What Would You Change About the TMNT?
 

[apologies if this or a similar question has been asked already but...]

In your opinion... Is there any point in franchise history where you feel the TMNT made a wrong turn or a misstep? Would you change anything about the franchise or any character IF you could go back in time?

If I could, I would delete the Next Mutation from existence altogether. I would probably have also given them the rainbow bandanas from the beginning of Mirage #1 (yeah I know its B&W but I think it is a good idea to have different colored masks across all media). At the very least I would have given the entire ‘87 OT the tone and atmosphere of The Red Sky episodes of Season 8-10 and I would completely replace the 2K12 show with something like the 2001 CG Pilot. I LOVE THAT PILOT. As for the Platinum Dunes films, I would replace them with John Fusco scripted movies.

What would you change, if anything?

Probably. Anyway, going back in time to make changes? Tell Laird and Eastman to wait an additional 3-5 years with licensing a cartoon, maybe go with Ruby-Spears instead of Fred Wolf.

I'd get the pizza thing toned down big time. It's probably the biggest blight on the franchize being taken seriously.

And I'd take out those two straight-to-VHS singalong things that came out after the Coming Out Of Our Shells tour. That was enough of a death rattle for the original Turtlemania. No need to leave the life support on just a little longer for those two abominations to come into existence. The only good thing to come of that was a line from an Obscurus Lupa review of it.

I wouldn't wipe out the third movie or the Last Mutation, but I would encourage beefing up the stakes and having the the turtles be a little more on-level with how they were in the original 90's movie. Because depicting all four of them as air-headed frat boys is a blight on the franchize being taken seriously as well.

Now I know what you're thinking: "She's probably going to do something with the Utroms". You know me too well. But just one thing.
The hyper-pacifism in the starts of Mirage and the 4Kids show. I can believe the group landing on Earth would have been pacifistic, but I wouldn't apply that to the population as a whole. Thankfully the Illuminated and Obscura became a thing later, but too little too late. Same with the Preservi, though I don't consider them that bad.

I like the idea of Bayou Leatherhead a lot, but I also miss the version that had been raised by Utroms. In light of...recent events...I miss it even more now. It was pretty sweet and developed the Utroms at least attempting to take some responsibility for their mistakes. So I'd encourage the 2012 show to at least have Leatherhead develop a friendship with Bishop. Since Xeinos isn't around...come back, Xeinos...

As for IDW, there could be so many different ways around the lack of mothers. Casey's parents could just be divorced in IDW and Hun twisted the law around his finger to get full custody. Not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, Casey thought he wouldn't have been allowed to complain to the law about his abuse - or he tried and failed. Now that he's come of age in the main story, could have his own subplot of trying to find where his mother is since he can now legally try to find her. Which actually could be pretty exciting, especially if it can be woven into the main plot somehow.
Angel's mother doesn't have to be dead either. You don't need to be half of a Batman copypasta to become a justice-seeking bad@ss, it can be done without losing a parent.
Saki's mother could be established in Secret History of the Foot Clan at least as a thing that was around, unless she does somehow get involved in Saki's...stuff. Maybe not tolerating his father's treatment of him because of being a reincarnation, and being a Lady MacBeth around her husband. Maybe she knows about Kitsune and was encouraging Saki to work with her. I have at least two different ideas for Krang's mother (either a pampered aristocrat or his predecessor as General), but either one would have her as his support for creating the bunker and stasis ooze, and would be one of the survivors on Burnow.
Really, the only mother that NEEDS to be dead for the narrative is Tang Shen, but it doesn't have to be for the rest of the cast. At that point, it's just scraping the bottom of the barrel for character motivation.

Though, I can forgive it for Alopex, because it wasn't just her mother that was killed, but her entire family. And since Arctic foxes can have up to fifteen pups in a single litter, it would have been a big family to lose, and thus a big impact. Then there's the mutation separating her from them in a different way than death did, so killing them was just kicking her while she was down.

Ensure that Michelangelo is not as dumb as Donatello is intelligent in the past as far back as the 2003 cartoon and going forward into the future.

I would have kept season 8 of the 1987 cartoon direction going in retrospect.

I'd make sure Mirage used a story bible and had a cohesive timeline.

Dude!Mikey would be competent.

There'd been two seasons of Tales from Nick, since I think those are some of their best stories.

April would be a well-developed character, have plot, and friends outside of the turtles. Or at very least show signs of what it's like to be a social person now suddenly isolated.
In like...every incarnation.

There'd be more than two named female characters, and they'd have conversations about things that aren't the male protagonists.

There'd be no Creeper!Don or Creeper!Mikey.

The 2001 pilot was basically what the 2k3 series was, just not in crappy early 2000's CG (thank god). A series with the Turtles fighting Shredder and the Elite Guards with few mutants and the Triceratons and being mostly Mirage inspired, we got that series.

The Nick cartoon did the perfect blend of mixing new and old while having a great sense of humor and action, but I would have toned down some of the excessive mutants at some point. The Nick cartoon has some of the best characterized Turtles and Splinter we've ever had. I doubt we'll ever get another series that mixes action and humor this well. For example 2k3 series did really well with action but the humor fell flat a lot of the time, and the original cartoon was mostly self-aware humor with less action. Nick blended both.

I would probably have kept April's characterization as a scientist, science student or lab technician consistent and never made her a news reporter... The TMNT don't need a Lois Lane. surely there are more creative ways to bring her into the 87 show from Mirage.

delet teh fanbeis

I'd nuke Bay Turtles stuff from existence. Easy.

I wouldn't even remove TMNT III nor The Next Mutation from existence. Those two installments haven't really done any harm to the franchise in the long term. Movie III came out by the time Turtlemania was cooling off already, and didn't help reviving the interest for it. If we were in 1999 you could still blame that movie for the death of the TMNT fad, but since then we've gotten two new cartoons, new comics, new movies, etc.

