Anyone who knows me, even for a brief period of time, would know I absolutely love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.(or Hero Turtles for our friends across the pond.) I cannot remember a time in my life where I didn’t love those lean mean green mutants. I had both the ’87 cartoon and all three films on VHS as a kid and I assure you those videos were played quite regularly. I remember going into my local comic book shop when I was younger with one of my missions being finding those original Eastman/Laird black and white comics. So when I heard about Paramount was rebooting the franchise I was cautious, but excited.
That excitement has diminished quite a bit since that announcement. I’ll admit I was a bit worried about Nickelodeon’s acquirement of the franchise, but so far it’s gone quite good. The comic from IDW is utterly fantastic and a perfect blending of the movies, cartoons and comics in one package that serves as a wonderful love letter to the mythology. Also, while haven’t seen too much of it, the new cartoon seems to be a good gateway to the franchise for kids and seems respectful of the characters. Everything I hear from the new film is the complete opposite of this.
First there was the announcement that Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes would be producing it. While this is better than Bay actually directing the film, it is just marginally so. Platinum Dunes has never really produced a satisfying blockbuster. They’ve just stuck to reviving horror franchises such as Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. It seems now they are moving on from sucking horror franchises dry to all franchises.
Even with Platinum Dunes producing, I felt maybe a director would come on with passion for the franchise or at least a vision for the film like Singer had when he first come on X-men. That does seem to be the case as they’ve hired Jonathan Liebesman, a man who has given us such gems as Battle:Los Angeles and Wrath of the Titans. Even after that I tried to keep a positive attitude towards the film. It was going to be the first live action TMNT in 20 years, so that had to count for something, right?
Well then came the words “alien race” out of Michael Bay’s mouth at a Nickelodeon presser and soon the fans made their concerns heard. Bay quickly retracted the statement, but I was already ready to check out. That feeling further expanded when I read about the leaked script. That script is probably one of the worst adaptations I’ve ever read about. Now I’m not one of those fans adverse to changes from page to screen. I love What Nolan did with the Batman franchise and he took quite a few liberties and X-men: First Class created continuity errors and I thought it was brilliant. When those films had that this script clearly lacked was that in those films the characters and situations felt true to the spirit of the worlds they were adapting. This script might as well be about some other alien race because it felt completely different from the TMNT. I would give the details here as they are gruesome, but a simple Google search will lead you to it, if you so dare.
After all this I heard the film was delayed and the script being rewritten. I thought maybe they heard the backlash and decided they should put genuine effort into this film instead of making it a blatant cash grab. But I was not rewarded for my faith for recently Megan Fox was cast for the film and it seems it was for the ever important role of April o’ Neal. This, to me is a clear indication of where this film is going, especially since they skipped over more talented actresses like Jane Levy and Anna Kendrick to cast Megan Fox. This film is obviously going to fit more into the G.I. Joe/ Transformers mold than the Iron Man/Spider-man mold. I don’t ask much of my comic book films. All I ask for is the two Fs, fun and faithful. It’s a shame the TMNT(or TAMT it seems.) won’t be getting their due anytime soon. Well I guess it can’t be too bad, let’s just picture this film for a minute…..
God help us….
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musings of a comic geek 