#platinumdunes

For those of you that don't know, Michael Bay's production company Platinum Dunes is currently filming a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.  It's directed by Jonathan Liebesman, and stars a bunch of nobodies doing performance capture for the turtles and Megan Fox as April O'Neil.  Last March the internet collectively shat its pants when Bay let leak that the Turtles in this movie are "from an alien race".  I, being a huge TMNT fan (and that's not an overstatement), did not know there was such a large audience that cared about a new Turtles movie.  The backlash was on every entertainment news outlet, every geek news outlet, every movie site, and all over social networks.  Who knew one slip of the tongue would cause such widespread vitriol amongst a normally invisible fan-base?

Personally, I just assumed that Michael Bay was an idiot that he didn't even know the details of the movie he was producing, seeing as the Turtles are originally "from an ooze created by an alien race".  A small omission like that can make a sentence and news story mean two very different things.  I wasn't on board with the idea that the TMNT were from an alien race, but as always, I was willing to wait until I see some actual footage before throwing the movie under a bus.  Everyone else, was not so open to change.

Then, a script leaked. This script included the Turtles as aliens, and the main character was Casey Jones.  The Shredder was not a ninja, but a Military Colonel named Schrader.  With these, and a myriad of other "issues", this script was considered an atrocity.  Even TMNT co-creator Peter Laid said "all true TMNT fans should be grateful to the new 'powers that be' that they did not allow this wretched thing to go any further."  Bay came forward and said that the leaked script had been trashed before Platinum Dunes even come aboard.  The internet had its doubts again, and again an uproar was had by an army of people that have seen zero footage of a new movie.  

The movie itself started filming last month and the first images from set are surfacing.  Once again, the internet has found something else to bitch about.  This time it's pics of Megan Fox as April.  Here are the images in question.  All I have heard all week is how Fox looks nothing like April and that she should have red hair, or a yellow jump suit.  Ok, that's where I have to draw the line!

Do I think this movie will be good, probably not.  Liebesman's track record is pretty bad (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Battle: Los Angeles, and Wrath of the Titans) and the TMNT typically don't deal with explosions, so Micheal Bay's strengths will not help him here.  Is Megan Fox a good casting choice? Probably not, the only thing she has proven in her career is that she's incredibly attractive, and that is super subjective.  

If April's character in the movie is shallow and doesn't need talent to play, Fox could be a perfect casting job.  To complain about her not looking the part is ludicrous.  What exactly does "April" look like? Throughout the storied history of the character she has had black curly hair (original comic), curly brown hair (original TV show, first 3 movies), red straight hair (second TV show, various other comics) and gingery orange straight hair (2007 movie, new TV show).  On top of that, her "trademark" (quotes included to accentuate sarcasm) yellow jumpsuit was only worn by her in the original cartoon, and even in that she stopped wearing it towards the end of the series.  

Come on people! Just calm down, this movie will suck all by itself, it doesn't need your help.  To be honest, I'm surprised its even being filmed.  After the outrage that came from the "aliens" announcement, the smartest thing for Paramount to do would have probably been to cancel the movie all together.  At this point its doomed. Self-proclaimed nerds and geeks (the worst kind of nerds and geeks) are waiting with baited breathe to lash out at any tiny detail that comes out about this project, without ever seeing a single frame of actual movie footage.  By the time the movie comes out, the audience will have destroyed itself and the film will bomb, dooming the TMNT franchise with it.  

So, I beg of you, just shut your trap!  Let this movie get made and judge it on it's final product and not this weird expectation you have been formulating in your head because obviously Platinum Dunes did not pull the idea for this movie out of the collective sub-conscience of the notoriously flaky TMNT fan-base.  

On a side note, where the hell were all of you when the 2007 movie came out?  That movie was really rad, and it only made $97 million. If that's all you whiny-ass TMNT fans can muster at the box-office, then Bay and Platinum Dunes might be on to something by ignoring you!  

If you were wondering, this was the post that broke the camel's back for me.