Oh Boy, Someone Thought Another ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Re-Make Was A Good Idea
Spoiler: that person was Michael Bay.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are truly creatures which transcend both time and space. This was clear from the get-go as their names — Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael — seamlessly united the world of historic Renaissance art with that of present-day fictional anthropomorphic turtles who live in New York sewers, fight giant rats and eat pizza.
Shh. Just accept it.
Over the past few decades this adaptability has proved itself again and again through the many lives the gutter brothers have had on the page, TV and silver screen. After first being conceived in the comic books of Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman in the late-’80s, TMNT have been transformed into manga, daily comic strip, anime, toys and video games. On TV they’ve been portrayed as adorable simplistic cartoons, horrific live-action fighting walnuts, cartoons once again with a deeply unsettling edge, and finally disturbing blobs of Pingu-esque clay. Similar patterns have played out on the big screen too.
But over all this time, perhaps no re-make or fun-loving reinterpretation has been so universally panned as last year’s feature film produced by Michael Bay, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Secret Of The Ooze.
“Cowabunga? Cowabuggeroff!” said adult professional film critic Mark Kermode in The Guardian in response to the film. “The problem is that it’s just not silly enough or funny enough,” offered Alistar Harkness in The Scotsman. “It should have been renamed TMNT: The Secret of the Snooze,” Ben Rawson-Jones wrote — while presumably winning some kind off film critic’s Pulitzer Prize — for Digital Spy. The film is currently rated at a pretty dismal 21 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Now, because Hollywood is Hollywood and Michael Bay is oblivious to criticism having presumably been partially defeaned by his own explosions over the years, the sequel is on its way. The trailer to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows has just dropped featuring CGI, Run DMC’s ‘It’s Tricky’, what is likely a very well-paid Will Arnett, more CGI, and a talking turtle being inappropriately sexual to human woman Megan Fox.
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is coming to cinemas June 9, 2015 (whether you like it or not).