Animal Ancestor theory
 

What did you think of the animal ancestor theory from tmnt out of the shadows?

While I prefer the simple mutagen which turns people into whatever they come into contact with, I didn't mind the theory that creatures mutate into whatever animal Is in their dormant gene, even though its more complicated and doesn't make sense in real life.

I think its interesting that while Bebops and Rocksteadys ancestor animals were warthhogs and rhinos, the ancestors of the turtles (and presumably Splinter) were humans, which I think would've been the basis of a 3rd film if there was one (turtles travel back in time to Japan to meet their human ancestors who are the sons of Hamato Yoshi, Splinters ancestor).

I think it's just the screen writers underestimating the intelligence/knowledge of the viewer.

What eats me up about this is that it would have been so easy to write something better. You could just say that the purple stuff works faster, or that they've been created in the past year or actually keep the hybridisation explaination.

The Turtles and Splinter was mutated by the green ooze, while B&R was mutated by purple ooze. The whole Animal Ancestor idea in OotS are dumb as a sack of bricks, but speculating with what's canon in the PD universe. I'd speculate that the Green Ooze regenerates humans (main purpose as a cure) and mutates animals to a humanoid form, while the Purple Ooze randomly mutates a creature into a hybrid of another creature it shares DNA with.

Although, since the Purple Ooze gave Donnie temporarily five digits on his hands, and then theorized that they could turn into humans, it's possible it just give Green Oooze mutants more human-like features then full on species transformation.

I'm just happy the turtles never became humans.

I haven't seen the first film in about a year while I saw Out of the Shadows again just about a month ago so I might be wrong on this, but I just presumed that they way the mutagen worked in 2014 was the same as the 2nd film, just that it never achieved full completion. For e.g. The turtles and Splinter were originally oridinary turtles and a rat who activated their dormant human gene by being injected with the mutagen, but the mutation process never achieved full transformation and thus they became half-animal, half human.

That's not the intended purpose for the mutagen in the 2014 movie, though. So it's seems weird that O'Neil and Sacks got 5 test animals all having "dormant human gene" instead of 1 human, 2 dogs and 2 gerbil dormant genes.

The Purple ooze didn't turn B&R into fully animals either if the Purple version is the "full completion" version.

You make a good point there, I guess by that logic then the purple ooze wasn't the full completion version but would mutate someone according to the size of the mutagen doze (for e.g. Donatellos hand only becoming human for a few seconds since he only administered a tiny drop).

If Bebop and Rocksteady were given a mutagen bath as opposed to an injection, I imagine they would've become full on animals instead.

It's "meanwhile in how idiots think evolution works" territory for me.

Platinum Dunes made just an excuse to mutate them.

Baffling. It's not hard to come up with "movie science" that at least sounds plausible.

Because Adam was a rhino and Eve was a pig. Read the fuc*ing Bible you backsliders.

Or Baxter was just a goofy mad scientist, and was giving a B.S. explanation to shredder, and there was actually animal DNA that was added when he synthesized it.

Because clearly, humanity evolved from warthogs.

Stupid, pointless, and unnecessary. "We used animal DNA to mutate them" is NOT a hard concept. It remains a very simple explanation and all that is needed for this fictional mutation.

Instead they chose the stupidest parts of the story to try to be "different" in, like this, and unnecessarily complicated it because now it created an unnecessary plot hole that they'd never bother explaining why humans having OTHER animal DNA is somehow even a thing.

While the typical route, as I'd put in bold above, may itself defy real life science, it is at least to the point and doesn't really need more explanation. (Save for maybe if you're a scientist who is still bothered by it.) But PD's idea did nothing but create the need for more explanation that they'd never go in to.



It also stupidly defies that humankind is an ape (and even if you reject that), as if to leave it blank like we're some mysterious "other" thing that can by magic contain other animal DNA...



The only ones it actually works for (a little) is the PD Turtles themselves if they presumably DO have some human DNA already because they were made that way via experimentation. They'd have been given it, not magically acquired it generations ago. (But then PD could have explained them like that too... If humans could have other species DNA then other species could have human.) But it still never explained why the mutagen would have worked that way on them. (Though I think in the book version Donnie mentioned "reverse engineering." Somehow.)


edit: To even try to make sense of it, I think a third film would have needed to bring about a realization that ancient aliens experimented on early humans and added small portions of DNA from other creatures. Much like 2012 made April part Kraang.

I'll confess I was hoping to have a budget-blowing scene of CGI indulgence where a chunk of the city's population gets exposed to mutagen and a whole slew of random mutant beasts start popping up everywhere. Also, it made me wonder what the "dormant animal genes" of Shredder, Baxter, Casey, and April would have been.

The whole theory was incredibly dumb, but I have to admit it fit in with the rest of the film.

Makes me wonder how the original second film would've dealt with Bebop and Rocksteady, if they actually had been used.

There's no theory to this. It's just a BS excuse to give an explanation to why they mutate into those animals.

It wouldn't have been the basis because these people don't care about lore and backstory.

Hell, they didn't even care about making a good movie!

It would have just been the same exact thing as Tokka and Rahzar, except a rhino and warthog.

Exactly, despite defenders saying that "they've learned" only by adding in FW characters.