According to Polygon, a new seven-minute animated short film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Chrome Alone 2 – Lost in New Jersey, released in theaters attached to The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants today. The short features the Turtles battling an AI named Chrome Dome that creates knockoff “Tubular Tortoise Karate Warriors” action figures to cash in on their fame without paying likeness rights. This comes just a week after the news broke that Disney struck a deal with OpenAI, the owners of ChatGPT and Sora, to license over 200 Disney characters for AI-generated videos. The BBC reported industry insiders see Disney’s move as a major $1 billion endorsement of AI that could reshape Hollywood. In the short, Raphael literally says “AI sucks,” framing the fight as one against unoriginal, thieving artificial intelligence.
More than just a cartoon fight
Look, on the surface, it’s a silly cartoon where mutant turtles blow up a factory. But the subtext here is about as subtle as one of Raphael’s sai strikes. The villain is an AI that amalgamates stolen story beats from Superman, Spider-Man, and The Lord of the Rings to explain its own origin. It’s a perfect, hilarious metaphor for the “slop” everyone fears—AI models trained on copyrighted work, churning out derivative junk that undermines the original creators. And the Turtles win by being unpredictable and silly, by being genuinely original in a way an AI trained on past data can’t compute. That’s the thesis statement.
Back to their roots
Here’s the thing that makes this stance so powerful: it’s completely in character for the TMNT brand. As Polygon outlines, the Turtles were born from the indie comic scene of the 1980s, a direct reaction to creators getting a raw deal from giants like Marvel and DC. Their creators, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, famously championed creator rights, even helping draft The Creator’s Bill of Rights in 1988. So for these characters to now stand against a new form of corporate/IP theft—this time powered by AI—feels like a return to form. It’s not a new message for them; it’s their original message updated for a new technological threat. The enemy has just evolved from media conglomerates to media conglomerates armed with AI.
A lost cause?
But let’s be real. The poignant, maybe tragic, contrast is with Disney’s deal. While the Turtles are metaphorically (and literally) smashing the AI factory, Disney is handing OpenAI the keys to its kingdom. That’s the billion-dollar elephant in the room. The short’s message is righteous, but it feels like a protest happening outside the stadium where the game has already been sold. Can a seven-minute cartoon really stand against the momentum of a $1 billion partnership? It casts the Turtles’ victory as a bittersweet one. They win their battle, but the war seems increasingly decided by the very corporate powers their creators fought against decades ago.
Whose side are you on?
So what are we left with? A fantastic piece of narrative pushback that’s also a stark indicator of where we are. The fact that a major studio like Paramount (distributing this short) is greenlighting a story this explicitly anti-AI in the same month Disney goes all-in with OpenAI shows a deep industry schism. It’s a cultural battle line being drawn in the most unexpected place: a cartoon about pizza-loving reptiles. The Turtles have always been counter-culture heroes. Now, in 2025, the counter-culture is being aggressively, creatively human in the face of automated content generation. Their fight might feel quixotic, but at least someone’s still throwing the first punch. And sometimes, that’s all you can do.
