I don’t think anyone has high hopes for Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, which is simply titled Ninja Turtles because the turtles are no longer mutants but aliens from space (no, really). There was a lot of outcry from fans, but Bay and his Platinum Dunes studio ended up with some support — including from Kevin Eastman, one of the co-creators of the TMNT, who described the new take as “AWESOME” and added that he was “officially on board.” The other TMNT co-creator, Peter Laird, gave a less than ringing endorsement, saying that fans out to give Bay and director Jonathan Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans) a chance because “it might actually work.”
Things have been quiet on the Ninja Turtles for a bit, with the exception of the film being delayed until May 2014 in order to trim the budget (I have no idea how prolonging a film’s development actually decreases the budget, but this is how Hollywood works). That is, until several days ago when the script by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol) was reviewed by Latino Review, which gave it an awful review. Improbably titled The Blue Door, the script made the Turtles, their mentor Splinter, and their enemy Shredder (or “Colonel Schrader” in this version) alien beings, among other complete departures from the franchise’s basic story.
Laird, who previously gave the project a reserved blessing, had much harsher words once he was updated on the script according to IGN:
I think the script that I read is so fundamentally flawed, and — more to the point — so NOT a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, that trying to make piecemeal changes to it in an effort to make it into something halfway decent is probably a fool’s errand. In my opinion, the thing should just be tossed out, deliberately forgotten, and the process of generating a new script really a new outline, then treatment, then script — should be started again.
Ouch! However, Bay himself issued a response to fan outcry:
The leaked script that different sites continue to comment on was written well before I, or anyone at Platinum Dunes, was involved with the project. That script saw the shredder a long time ago. This is tired, old news — wait for the movie!
Okay, so Bay dismisses the script that was received poorly as an old draft that existed before he came aboard the project. But Latino Review said the draft it reviewed was dated 1/30/12, and Platinum Dunes acquired the project back in 2010. The script also perfectly follows Bay’s description of the alien angle that he previously has talked about. Hmmm….
I can’t help but think that this script was leaked to gauge fan reaction, but I don’t understand why filmmakers decide to stray so far from the core elements of a movie franchise. Fans don’t demand exactness — the Marvel Cinematic Universe certainly doesn’t follow comic continuity, and Christopher Nolan‘s Dark Knight trilogy tosses aside huge chunks of the Batman continuity — but they do demand basic fidelity. Transformers fans seemed to generally like Bay’s take on that franchise even if they weren’t thrilled by the movies themselves, so why would he take another approach?
At the end of the day, people aren’t going to see Ninja Turtles to see a Michael Bay movie, they’re going to see Ninja Turtles to see a movie about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Is it that hard to understand?
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