Bay Ninja Turtles Obligatory Bitch Thread

[Onslaught Six]

I mean what's the use of creating something if you can't have fun with it?

I bet Dom can answer that question. I bet he can answer the hell out of it.

Ba-dum chsss!

http://peterlairdstmntblog.blogspot.com/
For more Peter Laird, just read all these emails he's been posting for the last, oh, year and a half or so. They're all correspondance emails between Laird and the producers of the later seasons of the 2003 cartoons. Primarily they deal with him acting as an editor on various script drafts and plot outlines. Sometimes he has a legitimate point, ("Are we really supposed to believe that x character is so dense to not realize this other thing is happening?") but other times it just gets so...idiotic and mundane. For one thing, he's got a serious hard on for the way Leonardo and Donatello talk. (I see repeated references to "Donatello doesn't say 'yeah,'" which is something that seriously starts to get on my nerves. Why the fuck doesn't he? They're teenagers. Let them talk the way they would talk. Especially for informally trained turtles.)

[Mako Crab]

Reminds me of Kane Hodder. He played Jason Voorhees in 4 Friday the 13th movies, so he felt like he owned the character, and would always say stuff like how "Jason doesn't run." Well, yes he does. Quite a bit, actually. Just not in Kane's movies.
The difference here being that Eastman and Laird actually do own the characters.

[JediTricks]

Eastman and Laird (especially Eastman) used to draw this kind of fuckery all the time. For fun. "Hey, what if the Turtles were wearing space armour?" "Why would they do that?" "I don't know, I just want to draw a turtle in space armour." "And do what with it?" "Nothing? Hang it on my wall? For fun? Jesus, Pete."

Why do I get the feeling that I would love to watch a sitcom about these two?

I have actually always felt a strange kindred feeling between those two and Tycho and Gabe from Penny Arcade:

Ha! Awesome.

To be fair, Eastman got a lot less dorky when he shaved off that mustache, fixed that curly mullet, and married Julie Strain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Strain

I'm wondering how we even have TMNT with these two getting along so horribly. It's a bit like He-Man. Early reports indicate that there was so much infighting at Mattel that no less than three people claim to have created He-Man.

Well, first it was their shared passion for the state of affairs in comics at the time, then it was the fat cash, then they sold out and split up.

When you work-for-hire, you risk having your parent company cover up creation, or smooth over the truth, but the reality is that you're often collaborating on behalf of the company so much that there can never be a clear path. And then there's execs who will just take credit for something under them.

It's funny you would mention that because their love of pizza is one of the things that attracted me to the franchise to begin with (I religously love pizza). Sounds like Laird took himself too seriously. I mean what's the use of creating something if you can't have fun with it?

I dunno, I've always thought that Laird was trying to protect the brand he co-created from becoming watered-down "product", and that's understandable.

[Onslaught Six]

Some things are understandable, and for the most part the 2003 cartoon is pretty good (I've only seen maybe 13 episodes between the first three seasons or so, but I liked them) but there's just some really niggly stuff in there. I mean, I can understand not wanting to water down the brand but he had (and still has) a huge vendetta against pretty much anything brought in from the 1987 cartoon.

[138 Scourge]

Well, I'll weigh in on this one. I straight up don't understand the motivation behind revamping the Turtle's origins in this thing. Are space aliens ninjas that much more feasible than mutated animals? It's especially baffling because Bay's other remakes have stayed faithful enough to the origins of the franchise characters...Jason's still a weird little kid who drowned and then decided to take it out on screaming teenagers. Freddy's still a creepy dude that really loved kids who got torched and decided to take it out on screaming teenagers. Leatherface is still from a cannibal clan in Texas that's all crazy and decided to take it out on screaming...damn, maybe horror movies are a bit repetitive. If it's just a way to gloss over the origin and get right to turtles beating the bejesus out of some chumps, that's all right and all. But if the entire thing's gonna be "space turtles adapting to their new world" then I'll just pass.

Actually, who am I kidding. I haven't even seen the last Turtles movie yet, and by all accounts that was pretty good. What are the odds that I'm gonna see a Bayed-up version?

Talking of weird-ass Turtle remakes, any of y'all ever see Micheal Zulli's version of the Turtles? Strange-looking, not even close to any other version ever, but dude's art is so fantastic that I was totally okay with it.

[Ursus mellifera]

Actually, who am I kidding. I haven't even seen the last Turtles movie yet, and by all accounts that was pretty good. What are the odds that I'm gonna see a Bayed-up version?

Talking of weird-ass Turtle remakes, any of y'all ever see Micheal Zulli's version of the Turtles? Strange-looking, not even close to any other version ever, but dude's art is so fantastic that I was totally okay with it.

Yeah, I haven't seen the last one, either, and I'm most certainly not seeing this one, so in the end I don't really care how bad it is. I might see it years later when it's free and moldering unwatched on Netflix.

I've never seen Zulli's Turtles, but the art is neat.

[Sparky Prime]

If it's just a way to gloss over the origin and get right to turtles beating the bejesus out of some chumps, that's all right and all.

They can gloss over the origin with out changing them into aliens though. 4 turtles and a rat that got mutated by ooze isn't that complicated of a concept.

And as we've discussed before in the thread, changing them to aliens rather than being mutants does change some other aspects of the turtles.

[Tigermegatron]

If it's just a way to gloss over the origin and get right to turtles beating the bejesus out of some chumps, that's all right and all.

They can gloss over the origin with out changing them into aliens though. 4 turtles and a rat that got mutated by ooze isn't that complicated of a concept.

And as we've discussed before in the thread, changing them to aliens rather than being mutants does change some other aspects of the turtles.

Other ideas....

1- The TMNT could get created by a mad scientist on the earth. they'd be bio-engineered TMNT. Maybe the mad scientist could be splinter who bio-engineered his human form into a rat/man by accident. or maybe the TMNT could be bio-engineered by shreeder for evil purposes but they rebel & fight for good causes.

[Mako Crab]

Even better idea.

The 4 Turtles were banished from their homeworld and sent to Earth. Earth would be like this big dumping ground for criminals from the turtle planet. And they're immortal. Yeeahh. . . . yeah, and in fact, the turtles INVENTED ninjitsu and the martial arts! YES! That's it! They've been on Earth that long! Yeah! And then, in present day New York some more alien turtles show up to kill them, because. . . well just because. And Queen needs to do the soundtrack!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ1WyBGG_Vw

[Onslaught Six]

Even better idea.

The 4 Turtles were banished from their homeworld and sent to Earth. Earth would be like this big dumping ground for criminals from the turtle planet. And they're immortal. Yeeahh. . . . yeah, and in fact, the turtles INVENTED ninjitsu and the martial arts! YES! That's it! They've been on Earth that long! Yeah! And then, in present day New York some more alien turtles show up to kill them, because. . . well just because. And Queen needs to do the soundtrack!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ1WyBGG_Vw

Wait, I know--the main villain could be named Katana, because that means sword!

I raise you your Highlander and beat you with the Protomen playing Princes:
http://vimeo.com/26630835

And yeah, Zulli's Turtles were part of that super-weird period of TMNT vol. 1 where Laird and Eastman didn't have time to work on the book anymore and instead just had whoever wanted to do a story...do one. The order of events and what's actually "canonical" starts to get really fuzzy around '88, and there were tons of weird reinterpretations of how the Turtles looked, spoke and acted...but their origins were never redone, at least.