Your honest thoughts on Fred Wolf's Shredder
 

Self-explanatory title.

The Fred Wolf series, as we know, established the Shredder as the Turtles' nemesis. In the Mirage comics he gets killed off in the very first issue and the Turtles fight all sorts of bad guys and characters in those comics.

In the FW series, Oroku Saki was one of Hamato Yoshi's students at the Foot Clan. One day, Oroku Saki frames his master Yoshi and Yoshi gets banished from the Foot Clan and moves to NYC, while Saki becomes the leader of the clan in Japan and turns it into an army of crime.

Eventually Saki becomes the Shredder. Who knows when he exactly began wearing his purple cape and his metal mask and spikes. And tbh, what even was the point? I guess it looks cool and the spikes serve as some sort of protection against pointy weapons? But yeah, probably because a plain Oroku Saki action figure in civilian form wouldn't sell that well. :lol:

And, Shredder tries to kill Yoshi with the mutagen but that doesn't work as we all know and the rest is history.

Somewhere, sometime, Shredder met Krang, an alien from outer space with access to advanced technology, and decided to work with him. Makes you wonder whatever happened to the Foot Clan in Japan after Shredder decided to go to USA. By the time he tried to kill Yoshi, he already met Krang, since that's where he got the mutagen from. So the question is: did Shredder decide to go to USA to kill Yoshi for good or did he just happen to be on vacation in NYC when he suddenly met Krang? Who knows.

Anyway, Shredder in this version is quite cartoonish and more incompetent than in most other versions. He sometimes gets defeated by getting pizza thrown in his face, but he's still a dangerous opponent and hard to defeat once and for all. He always gets away in the end. The voice actor? James Avery did a GREAT job with it. I think we can all agree that.

Shredder is actually rather intelligent. He seems to know a lot about science and technology. He wasn't an idiot by any means. Who knows where he learned all of that. Did he get a degree in engineering back in Japan? So he was both a top engineering student and also a black belt? Ehhh a bit hard to believe, but Donatello is also a genius scientist and engineer despite being a teenage mutant turtle living in the sewer with no formal education whatsoever, soooo...

Oh and I love how Shredder in this version has a sense of humour. He's a pretty funny guy, tbh. Even when he doesn't try to be. Whodoesn't love his classic insults/lines? "You wretched reptiles"! "Those blasted turtles"! "You mutant morons"!

The "tonight I dine on turtle soup" line has always creeped me out a bit though. I seriously hope he never meant that literally. Also, I'm not sure if it would be good for your health to eat mutant turtles. They probably still have traces of mutagen left in their bodies. So maybe Shredder would turn into a Turtle if he ate them. :teek:

A funny thing about Shredder though, is that even though he's the nemesis of the Turtles and Splinter and the villain that gets mentioned in the theme song... he takes orders from Krang. Technically Krang is THE boss of the bad guys. I Shredder did not have access to the Technodrome nor had he ever met Krang... I don't think he'd last long against the Turtles and Splinter.

His past is also rather interesting. So his mother is a retired super-villain but his brother is a police officer? What a dysfunctional family.

I think Shredder could be quite ruthless and cunning at times. But due to it being a children's cartoon, obviously they had to tone down a bit on that and made him a bit more incompetent and look like a fool at times. But there's times where April would have definitely died if the Turtles had not come to her rescue. And also, "I never bluff".

It's kinda funny how Shredder wanted to take over the world on this version while Chrell in 2k3 did not, even though the latter had a much bigger chance of succeeding at it. Although, Shredder in the FW series cared more about killing the Turtles and Splinter than taking over the world.

In most versions Shredder is a badass and scary type of villain. In this one, though, he's more like a funny type of villain. One that makes you forget at times what he's capable of doing if there's no Turtles around to stop him. I'd say FW Shredder is more like Bowser and most other Shredders are more like Ganon(dorf). Know what I mean?

FW Shredder fit the tone of the show well. As did his "elderly couple" relationship with Krang.

He's okay. While I've never been one to get attached to any villains, he's almost sort of likeable these days in contrast to so many far more evil Shredders in the franchise at this point. FW Shredder wants to get rid of those Turtles and hopefully rule the world, but he's such a total failure at it. He just doesn't really have what it takes and basically just ends up stuck as the roommate of the one being that will mostly tolerate his presence and help in a mutual (and unattainable) goal, even if that being is an alien. It's kind of funny really.

Although I'm always going to wonder why they went with a cape and yet, for the figure, no shirt/chest armor. :tlol:

I always liked OT Shredder for the same reasons. He’s still one of my favourite villains. I liked the way he was protrayed in seasons 1/2/7 and red sky the most.

He was busy enslaving planets in the Theta Galaxy.

He is by far, the best Shredder in my opinion, and just very entertaining overall.

