It's lots of people. Naming names and pointing fingers distracts from the larger point and I try and avoid it unless it's absolutely necessary.

The broad point being, the people who enjoy these movies the most are the ones who are content and/or more satisfied with TMNT being primarily "silly dumb fun". I don't think anyone can argue that. And I also don't think anyone can argue with the fact that there's just as many people who know that TMNT can be a little bit better than that, and they in turn often get yelled at or made fun of for expecting too much. And I find that kind of unfair.

Also, I do wish I had a Flying V. No foolin'.

Exactly. And, Seth, they didn't establish the origin at all. There is no Saki/Yoshi rivalry and Splinter learned ninjutsu based off of some silly book. To me, that's not establishing an origin of anything more than it is p*ssing on it and not putting forth the effort to tell the story right. And when they were asked why, they simply said, "It was too complicated." Are you serious?

Lol
 

"they are the foot because they stomp everything" or something like that. I lost it. Like WTF! Really?

I didn't see that, but they did say that the Yoshi/Saki rivalry was too complicated to tell. Um, how is it complicated?

'Cause it was a dude and another dude arguing about a dudette.

Casting three more people would have required cutting the tower explosion carnage from the budget. Which is gonna look better on a big screen!?

I think it was their excuse of saying, "We're lazy and we don't care about the franchise. We just want to make money."

More realistically, I think it has more to do with how minimally the Fred Wolf cartoon referenced the origin. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Tang Shen ever features... it's just Saki and Yoshi. One brief little "Saki had no honor and tried to take over the Foot by framing Yoshi, who got kicked out... and well here we are!"

But even then, Bay couldn't be bothered. Because it's too complicated. :trolleye:

As much as the people who made the first movie mentioned comics and Eastman, their main influence was the old cartoon. The origin wasn't a big deal in that show (And it was also a huge simplification of the comic origin). The Splinter/Shredder rivalry was small potatoes. Shredder wanted to destroy the turtles because the turtles kept messing up his plans. The OT turtles also kicked in doors and fought like overpowered brutes, instead of like ninjas. That's what Leibesman grew up with.

If I made Batman movies, they'd be more like the 60's show than anything else. I've liked Batman my whole life, but I've never read The Dark Knight Returns or Knightfall, or really any comics you might hope would influence my films. Whether it's my responsibility to incorporate that stuff or if I have every right to make Batman '66-inspired films is up to debate. I'm just saying that's what I think happened with TMNT. And if you look at the movie as something influenced almost solely by that cartoon, it makes a lot more sense that it came out how it did.

True, but even as an OT homage, the movie failed miserably. The writing and editing were atrocious. If PD wanted to acquiese to fan complaints about a white-washed Shredder, then they shouldn't have half-assed it.

A terrible movie is somewhat subjective, due to taste; but terrible writing is absolutely objective.

And you would be absolutely within your right as a scriptwriter or director to produce a 66-Batman movie. But it would be idiotic to do so, knowing that the majority of your potential audience will not like it. In the same way, Michael Bay is an idiot for not knowing that 50% of his audience are adults who grew up on the OT, but are now old enough to recognize half-assed writing and lack of interest, and who will villify him for insulting their intelligence and their fandom.

Talking of p*ssing all over a franchise's legacy, much respect to Robert Zemeckis who is blocking all Hollywood attempts to re-make BTTF as long as he's alive.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/back...bert-zemeckis/

Shame others don't have that respect for other franchise's....

*cough* Michael *cough* Bay

Framed for murder attempt and a assassination plot that mutated the victim instead isn't that small potatoes though.

There were certainly a lot of writing issues. We'll never know how deeply the budget cuts and rewrites altered their plans. It's easy to say they should've done better with the changes, but we'll never know what options were actually at their disposal at those stages of production. What they could afford to do, or what footage was rendered worthless. Personally, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, in that area. Especially since I think feel they did a great job with the turtles, themselves. I don't share the impression that there was a lack of care or concern. At least not from Leibesman.

You wouldn't think so, but that's how they treated it after the first miniseries.

As someone who loves BTTF as much as TMNT, it's a perfect property for a remake. There's just a 95% chance it would be done poorly. The story of a teenager who goes back in time 30 years to when his parents were teenagers, and has to make them fall in love? That's GOLD. GOLD. That story could work today, a hundred years from now, or a hundred years ago. But no one would remake BTTF using only the core concept.

You try reusing the old characters or old jokes? Hello, McFly, 1.21 jiggawatts, Doc, Marty, Biff, the DeLorean? You'll never please fans. But just that core story concept? It's like most remakable thing ever.

The four Turtles were well done (except for Donnie's uber-geek), but I wouldn't give anyone credit for that except for the four actors themselves. Five, I guess, if you count both halves of Leo (VA + motion capture).

Some of today's film makers are basically the kid who came in fourth place and still expects (and probably receives) a trophy and vigorous applause.

It might take effort to tell a story well, but it's never "too complicated" tell a story unless you're that uncreative or lazy, and at that point why are you in the business.

What I meant by "they established the origin" was this: They have established the origin for this specific film series so the next film can just move on to the next adventure and we don't have to go through all of the character introductions since they are already established. This will allow them to put more characters and content into this. I didn't say the origin story in the first movie was good or well written. I hate it too. But it least we don't have to see it again in the next one.

Yeah, now they can focus on April even more!

I agree with you when you say we can move on and not revisit that atrocious half-assed non-origin.

I don't necessarily think putting more characters and content into this sequel is a good idea... so far, it seems like it's gonna be just as much of a mess as the first movie, assuming a similar 90min runtime.

But I, at least, am prepared to change my opinion on the movie's quality or lack thereof once we start getting some trailers. We shall see. I expect the worst, but we shall see...

Some new info about Stephen Amell's take on Casey Jones.
http://www.thetvjunkies.com/stephen-...n-casey-jones/

So basically, this movie's main narrative focus is going to be Casey's origin. And the previous movie's narrative focus was April. And now we can see where the majority of character development is going to lie... :trolleye:

So first Amell says the movie will be "more kid friendly" than the first installment, but then he says it will be "a little darker than people anticipated"... dude, STFU. You're just saying what you think everyone wants to hear, and everyone (parents vs fans) can't agree on what we want. Just like this forum, pretty much.

Gah. This little snippet just adds to my overwhelming sense of angry "meh" for this movie. :tgrumble:

"this to me, based on everything that I’ve heard, feels like a Turtles movie as opposed to the first one"

That, at least, is an acknowledgement from someone officially involved that "yeah, we f*cked up on the first one."

If this was coming from an actual producer or director, and not just some actor desperate to upgrade from television to movies, I'd feel a little better. We shall see, Amell... we shall see.