If you think about it, Shredder’s armor was always kind of impractical. Sure, the shin and forearm blades kind of make sense, and the headpiece could be useful at close range if you had to resort to a headbutt, but who was he going to stab with his epaulets? His tailor? Fortunately, in the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, they appear to have addressed this in the least subtle way possible.
In this leak from the TMNT Fansite, they present what appears to be what happens when Edward Scissorhands has a romantic assignation with a Gundam. Either that or Splinter is, like, Peter Dinklage-sized in this movie and they made his katana to scale.
We’ll point out that Shredderbot is the more likely answer here, both because you can see Splinter’s katana in the lower right-hand corner and because this is a movie produced by Michael Bay, a man who long ago destroyed any sense of subtlety he had after a tragic camera-shaking accident. Also we’re guessing the Silver Samurai props from The Wolverine were pretty cheap, since it’s not like Fox will ever be using those again.
Joking aside, this was probably inevitable; the finale of a movie like this needs to be big by the standards of Hollywood, and that means either mass city destruction and/or giant robot. Also, a giant pointy robot sells more toys than William Fichtner, and let’s not kid ourselves about what the ultimate goal is, here.