There is so much to say about him, it'll take me a while to gather all my thoughts.

If this was a lettercol I would say "Nothing printable."

Fred Wolf's Shredder is not Shredder, he's not even a decent villain. The closest thing to praise I can give him is that he isn't one of the other three main villains, which really just means he isn't extremely annoying.

While no adaptation makes Shredder out to be quite the same character as he was in the comic, Fred Wolf might actually be even less representative of that than the literal alien version. The FW Shredder does not want revenge and does not kill Hamato Yoshi or Tang Shen, all key traits of the Shredder that even Ch'rell gets right. However, in addition to this lack of defining aspects, FW Shredder is also best described as a clownish parody of mad scientists, a rather perplexing creative liberty as the character is meant to be a ruthless martial artist even in the FW cartoon.

Finally, we get to the problem of wheter or not he even works as a character. The previously mentioned contradiction in characterisation does lead to a rather confused character that is kind of hard to pin down, it's confusing as to wheter or not we're meant to take him seriously as a threat or laugh at him for being a buffoon. His motivation is also rather paper thin and we're not quite sure why he wants to take over the world. There's also the gap in his backstory but I don't think we need to bring that up or we'll be here forever.

Yeah that's one weird action figure lol

I had a feeling you'd say that ;)

Good points. Indeed his reason to take over the world is a bit... non-existent? What reason does he even have? I guess it's the old supervillain cliché of wanting to take over the world. Not a cliché I've ever been a fan of. It would have made more sense for Shredder to be satisfied enough already with ruling the Foot Clan and Japan.

Well, eventually he wants revenge somewhat. He becomes obsessed with killing the Turtles and Splinter, letting such obsession getting even ahead of his world domination plans. Funny enough, Dregg also eventually ends up getting obsessed with killing the Turtles as well.

I like his design. He was very badass looking, menacing and unique for a main villain on a kids show at the time. But he suffers from all of the problems of a lot of toon villains from that period, where he spends all his time yelling at his subordinates rather than being the formidable villain we'd prefer to see, dishing out impressive martial arts moves, splitting turtle shells and the like.

That's my main impression of him... first and foremost, that he looks cool, but close secondary is that he complaints 90% of the time rather than doing cool stuff. It is what it is.

He takes orders from Krang and clearly has no power over him, which makes it a bit harder to take him seriously. And even Krang eventually stops looking menacing. He's literally a brain in a slow and clumsy body. If Raphael tried to stick his sai in him, he'd be a goner.

Fred Wolf Shredder was a twit and I liked him for that in the earlier seasons.
Then, he sort of panned out into a generic villain during The Red Sky Season.

Great design, great voice, great jokes, good banter with just about everyone he encounters, but as far as Shredders go, he is largely incompetent & foolish. Par the course for the series, though.

James Avery truly did a great job with the role. He seemed to really get into it. In fact, that's one of the main strengths of the FW series: it's superb voice acting cast and the chemistry between them.

He was great and I think Avery did a terrific job although this Shredder is not as threatening as he could be as I mention below.

I disagree with most of what you said apart from this quotation. You are correct, I think one of the main problems of the FW series is that Shredder was often portrayed as ineffectual and I think he would have made a greater threat if he was...well more threatening like the 90s movie Shredder for instance. Having said that with this flawed Shredder who cracks jokes he came across as the most human and less wooden like many other iterations have so at the end of the day is he really any worse than the 2003 Shredder for instance?

Agreed. Though OT Shredder isn’t my favourite Shredder, he was at least human and had a sense of humour, unlike Ch’rell. For example, I love his response to Vernon in the episode Attack of the Neutrinos when Vernon said he didn’t know anything and Shredder replied “That’s never stopped you from talking before”.

Basically, this

He had to be more human and have more of a sense of humour for that version since it was a comedy and aimed at kids, I guess.

Villains in children's properties are often like that. Dr. Robotnik, King K. Rool, Team Rocket and Bowser are also kind of buffoons.

In the context of cartoons, Fred Wolf Shredder is probably the greatest comedic bumbling villain in the history of the medium.

He might very well be. Or at least top 5.

Tbh the main villains of the show are still very popular after all these years. FW basically made Shredder THE number 1 Turtles villain and also was the debut of Rocksteady, Bebop and Krang; 3 characters that casuals still remember after all these years and demand to see in every single Turtles cartoon and movie to this day.

I feel like the greatest pitfall to this Shredder was simply that he was a product of the 80's. He had all the right pieces to be a pretty great villain, but because of the "uwu no extreme violence for the kiddies winners don't do drugs uwu" attitude of the time, he was defanged into a bumbling hooligan.

The same goes for Krang, Bebop, and Rocksteady.



It would be nice to see what they could have been without having to go full IDW.