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What's a half-shell, anyway?
Oct. 22nd, 2012 02:47 pmMaybe you kids don't remember this, it was before your time, you weren't born yet and your souls were being forged in whatever hell dimension lets you listen to Justin Bieber music while you read Twilight and complain about how the new Spider-Man isn't gritty enough, but there used to be a cartoon called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It existed in the 80s, so now it's getting a reboot called Ninja Turtles because self-awareness and a sense of irony is for assholes, they're aliens now, brah.
Yeah, so before Michael Bay chainsaw-fucks this crap, a script review came out where it turns out that Casey Jones is now a warehouse security guard, April O'Neil is a journalism intern, both of them are teenagers (just to make it a little creepier when we're openly invited to leer at the girl, I guess).
Also, the TMNT are now Chosen Ones from a race of alien turtles who are exiled to Earth so they can't or can fulfill a prophecy, who knows, Shredder is now a military commando named Schrader who runs a guv'mint unit called the Foot Soldiers and is really an alien with a 'Shredder' form underneath his skin (with the Turtles saying "Schrader? More like Shredder!" because not all writers have a sense of shame).
Now, when I first heard about Michael Bay doing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot, my reaction was simply 'Why?' It's not that I'm not a TMNT fan; I was. When I was a kid. And there was a cartoon, there were action figures, video games, movies... I got my TMNT fix. It's not like, you know, Daredevil where there's stuff left to explore. I'm good with the level of TMNT in pop culture. Why can't they make a movie of something that's popular with kids now, like Adventure Time? I know that's taking my life into my own hands, saying I'd watch Adventure Time for an hour and a half when five minutes of Ice King and Marceline basically put my emotions in a death camp, but you know, wild idea: let's make adult movies for adults and kid movies for kids, not kinda violent, kinda pornographic movies for man-children of all ages.
And I know that they've made new TMNT cartoons in the modern era, not because I watch them, but because Jason Biggs was cast in one of them and he got in trouble for making a sexist Tweet about Mitt Romney's wife which was picked up by the Nickelodeon twitter (because as it turns out, you really only have to respect women if they're Democrats). But! I'm pretty sure those cartoons stick to the classic origin of the TMNT. Because they're for kids. Kids can accept "there's this ooze and it turns you into a hybrid of whatever you touched last, so if you're a turtle and you touched a human, you become a man-turtle, but if you're a man and you touched a rat, you become a man-rat." That's child logic. It makes as much sense as J.K. Rowling going "Yeah, so Hogwarts puts all the asshole wizards into one house." It makes sense for the children's story, not because she's trying to do a gritty story of what it'd be like IF MAGIC EXISTED IN THE REAL WORLD CHRISTOPHER NOLAN!
So this whole thing about alien turtles fighting the military isn't aimed at kids, it's aimed at adults like me who liked the cartoon as children and now they're hoping that by taking away all the silly, over-the-top stuff (i.e. what I liked as a child, because TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES! THEY EAT PIZZA!), they can get me to come back on the strength of my nostalgia to watch a generic PG-13 action movie by Michael Bay. Which is like someone telling me "Hey, man, you like Godzilla movies? Then you'll LOVE voting for Adolf Hitler!"
It's an insult. They're actively trying to get adult me to punch kid me in the face like some warped version of Looper where you can't see Piper Perabo's nipples. It's like they're implying that just because I liked something as a kid, it's really some transcendent work of genius for the ages and once we get rid of all that dumb kid stuff and the creator's original intentions, it can shine like it was always meant to. And it won't. It's silly, it was always silly, I liked it because I was a kid and there are even probably aspects of it I can enjoy now, but even if I wanted to see a grim, gritty Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where they swear and cut people up, this won't even be that! It'll be PG-13! A hard-R TMNT would at least have the virtue of being weird, but PG-13?
The original movies they made back in the day were grim and gritty enough; they got rid of the Technodrome and made it about street thugs and vigilantism. This, I feel it's going to be like the Bayformers movies were to the original Transformers movie. Original Transformers, they said 'shit', Autobots died, there was some edge to it. Bayformers was just crass and gross, everyone was saying 'Shit!' and all the women were sexualized and Shia LeBeouf was in it; it just had no class.
And what really grates is that TMNT was pretty much conceived as a parody of wildly capitalistic craziness to begin with. It's supposed to be a big cash-in, but these fuckers are so uncreative that they can't even let it retain what soul it has. Everything in the TMNT plot I can dumb-studio-executive to something already popular.
Okay, so there are four teenage mutant turtles being taught ninjitsu by their beloved rat mentor (the fucking premise). But their mentor has a personal connection to the evil Shredder (Screenwriting 101). Shredder is the leader of a clan of ninja terrorists (Batman Begins) serving as the advance agent for the intergalactic despot Krang and his extradimensional invasion force (The Avengers). To stop him, the Turtles team up with Casey Jones, an urban vigilante in a scary mask (Batman). They, and April O'Neil, an intrepid-yet-beautiful reporter who'll do anything to get her scoop (every Jean-Claude Van Damme movie ever made), have a bunch of massive kung-fu fights (The Matrix) before saving the day. Also, the Turtles really like making pop culture references and eating pizza (hipsters).
What do we need to change there? That's all very silly, but endearingly so, and you can tell a story with those elements that actually has some creativity. I mean, imagine handing the above paragraph to Gail Simone and telling her to go nuts. Shit would get real. Because she's someone who can embrace the silliness of the concept and go "okay, this is strong, we can do something with this" instead of saying "NO, no, no, this is dated, teenagers will never go for this, men age 18-35 will never go for this, this needs to be grim and gritty and realistic and grounded. The Turtles need to have Destinies and the Military needs to be in this, not robot ninjas that the Turtles can actually use ninja weapons to fight, and they need to listen to POD and fight in UFC matches and eat Wal-Mart-brand Pizza Nuggets(tm) and we'll make the villain a white guy in a suit with a British accent!"
