I'm a day-1 TMNT fan(I still have my original TMNT #1,2,3,4 issues, and the Archie ones too, but I mean the original Mirage first printing originals. :shrug: It has nothing to do with ruining childhood, it has
everything to do with the fundamentals of what makes TMNT unique. And Michael Bay sucked all of the originality out of TMNT, only to make it as genre cliche as possible. Basically preying on stupid consumers because of a franchise name to sell movies, instead of actually giving TMNT the big budget that it deserves to make it great. AKA the modern-day Hollywood reboot for bucks written by marketing departments and executives, not by artists and visionaries.
It's like saying A New Hope is the best Star Wars movie.
I've written about this before, and I'll do it again I guess. There are certain characteristics about TMNT that make them great. These characteristics are consistent with the comics, the cartoon, the movies(for the most part), and that is why they are great.
The turtles are great because of
very specific characteristics.
#1. They are active Teenagers, behave like teenagers, and all 4 have different characteristics. They are built like human teenagers as well, which is why people can relate to them.
#2. They are a PARODY of the comic industry creating mutants out of thin air. They are meant to be stupid and funny, but at the same time, highly skilled and trained ninjas.
#3. They are not a "save the world" super hero. This is what sets them apart from other comic heroes. They are more like Dexter(TV show) but with full emotions, less like X-Men.
#4. Their influence comes from a Ninja Rat who is a renaissance art lover. Something that was also a comedic conflict of personalities at the time, because most ninja artistic influences were Japanese. And if you read the original comics, the influences show how Splinter acts, how he passes this onto his students, and what makes him different than your cliche dojo sensei.
#5. They are mutants because of industrial waste. Even then they used this as a small protest of how corporations and government try to hide these things, as well as expressed the corruption quite nicely. Thus making a sub-culture of enemies and allies to build on.
#6. They live in the sewers. Because kids were being blamed for strange species in NYC sewers for whatever reason at the time. This was a joke, because all 4 turtles and splinter were previously
pets.
#7. April is a highly intelligent science nerd. She was a lab assistant, and became a journalist because she had inside information on the turtles, since they saved her and became friends. This is also a parody on Peter Parker and Clark Kent, because both are terrible at their day job, but get inside information that keeps them around.
#8. Shredder is a character inspired by, and named after a food grater. His whole weapon and armor design is based on a grater, which was and still is a feared kitchen tool for kids helping their parents prepare food. He's the younger brother of Splinter's mentor.
#9 The foot clan was mocking the portrayal of street gangs, and this vision at the time that regular people and cops could not compete with inner city gangs, because the media built them up to have some kind of super power and advantage over cops and civilians. Therefore the foot were super trained assassin ninjas, which by some perception, made them untouchable.
Now, before anyone breaks down the quote ans says Michael Bay did not derive from any of the characteristics that I mentioned, just keep in mind, I am posting those 8 characteristics as a general guideline for what TMNT is. Whatever Bay does, I really don't know yet. But I have good reason to believe half of those were thrown away completely.