The Next Mutation... it came out in 1997. The last 3 seasons of the FW cartoon weren't that popular and I'm sure by then most people didn't know that the show was on air still. TNM is kinda like an obscure turd from the mid-late 90s no one remembers other than huge Turtle fans. It wasn't a movie seen by millions of people worldwide nor did it cast Megan Fox as April or anything. Venus de Milo has never showed up again in TMNT media and no one remembers her existence. I bet most people on the planet aren't even aware of her existence.

What else would I change? Well I'd try to make the franchise more mature overall. The kids could still get their TMNT versions but I'd make sure there was something mainstream for older audiences as well.

Pilot? There was an actual pilot episode for that planned WB Turtles cartoon?

I would keep the Fred Wolf series in Season 8 onwards as it were in previous seasons in terms of animation and characters but step up the darkness we got in the actual Season 8.

I agree with AVGN, TMNT III should have had Krang and the Technodrome.

I probably wouldn't have split the Mirage comics into so many Volumes, some of which contradicted each other.

I would have:

1. Given various one shot characters more appearance in the Original Toon such as Mona Lisa, Razhar and Tokka, Ray as well as make recurring characters like Casey Jones and the Rock soldiers appear more often.

2. Make Tmnt 3 about the Turtles visiting the ancestors of Hamato Yoshi and Oroku Saki instead of Walker.

3. Replaced the Next Mutation with a 4th Live Action movie.

4. Made the original voice cast of the FW toon reprise their roles for Turtles Forever and write their turtles a little more serious in the movie.

5. Make the 2k3 series go in a different direction after season 4, neither too magic based like Ninja Tribunal nor too futuristic like Fast Forward.

6. Made the Nick toon longer.

7. Have entirely new films during the Nick era instead of the PD ones, or atleast fix things in the PD films such as the turtles learning from a book, Sachs etc.

this, plus overall better priority on martial arts and ninja research.

Secret of the Ooze
 

TCRI, Utroms and extraterrestrial mutagen origin in "Secret of the Ooze".

I'm pretty sure people won't like it but I would change... their fighting style.

They all have different personalities and weapons, but they all master the same martial art. Also, we rarely see them fighting without their weapons.

I would have kept Raphael as a brawler (just like at the beginning of the IDW series). He would have been raised by a boxer with a blind son (more a wink than anything else). The boxer could have a second son named Casey, and would consider Raphael as his brother.

Donatello would be in the "Oracle" position (very unoriginal in 2017 with all superhero shows doing it, I know). He could also use Metal Head as an armor, or control him at distance.

Leonardo would be the nearest to source materiel: A ninja raised by Splinter mastering the martial art. I would give him another skill: Feel air movement (like Goku at some point in Dragonball)

For Michaelangelo, I would give him magical aptitudes. (and not magical power, that's different) I know magic can be very deus ex machina, and it would fit better with Leonardo concentration skill, but Mikey's general lack of concentration could be it's own limitation.

I know it's very very far away of the original source material, but he would add something more than seeing the turtles going to war against technological weapons with swords and nunchakus.

Except for the Original Cartoon where they didn't directly use their weapons, but that was the exception rather than the rule of tmnt incarnations.

I've actually been going over my head on how the "Leatherhead raised by Utroms" storyline would work in IDW. It would change just a few things, but maybe not terribly much.

No, it's not because I'm bitter about #75 :P . Maybe a little bit about entirely removing him from his Mirage storyline as a whole. Mostly because we don't need another reason for him to be a "raging tortured soul". He doesn't need to go full Frankenstein's Monster.
Torture by aliens is fine for Bishop, since that was part of his founding arch.

But mostly because an "antagonist Leatherhead raised by Krang/Utroms" could be pretty interesting.

I don't know why the change even happened. Separating Leatherhead from the Utroms in that way (in Nick and IDW) seems a bit like making Anakin Skywalker love sand. Or making Raphael the leader of the turtles.

As for the ending of #75, I'd leave that up to a fight between Krang and Maligna. Ending with both fighting to the death.

I want to see Leonardo use one sword style from time to time so we can get some sweet iaijutsu action.`

There should be in incarnation where mutants while not heavily accepted into society are kinda part of the norm and people sometimes bump into one without all the yelling and screaming.

I kinda want to see a middle ground between good Bishop and evil Bishop, in a sense that he will try diplomatic means at first but he is not afraid to be pragmatic and ruthless. Sort of like Cecil from Invincible

Well they did use their weapons although not as much as in other incarnations.

Not surprisingly, I'd go back in time and stop the Surge Licensing/Playmates/Fred Wolf deal from ever happening. "That's crazy! TMNT would never have been popular then!" you say. We can't know that. If the comic had been allowed to grow for a decade or two, who's to say that any cartoons and/or movies that would've followed wouldn't have been more in line with them (as opposed to something like Fred Wolf, who only had 2 or 3 comics to read at that point, so they just made everything up from scratch)? Plus after X-Men kicked open the door, suddenly comic book properties were being optioned left and right with movie deals... who knows what would have happened. All I know is just about anything is better than the way it is now, or has been for the last decade.

Alternately, I'd let the Fred Wolf show and original "Turtlemania" begin its trajectory with the first TMNT movie and beginning of the cartoon... then make Laird and Eastman veto every sh**ty movie or show or idea from that point forward. No TMNT II (not the one we got, anyway) or TMNT III, no NT:TNM, no Imagi movie, only "Yes"es to good, Mirage-faithful stuff. And sorry, Kevin, no, Laird will NOT buy your half of the rights in 2000, stop losing all of your money in the casino!

How long would the Fred Wolf show gone on in your scenario?