How excited are you about the new Ninja Turtles movie?

[The Wormhole]

I assume this Shredder will still be some sort of military guy. Not being a TMNT fan, that doesn't bother me at all. Does it bother you?

Though I'm not really a TMNT fan, it does kind of bother me that Shredder is being reimagined as an evil military officer. Mainly because it implies the movie is going to feature a villainous government agency as a foil to the heroes, which is something Bay has already done with the Transformers movies. Like I said earlier, it just makes the movie look like Transformers with giant robots replaced with sentient turtles.

I don't think he's prejudiced for it, I just think it's dumb and annoying to whitewash famously ethnic characters.

It is a bit disappointing that Star Trek, a franchise known for its racial diversity has now cast a white guy as an Indian character. Sure, the character is well known as being played by a Latino actor, so one could argue race shouldn't matter. But having a white guy does make things look less diverse all the same.

 

[Pondwater]

I grew up with TMNT too and watched every incarnation including the current series on Nickelodeon. However since this one has Megan Fox, I will pass.

 

[Gaith]

You were speaking as though the issue were about whom they should have cast to fit the revised conception of the character; my point is that the question to be asked is a step or two further back in the process, namely, what motivated them to make that particular revision in the first place?

We'd have to ask Bay, I guess, though his predilection for military/cop characters is of course nothing new. And I'd think that the storytelling advantages of having a US military villain in a NYC-based story are fairly self-evident...

Though I'm not really a TMNT fan, it does kind of bother me that Shredder is being reimagined as an evil military officer. Mainly because it implies the movie is going to feature a villainous government agency as a foil to the heroes, which is something Bay has already done with the Transformers movies. Like I said earlier, it just makes the movie look like Transformers with giant robots replaced with sentient turtles.

But in the TF movies, the military is saintly/heroic, and it's the whiny politicians and bureaucrats who're corrupt. A military antagonist sounds like it could be a pretty significant departure to moi...

 

[Christopher]

We'd have to ask Bay, I guess, though his predilection for military/cop characters is of course nothing new.

I wouldn't know. I haven't actually watched any of his films since Armageddon, though I've caught portions of Transformers on TV -- mostly just the parts with Optimus in them, because Peter Cullen's cool to listen to.

And I'd think that the storytelling advantages of having a US military villain in a NYC-based story are fairly self-evident...

Uhh, no, they're not self-evident to me in the least. I really have no idea what you mean here. As I said, New York City is the most cosmopolitan and diverse city in the US. There really aren't many limits to what kind of characters of what origin could work in an NYC-based story.

 

[Gaith]

Huh. I'd have thought that anyone who'd even read reviews of the TF series would know that they fetishize the military. ROTF, IIRC, even features an opening scene of Autobots helping the military blow up a foreign encampment not at all related to Cybertronians.

As I said, New York City is the most cosmopolitan and diverse city in the US. There really aren't many limits to what kind of characters of what origin could work in an NYC-based story.

Sure, about anyone can find their way to NYC, but how many of them can plausibly call upon the sorts of hardware and manpower resources the US military can? How many New Yorkers can plausibly provide big-ass robots or mech suits for the turtles to fight? Not too many Japanese citizens, I'd wager, and those are just wild guesses on my part. Again, I'm not yet endorsing the choice, but I don't think it's at all a mystifying one either. Guess we'll just have to see...

 

[Christopher]

Sure, about anyone can find their way to NYC, but how many of them can plausibly call upon the sorts of hardware and manpower resources the US military can? How many New Yorkers can plausibly provide big-ass robots or mech suits for the turtles to fight?

Uhhh... what? Where are you getting "robots or mech suits" from? The Turtles in their various incarnations generally fight ninjas, street gangs, other mutant therianthropes, alien invaders, or supernatural/extradimensional entities. When they do fight robots, they're generally either alien robots or the inventions of Baxter Stockman, a rogue scientist. And the latter are not particularly big; Baxter's best known for creating the Mousers, small but numerous robots with lethally sharp metal teeth.

