Ninja Turtles

I guess I'd better throw my two cents in for this whole Ninja Turtle business.

For those not in the know, if there are any of you, Michael Bay is producing a new Ninja Turtles movie. Well, the first Ninja Turtles movie, because the others were called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This one, on the other hand, will have no Teenage Mutant in it. It could have mutants, but that seems like it would just be a kick in the teeth for the fans. And I'm pretty sure the Turtles are still teenagers, but who knows.

What the movie's going to do is make the Turtles aliens, instead of mutants. I've heard a lot of arguments for and against this. The "for" are all well reasoned and well thought out, all stating the obvious fact that the Turtles that most of you know aren't the original Turtles. That the original turtles were a dark and gritty Daredevil parody. From what I've heard they were essentially Splinter's hit men. And as such the Turtles we know and love were, in fact, someone butchering the original concept for a toy line.

The "against" tends to be whining about Michael Bay ruining (or another "r" word) peoples childhoods. Since the arguments seem to be leaning towards the side I disagree with I figured I'd try and make a rational argument against the Ninja Turtles being anything but Teenage Mutants.

What is the point of making them alien? I can honestly see no reason for it. While it's true that it might help introduce the alien threats of the Ninja Turtle universe I disagree that it's necessary and it seems like they're sweeping away inconvenient story elements in order to make their job slightly easier. What I'm seeing here is that they don't believe the mutant aspect of the Turtles is believable and they're trying to simplify it as something that popular media is going crazy for these days. Aliens.

If I honestly thought that their being aliens was an actual change to the franchise to look at it through another lens, if I thought it was a creative tweak in a direction that they believed would improve the story, I would be all behind this. But turning the Mutants into Aliens doesn't strike me as any form of creative genius, it strikes me as them simplifying something to make it easier. At the end of the day all it serves is to make me wait a few days before going to see it, to see what the people think of the movie.

Of course, there's also the quite high probability that they only did it to give the movie some press before release. It's working. Good job gentlemen!