Heroes in a Half-Shell

So, when you were little, what was your favorite show?  Some folk liked Care Bears, some folk liked Thundercats, and some folk, like me, liked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  I owned a red bandanna, I painted my face green, I made shells out of cardboard, and I pretended that I knew ninjitzu by just jumping around and smashing things.  I owned every cartoon, movie, comic, poster, I bought every toy I could find.  Everyone had a favorite turtle, and as you can see by the pic I drew to the left there, mine was Raphael.

Raph was, in all honesty, the only ninja in the group.  Leo was more of a samuri then a ninja, Donnie would have been happy never going into combat, just being a tech guy, and Mikey...  look, we all know that Mike was just doing the martial arts thing to make his dad happy.  Mike has no ambition and would have sat on his ass watching TV and playing Turtles in Time all damn day.  He put in the minimal amount of effort required to keep Splinter from getting all dissapointed in him.  Raph looked out for him, or he would have been dead in half the battles he fought anyway.



Raphael reminds me of myself.  He doesn't take shit.  He strikes in the dark, swiftly and silently, like a real ninja.  He will put on a trench coat and go watch Critters, despite being a mutant turtle.  He hangs out with a Canadian badass in a hockey mask.  Raphael, without a doubt, is the best turtle.  You're welcome to your own opinion, but Raph will forever hold a special place in my heart.

So, imagine my surprise and delight when I read on NPR that a new turtle movie was coming out!!  The last movie, Turtles Forever, was fucking epic.  I kept waiting on it to suck, and it never did!  The story tied the various universes together seamlessly for fans- it was quite possibly the best crossover that I've ever seen in the history of all time.  It was amazing.  So I ask myself, where will they go from there?  There's a million comic storylines to explore.  We could see the multiverse fighting championships, which would look amazing with today's technological advancements in movie magic- we could get cyborg Donnie, or that time that Leo challenged Hiroko for leadership of the foot clan, and all the grunts backed down, because as Himato's child he totally has a right to do that.  We could revisit dimension X, an multidimensional battle in this day and age would look amazing!

Then I clicked on the article and actually read it.  I must say that...  it struck me as odd.  And I, obviously, am a fan who's ok with watching Vanilla Ice Dance his way through the ending of Turtles 2.  It takes a lot to strike me as odd.  See, the article said that in this edition, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would be neither teenagers, nor mutants, nor turtles.  They would, instead, be adult aliens.  For...  some reason.  I'm not sure why.  Michael Bay is directing, which, honestly, cannot be a good sign (ask any hardcore TF fan) and has been making all the press appearances, so...  I don't know exactly how much input he has script wise, but it seems to be disproportionate.  Where are Eastman and Laird?  Does anyone have a link so that I can see what they think about this radical change?  It could greatly influence my opinion, because right now, I'm viewing this movie with a lot of skepticism.  But I don't know if it's my overreaching cynicism, or if this is as... well, off as it sounds.

I'm going to reserve judgement until we see more from this.