[Panda_Kahn_fan]

As i said before elsewhere, I'd take us back to square one; TMNT, Angel, and Casey vs. Hun and the purple dragons. Actually period set in the 1980's New York, and inspired by the plot of the 4kinds episode 'Fallen angel', where Casey tries to show His childhood friend Angel Bridge being a member of the dragons is a mistake. he introduces Angel to the turtles, and the five of them Crush the Dragons.

At the same time, we get scenes of Master Splinter back at the lair, meditating and having visions of the Rat King, who is berating Splinter for holding on to his humanity. We get flashbacks of the turtle's origins, along with vision's of Saki and Yoshi in the past, laying out the TMNT's backstory. This sets up rat King for use in sequels.

Also, I'd have a battle with the dragons in the middle of a nightclub, called the gator's den, run by a mysterious proprietor named Jess "Leatherhead" Harley; the club goers believe Leatherhead wears an elaborate gator costume as part of the club's gimmick, they don't realize he actually IS a gator. We only see him for the nightclub battle scene, where after the turtles and the dragon's have trashed the gator's den, we wades out into the battle, beats them all up, and tosses them out; "GET OUTTA MY CLUB!" LH is only in it for the nightclub sequence, and is also set up for future films.

Why the dragons instead of the foot? The dragons let us start at the bottom, having the turtles fight no-holds barred violent street battles against unskilled punk opponents, letting us see how impressive their martial arts are against street thugs. Then, when the foot are introduced in a sequel, they actually turn out to be much deadlier fighters, and not just cannon fodder like the dragons.

Why Angel instead of April? She better ties in with the Dragons as villains, and being an ex-dragon she can fight with the turtles and Casey against the dragons (going for the older IDW-style Angel, here.) Also, it saves April for a sequel, where she can be introduced as Baxter stockman's assistant.

Why the minor roles for Leatherhead and Rat King? set up roles, previewing the characters for much bigger parts they will play down the line. rat King appearing in Splinter's visions is a Mirage idea, while Leatherhead as a underworld Nightclub owner? It's something new, a new idea not taken from any spinoff material, that does something more interesting with the character than "raaagh! I'm an angry monster! raaagh must build transmat to get back to little squid people family! Raaagghh!" which is good for the comics, but I think something more could be done for a film.

Shredder? Again, set him up for later, have Hun refer to the 'master', and we see Saki in the flashbacks. Hint at the end of the movie a war is coming; the purple Dragons were just an exercise, and taking them down has drawn the attention of someone much, much more powerful. The fights against the Dragons in this film would be bloody and violent, but the fights against the foot in Part 2 would be absolutely BRUTAL.

And no, I don't think this would become 'the Casey Jones movie', Jones can be an important character, and his backstory be explored here, but he doesn't have to be the center of everything. This could wash the taste of OOtS Casey out of our mouths, and return the character to a violent vigilante in a hockey mask.

Most people probably won't like any of this stuff, but I think some people would be drawn back in if we had a movie like this. Return the turtles to the Henson suits touched up with CG, show elaborate martial arts sequences in the trailers, and you may just win back the audience lost by the previous films. But then again, this is just what I would do, if I were in charge.