Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (

[Dark Silver]

So there's a new movie coming out in 2013......produced by Micheal Bay.

So here's a youtube clip from SourceFed discussing the news (albiet with a bias, but hey, I like SourceFed's 3min vlog bites)

[youtube][/youtube]

I pretty much agree with these fine gentlemen.

Discuss.

[frigidmagi]

AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH! It's Transformers all over again! I'm feeling a boycott!

[LadyTevar]

Did Michael Bay's Mom not buy him the toys or something? Is that why he wants to fuck over all the 1980s favorites?

[B4UTRUST]

Did Michael Bay's Mom not buy him the toys or something? Is that why he wants to fuck over all the 1980s favorites?

I have a few working theories.
1) His mother never loved him enough
2) He was bullied as a kid and had all his toys taken from him. He wants to ruin other peoples childhoods the way his was ruined, by a bigger bully that he was powerless to stop.
3) He has a sexual fetish involving 80's nostalgia and fan rage. I think he has some sort of horrible machine that siphons the tears of hate we shed from the world and turns them into some sort of natural waterbased lube. Which he then uses to sodomize 80's toys.
4) He really is so self-absorbed and deluded that he firmly believes he is making it better. Of course we all know he's deluded into thinking he's a talented director so this is entirely possible. Lets face it, the man is a two trick ponies. CGI and Explosions.
5) He's a Malkavian trying to twist us all to his flavor of madness.
6) Blame Congress

[Josh]

...dude.

Fuck.

This is why I don't watch movies anymore.

[LadyTevar]

#5 is actually plausible.

Wait, have we seen him in daylight?

[frigidmagi]

He does really love filming at sunset...

[B4UTRUST]

So, we're going with the Malkavian theory then. Alright. *nods* It's settled then. Michael Bay is now officially more than meets the eye, he's a vampire in disguise...

[Steve]

Malkavian? I was thinking Skaris myself....

[Steve]

Oh God.... that video makes me want to punch them. Seriously, the Dork Side is too strong in them.

Seriously, the first cartoon? Alright, yeah, I watched it growing up too, and I loved it... but then I saw the newer 2K3 series and it just trounced the old one. Because, let's face it, the old one soon devolved into slapstick, with the writers even lampshading their own unoriginal plot mechanics (Oh look, April's in trouble again!). Hell, half the time Shredder kidnaps April they banter about it. The new one had character development, plot arcs, a Shredder who was such a hardcore villain badass that the Turtles barely survived most of their fights with him. A more diverse rogue gallery. No idiot Bebop and Rocksteady. An April who actually fights.

Oh, and, Casey's not a once-a-season grim guest star, but a series regular. And makes the show better for it.

(Granted, I think the Turtles Forever special exaggerated '87's slapstick and weirdness a bit).

Now, on the face of it, Bay's "they're aliens" thing can happen any number of ways, and for all we know they'll still be teenagers and mutants on top of having an alien origin. Or maybe not. If I've got hesitations about it, it's because Michael Bay's track record doesn't inspire confidence.

[Josh]

Yeah, I'm really not enjoying this new style of shout video broadcasting. Even if I agree with the opinions presented, I want to punch the presenters or at least not be associated with anything they're attached to.

I haven't seen the 2K3 cartoons, I really should check it out. The coolest part of the original cartoon was the very first week's worth of episodes. Bebop and Roksteady were serious friggin' menaces and Shredder was serious shit. Then it went downhill into repetitive campy fun. I watched it because the characters were enjoyable, but the storylines...

Good god, did I just write serious analysis of the old TMNT cartoon?

Shoot me now.

Seriously though, that's how I felt about it as a kid. I hated the cartoons that turned the villains into non-threatening slapstick who were only menacing by virtue of being sneaky for the first fifteen minutes.

[Dark Silver]

Thankfully, they vary up the people who do the vlog things, some are better than others.


As for TMNT - yeah, I really did enjoy the 2k3 series, it was pretty serious, and took the mythos in a interesting more comic-like directions rather than the rather campy 1980's cartoon. Though yes, in the first couple of episodes of the first season of the toon, Bebop and Rocksteady were interesting menaces, and Shredder and Krang were evil bastards to be scared of (until they too went into the Camp and never returned).

I prefered the first TMNT movie's take on the Turtles and Shredder though, to the 80's cartoon.

But yeah, Alien Ninja Turtles....

No, no. I will not stand for it.

[frigidmagi]

There's an alternative explanation

You know, I watched the 1987 series and was young enough to enough it, but what really sealed my fandom? The comics, both the orginal black and white and the colored version based off the cartoon. Even the comic based off the cartoon was amazing, they ditched the camp (and often ditched the cartoon villians) in favor of story arcs and character pieces. Interesting stuff like the Turtles travel around the world and meet various mutants (the discussions the Turtles had with those mutants were my first real exposure to things like Buddhism, Islam or Hinduism.) The villians often got issues of their own to develop their backstory and reasons. We would be better for it if all kid comics were held to that standard. I mean they developed Bebop and Rocksteady into independent people who left Shedder to pursue their own goals.

Granted the Comic also embraced the weird shit of it all. Such as story lines where the Turtles are kidnapped by aliens to become professional wrestlers but man at least they could hold your interest.

[rhoenix]

Huh. I remember the old cartoon, and though I never was a zealot about the show, I always thought it was at least fun.

I haven't seen the 2k3 version, and find myself very curious now, with everything Steve's said about it.

But yeah... Bay I think had to work in a coal mine from the time he was three until he was eighteen, and all other children around him got to play with toys and laugh and be merry - so he decided "ok fine, I want to see a tear of betrayal on every child's face" and so got into the final nefarious stages of his plan.

He has ruined Transformers for all time. He now seeks to vomit on and clean his infected hemmorhoids with another beloved part of my childhood.

I almost want to send him an old 1800's picture of a child laborer covered in coal dust so he'll feel like someone understands his pain.

[Steve]

Rheonix, Josh, I think you'll like the 2K3 series, at least up until Season 5 (aka the Lost Season). Seasons 6 and 7 were somewhat weaker due to 4Kids starting to exert more Executive Meddling pressure on them (hell, the reason Season 5 is called the Lost Season is because they were forced to skip it and head straight to 6, which was immensely confusing since 4 ended on a cliffhanger introducing the Ninja Tribunal), but they also had memorable storylines and episodes. Season 6 was the "TMNT Fast Forward" series, which had the Turtles and Splinter time-warped to 2105, while Season 7 was titled "Back to the Sewers" and had them coming back a year after their disappearance - the main arc, set up by an enemy added to their rogues gallery in Season 6, involved the Turtles going Cybernauts Tron-style. The Season 7 finale culminated everything with Casey and April getting married (and a large battle royale when the wedding gets crashed).

Then came the Grand Finale of the series and, arguably, the entire franchise's Mirage era: Turtles Forever, the 25th Anniversary celebration DTV that had clear nods to Crisis on Infinite Earths and introduced the concept of the Turtle Multiverse, complete with the 2K3 Turtles meeting their 1987 slapstick counterparts (and the original black and white Mirage comic Turtles too). I'd recommend watching it just to see the Culture shock, even if I think the 87 team got their slapstick goofball behavior turned up to 11 somewhat inappropriately.

[Josh]

Thanks Steve, I'll have to look that up sometime.