on. I don't think Splinter ever told Leo why he was made leader. On my first watch-through of the show, I saw that scene similarly to the turtles; they did some awesome, world saving level stuff, and now this out-of-nowhere bomb is being dropped on them which actively stresses them all out. On second viewing I realized Splinter saw all of Leo's actions, like his extremely well thought out (even if some parts were on the fly) plan, his confidence in his brothers' abilities, and a couple other points I can't remember off the top of my head but know are there 😅, then went "yeah, that's leader material." I don't know if there's any time off screen that he says this, but based off of some moments in the movie, I'm going to guess no. I also like the theory that Leo has an inferiority complex, because his actions do seem to line up with that idea. Which means the sudden switch from face guy and sideline strategist to leader would be stressful enough for his coping mechanisms to come in full force, and also his desire to over conpinsate for his none-existant inferiority. Sorry for the long comment 😅

I am 30+ years old. I watched the original cartoon as a kid through the 90's, and the 2003 one as a teen. I skipped 2012, so I don't know much about it. But I was never a huge fan. I liked the TMNT, but I didn't LOVE them. ROTMNT is the first time I could call myself a fan of the series, easily my favorite incarnation. 80/90's TMNT had no emotional depth. It was fun, sure, but shallow. 2003 had some more emotional depth, but 99% of it was dedicated to Leo and what a cool honorable disciplined awesome leader he is. Might as well have been Teenage Mutant Ninja Leonardo. I started watching ROTMNT almost out of spite (so many people my age were being such whiny boomers about "mUh cHaNgEs!" and because of the AMAZING action scenes, which are also easily the best of any TMNT series until now by far. But on an emotional/character development level, this is the best version of TMNT too (but again, I haven't seen 2012, so take it with a grain of salt). I wanted to say a few more things, but the comment is already too long. Great video, I did feel they leaned WAY too hard on Leo's doucheyness in the first half of the movie, and it still doesn't quite click with me, but I can more or less 'get it' a little more after considering some of the stuff you said.

i love this, i like that you bring up that the conflict with him in the movie is actually pretty consistent with the rest of the show, cuz i feel like that's kinda the whole point of the movie that for some reason is being misinterpreted recently?? lmao i feel like the show shows the "best case scenario" of leo's arrogance whereas the movie is just worst case scenario rather than the movie being a completely separate personality. he's insufferable a lot of the time but in the best way, and he does so much growing through the story. good work! 🐢💙

I’d like to say, that personally I don’t think him being so…him?? is his ego, I argue it’s his fear. His fear of not being good enough, fear that he’ll mess up so bad that he can’t save everyone (like what happened with the portal key). This was still a good video though! I love hearing others opinions on Leo

You explained Leo's characters in rise very well I like leo in reboot alot so it was nice seeing this video pop up in my feed continue making more videos and doing your best bud!

You make a lot of interesting (and painstakingly cited lol) points in this video; I hadn’t considered that the increased stakes of the movie might be the reason why Leo’s behaviour feels so dissonant from the way he acts in the show in the early scenes. Thanks for making it!