As a rule, the Shredder is portrayed as the head of a massive criminal organization, sometimes behind the facade of a large corporation with abundant wealth and resources. However, in the first two live-action Turtles movies, he was more of an underground figure, a Fagin-like corruptor of youth organizing a street-level criminal gang. There's no requirement for a TMNT story to be on a massive scale, though they often are.

 

[Dream]

I think the next TMNT movies should all take place in New York City. It has become such a huge part of the setting for the series. Movie it to another location like the third movie, and it loses something. Also the poorly developed villains in that movie really didn't help.

 

[Gaith]

Uhhh... what? Where are you getting "robots or mech suits" from?

As I said in my post - though my wording may have been unclear - those were "wild guesses" as to what the movie might feature. I got 'em from my... well, this is a family-friendly board, so...

The Turtles in their various incarnations generally.... As a rule, the Shredder...

"Generally"? "As a rule"? Sir Bay-atron cares not for such things! He is as a god, and will throw in whatever the heck he likes - and he likes military stuff, explosions, fighting robots, and caressing Megan Fox with his... uh... cinematographic composition technique.

There's no requirement for a TMNT story to be on a massive scale, though they often are.

"No requirement" to be massive? Sir Bay-atron may be "as a god", but the subtle mysteries of this remark elude even him...

 

[Tosk]

Even allowing for making Shredder a Military Guy™, why couldn't he remain Japanese?

 

[KGator]

I saw the original movies when I was younger but I'm not excited enough to go to the theater to watch a reboot. I will probably catch them on DVD. Maybe I've just outgrown the appeal of giant, talking, mutated, teenage turtles. I dunno.

 

[Christopher]

As I said in my post - though my wording may have been unclear - those were "wild guesses" as to what the movie might feature. I got 'em from my... well, this is a family-friendly board, so...

Hence my confusion at where these totally random suggestions were coming from.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Assuming the Foot Soldiers are in this movie, they've both been portrayed as humans and robots, so I suppose anything goes. I don't think they've ever been portrayed as robots in any of the movies though, so it remains to be seen what Bay will do.

 

[Christopher]

^The only reason the Foot Soldiers were robots in the '80s-'90s cartoon was censorship -- you couldn't show the good guys using weapons against living people on cartoons, so their enemies had to be robots that could be stabbed or smashed without remorse. The modern cartoon does much the same thing with the Kraang robots, whose alien-brain pilots always manage to bail out safely after the Turtles smash the robots (even though, realistically, the Turtles would be much better off targeting the soft, squishy, exposed Kraang directly).

 

[Gaith]

^ Ah yes, the ol' Prequel Trilogy conundrum... "Crap! Our mostly-peaceful monks are carrying just about the most lethal weapon imaginable! Quick, get us some abiotic mooks so they don't have to kill anyone!"

 

[Owain Taggart]

Ahh, good point, Christopher. Had forgotten about that. I had forgotten that it was the cartoon that had done that, but it makes sense. I think the games also took that route if I'm not mistaken. Still, it opens the door to whatever method Bay chooses to use.

 

[Samurai8472]

First trailer


[YT]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCjsWpM9zFU[/YT]

 

[Trekker4747]

Looks perfectly Michael Bayed all to hell. And, Jesus, why are the turtles so damn huge?!

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

They were pretty big in the original film. When Raph carried April, she looked really tiny in his arms. I'll bet the turtles are the same size.

 

[Trekker4747]

They were pretty big in the original film. When Raph carried April, she looked really tiny in his arms. I'll bet the turtles are the same size.

But they didn't tower over her like these guys do.

 

[Christopher]

They were pretty big in the original film. When Raph carried April, she looked really tiny in his arms. I'll bet the turtles are the same size.

The suit actors who played Raphael in the first two movies were both 5'7" -- the same height as Judith Hoag, who played April in the first movie. And it looks like the animatronic head would've fit about as snugly as a bike helmet, so the full character might've been something like 5'9", say. Since Megan Fox is 5'4", Mikey as shown here, easily a full head taller than she is, would probably be at least 6'2" or so.