Does anybody really like Michael Bay films? I haven’t really met anyone who thinks Armageddon or any of the Transformers films are actually any good. When it comes to Bay, it’s all big explosions and scantily clad ladies. Now he’s at it again with plans for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film that will completely change the origin of the heroes in a half-shell, an action that has got the entire geek universe up in arms (except for Corey Feldman, who voiced Donatello in the original film as is “IN” if Bay wants him. Of course, if Michael Bay wants Feldman to deliver him a pizza, he’s also “IN”.
On that note, I asked our team of Biff Bam Pop writers to weigh in on his fairly insane plan to turn the turtles into aliens. Here’s what they had to say:
It has always bothered me when Hollywood takes a property from another medium (or in some cases, its own medium) and finds the need to change it. If it was popular enough on its own, why mess with the source material, it was a working formula! Such is the case with Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He says they will be aliens in his version. Wtf? It says right in the title what it’s all about – Teenage. Mutant. Ninja. Turtles. He is changing the whole core of the concept. If Bay wants aliens, he should do aliens, not the Turtles. It rips the heart out of the source material and what makes the characters popular. Next thing you know, they’ll be making Superman a mutant instead of an alien…
Mat Langford:
It’s a cardinal sin, you don’t mess with great source material. I already don’t like Michael Bay, he ruined the Transformers franchise (the first movie was only bearable), and now he has his medusa gaze set on one of the 90s’ most beloved movie franchises, changing the Teenage ‘Mutant’ Ninja Turtles into Teenage ‘Alien’ Ninja Turtles. His lackluster formula of taking a successful movie franchise, changing characters and adding heaps of CGI and pounding soundtracks – appealing to the growing teenage crowd with, arguably, the attention span of a goldfish – is his license to print money, and while it seems to work for his wallet, I doubt he’ll make many fans with a total remake of the ‘Heroes in a Half Shell”. Let’s just hope we don’t get the “Middle-aged Alien Karate Reptiles” when all is said and done.
Nothing is ever extreme enough for Michael Bay so it’s no surprise that he’d throw the TMNT franchise for a loop. It’s a lot easier to gut a character and reinvent it than do the original any justice, I wouldn’t expect any better from Bay.
JP Fallavollita:
Man, I don’t know what’s going on in the world of Hollywood or what’s running through the thoughts of a certain big-budget, blow ’em up, movie producer/director. But Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, pet (teenage) turtles that get their powers whilst crawling through radioactiive sewage, that take the names of famous Italian renaissance painters, that get trained in the ninja arts by a wizened rat with a fu-manchu mustache, and that enjoy the hell out of a pizza pie – well, the origin of those turtles doesn’t need to be changed to “aliens form another planet” for the premise to be any more ridiculously entertaining than it already might be. Michael Bay: never, never go full ridiculous.