And that's why we can't have nice things.
Yeah, so before Michael Bay chainsaw-fucks this crap, a script review came out where it turns out that Casey Jones is now a warehouse security guard, April O'Neil is a journalism intern, both of them are teenagers (just to make it a little creepier when we're openly invited to leer at the girl, I guess).
Also, the TMNT are now Chosen Ones from a race of alien turtles who are exiled to Earth so they can't or can fulfill a prophecy, who knows, Shredder is now a military commando named Schrader who runs a guv'mint unit called the Foot Soldiers and is really an alien with a 'Shredder' form underneath his skin (with the Turtles saying "Schrader? More like Shredder!" because not all writers have a sense of shame).
Now, when I first heard about Michael Bay doing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot, my reaction was simply 'Why?' It's not that I'm not a TMNT fan; I was. When I was a kid. And there was a cartoon, there were action figures, video games, movies... I got my TMNT fix. It's not like, you know, Daredevil where there's stuff left to explore. I'm good with the level of TMNT in pop culture. Why can't they make a movie of something that's popular with kids now, like Adventure Time? I know that's taking my life into my own hands, saying I'd watch Adventure Time for an hour and a half when five minutes of Ice King and Marceline basically put my emotions in a death camp, but you know, wild idea: let's make adult movies for adults and kid movies for kids, not kinda violent, kinda pornographic movies for man-children of all ages.
And I know that they've made new TMNT cartoons in the modern era, not because I watch them, but because Jason Biggs was cast in one of them and he got in trouble for making a sexist Tweet about Mitt Romney's wife which was picked up by the Nickelodeon twitter (because as it turns out, you really only have to respect women if they're Democrats). But! I'm pretty sure those cartoons stick to the classic origin of the TMNT. Because they're for kids. Kids can accept "there's this ooze and it turns you into a hybrid of whatever you touched last, so if you're a turtle and you touched a human, you become a man-turtle, but if you're a man and you touched a rat, you become a man-rat." That's child logic. It makes as much sense as J.K. Rowling going "Yeah, so Hogwarts puts all the asshole wizards into one house." It makes sense for the children's story, not because she's trying to do a gritty story of what it'd be like IF MAGIC EXISTED IN THE REAL WORLD CHRISTOPHER NOLAN!
So this whole thing about alien turtles fighting the military isn't aimed at kids, it's aimed at adults like me who liked the cartoon as children and now they're hoping that by taking away all the silly, over-the-top stuff (i.e. what I liked as a child, because TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES! THEY EAT PIZZA!), they can get me to come back on the strength of my nostalgia to watch a generic PG-13 action movie by Michael Bay. Which is like someone telling me "Hey, man, you like Godzilla movies? Then you'll LOVE voting for Adolf Hitler!"
It's an insult. They're actively trying to get adult me to punch kid me in the face like some warped version of Looper where you can't see Piper Perabo's nipples. It's like they're implying that just because I liked something as a kid, it's really some transcendent work of genius for the ages and once we get rid of all that dumb kid stuff and the creator's original intentions, it can shine like it was always meant to. And it won't. It's silly, it was always silly, I liked it because I was a kid and there are even probably aspects of it I can enjoy now, but even if I wanted to see a grim, gritty Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where they swear and cut people up, this won't even be that! It'll be PG-13! A hard-R TMNT would at least have the virtue of being weird, but PG-13?
The original movies they made back in the day were grim and gritty enough; they got rid of the Technodrome and made it about street thugs and vigilantism. This, I feel it's going to be like the Bayformers movies were to the original Transformers movie. Original Transformers, they said 'shit', Autobots died, there was some edge to it. Bayformers was just crass and gross, everyone was saying 'Shit!' and all the women were sexualized and Shia LeBeouf was in it; it just had no class.
And what really grates is that TMNT was pretty much conceived as a parody of wildly capitalistic craziness to begin with. It's supposed to be a big cash-in, but these fuckers are so uncreative that they can't even let it retain what soul it has. Everything in the TMNT plot I can dumb-studio-executive to something already popular.
Okay, so there are four teenage mutant turtles being taught ninjitsu by their beloved rat mentor (the fucking premise). But their mentor has a personal connection to the evil Shredder (Screenwriting 101). Shredder is the leader of a clan of ninja terrorists (Batman Begins) serving as the advance agent for the intergalactic despot Krang and his extradimensional invasion force (The Avengers). To stop him, the Turtles team up with Casey Jones, an urban vigilante in a scary mask (Batman). They, and April O'Neil, an intrepid-yet-beautiful reporter who'll do anything to get her scoop (every Jean-Claude Van Damme movie ever made), have a bunch of massive kung-fu fights (The Matrix) before saving the day. Also, the Turtles really like making pop culture references and eating pizza (hipsters).
What do we need to change there? That's all very silly, but endearingly so, and you can tell a story with those elements that actually has some creativity. I mean, imagine handing the above paragraph to Gail Simone and telling her to go nuts. Shit would get real. Because she's someone who can embrace the silliness of the concept and go "okay, this is strong, we can do something with this" instead of saying "NO, no, no, this is dated, teenagers will never go for this, men age 18-35 will never go for this, this needs to be grim and gritty and realistic and grounded. The Turtles need to have Destinies and the Military needs to be in this, not robot ninjas that the Turtles can actually use ninja weapons to fight, and they need to listen to POD and fight in UFC matches and eat Wal-Mart-brand Pizza Nuggets(tm) and we'll make the villain a white guy in a suit with a British accent!"
And that's why we can't have nice things.
