ScreenRant: Best/Worst TMNT Villains List

[Leo656]

https://screenrant.com/tmnt-villains-best-worst-ranking/

Discuss.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Not a single damn mention of any Mirage, 4Kids, or IDW characters.

I'm shocked. Only embrace the kiddie parts of TMNT, toe the party line, blah blah blah.

[Leo656]

Well, to be fair, they seem to have stuck with the most memorable ones from across the spectrum for this list. As in "characters most TMNT fans have heard of".

Nobody outside of this forum knows who Hun or Bishop or Aloplex or whoever else is. Gotta work with what they have, y'know? I don't think it's a bad list. Any 4Kids/IDW stuff would be way too obscure. No character can objectively be "Best" OR "Worst" if only a handful of people know about them. Otherwise there are already like a dozen villains from "Rise" that could easily make the "Worst" list... but that would necessitate a large number of people actually watching that show, and apparently they don't.

Although not having some version of Stockman on there is kind of strange.

[CyberCubed]

Surprised they disliked Fishface/Dogpound AND Rahzar/Tokka. I guess there's just no replacing Bebop/Rocksteady as Shredder's mutant henchmen.

Also Traag/Granitor and the whole concept of Stone Warriors is cool. I'm glad IDW kept them.

[Prowler]

Traag the WORST one?! Seriously?! Not one of those random mad scientists from the OT, Mr. Ogg, Garbageman, or that tall muscly woman scientist from that 2k3 season 2 filler episode?!

If General Traag was unanimously considered the worst villain in the entire TMNT property history then it'd be a very good sign...

[snake]

Who the f*ck is Eric Sachs

[neatoman]

Alright, let's just break this down into two lists to make it easier to look at.

Top Five Worst according to Sara Schmidt:

GENERAL TRAAG
DOGPOUND AND FISHFACE
ERIC SACHS
TOKKA AND RAZHAR
WALKER


Top Five Best according to her:

THE SHREDDER
BEBOP AND ROCKSTEADY
TATSU
KARAI
KRANG


... Clickbait, pure clickbait. Nearly all of these can be considered major characters in whatever version they're part of. It's not even a broad variety of different versions. They're all either from Mirage, the movies, the Fred Wolf cartoon or the Nick Cartoon. If you want some terrible villains you'd have to dig way deeper than this.

Anyway, let's see if I agree with her reasoning for wheter or not these characters are good/bad.

Bad:

Walker - Basically she dislikes him because he's uninteresting, fair enough.
Tokka and Rahzar - Because they're annoying, sure, why not.
Sacks - Eh... Not really that bad, most of what sucks about him comes from the reshoots. I'm not even sure why she calls him "cringeworthy".
Dogpound and Fishface - OK, no not really. They were better characters before they mutated and they just kind of got sidelined but I can't agree they're bad based on them being "silly".
Traag - Traag is such a non-character I keep forgetting that he even exists, I just don't care.


Good:

Krang - No, he's not a good character. The strange thing is that she doesn't even give a reason to like him, it's in fact nothing but complaints about how he sucks. Why did she put him in the good category?
Karai - This was the point in the list where I realised the author's experience with TMNT probably doesn't include anything other than the Nick Cartoon, Fred Wolf cartoon and the movies. Everything in her description relates to the Nick version, which barely even resembles any other version. I would call not Karai a bad character in general but I can't say "Teenage Mutant Emo Snake" is a good version of her.
Tatsu - Really? Tatsu? The guy with barely any lines or screen time is the third best TMNT villain? Really?
Bebop and Rocksteady - The justification here is "Like Tokka and Rahzar, but arbitrarily better for some reason". I don't like Bebop and Rocksteady in general, there's like one decent version of them and it's not the one most people think of.
Shredder - I mean yeah, he's in every single iteration to some extent. Admittedly, there's even more evidence here that the author has somewhat limited experience with the material. Citing his backstory as a great aspect makes very little sense considering that it can vary from "Guy gets revenge at the one who cucked him" to "Alien criminal crashlands on earth and claims to be a demon".

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Alright, let's just break this down into two lists to make it easier to look at.

Top Five Worst according to Sara Schmidt:

GENERAL TRAAG
DOGPOUND AND FISHFACE
ERIC SACHS
TOKKA AND RAZHAR
WALKER


Top Five Best according to her:

THE SHREDDER
BEBOP AND ROCKSTEADY
TATSU
KARAI
KRANG


... Clickbait, pure clickbait. Nearly all of these can be considered major characters in whatever version they're part of. It's not even a broad variety of different versions. They're all either from Mirage, the movies, the Fred Wolf cartoon or the Nick Cartoon. If you want some terrible villains you'd have to dig way deeper than this.

Anyway, let's see if I agree with her reasoning for wheter or not these characters are good/bad.

Bad:

Walker - Basically she dislikes him because he's uninteresting, fair enough.
Tokka and Rahzar - Because they're annoying, sure, why not.
Sacks - Eh... Not really that bad, most of what sucks about him comes from the reshoots. I'm not even sure why she calls him "cringeworthy".
Dogpound and Fishface - OK, no not really. They were better characters before they mutated and they just kind of got sidelined but I can't agree they're bad based on them being "silly".
Traag - Traag is such a non-character I keep forgetting that he even exists, I just don't care.


Good:

Krang - No, he's not a good character. The strange thing is that she doesn't even give a reason to like him, it's in fact nothing but complaints about how he sucks. Why did she put him in the good category?
Karai - This was the point in the list where I realised the author's experience with TMNT probably doesn't include anything other than the Nick Cartoon, Fred Wolf cartoon and the movies. Everything in her description relates to the Nick version, which barely even resembles any other version. I would call Karai a bad character in general but I can't say "Teenage Mutant Emo Snake" is a good version of her.
Tatsu - Really? Tatsu? The guy with barely any lines or screen time is the third best TMNT villain? Really?
Bebop and Rocksteady - The justification here is "Like Tokka and Rahzar, but arbitrarily better for some reason". I don't like Bebop and Rocksteady in general, there's like one decent version of them and it's not the one most people think of.
Shredder - I mean yeah, he's in every single iteration to some extent. Admittedly, there's even more evidence here that the author has somewhat limited experience with the material. Citing his backstory as a great aspect makes very little sense considering that it can vary from "Guy gets revenge at the one who cucked him" to "Alien criminal crashlands on earth and claims to be a demon".


You and I have about the same opinion on the author. No real research or familiarity with the franchise, just whatever she's seen her 6yo kids watching while she drinks Chardonnay on the couch. :trazz:

I'll name some terrible characters just from my fvcking memory:


Don Turtelli (did I remember his doofus name right?)
Dregg
Garbageman
Wick
Kid Terra
Eric Sachs :trazz:
Darius Dunn (4Kids, not IDW)
Tatsu

[CyberCubed]

Tatsu is a bad character? Tatsu is one of the best and most memorable characters the TMNT franchise had ever produced. For a character only in two movies from the 90's, he's had enduring popularity for 30 years.

[neatoman]

Tatsu is a bad character? Tatsu is one of the best and most memorable characters the TMNT franchise had ever produced. For a character only in two movies from the 90's, he's had enduring popularity for 30 years.

I'm not saying Tatsu is a bad character, I'm saying Tatsu hardly qualifies for a top ten list, let alone being in the top three. He fit on a top 100 list, not a top ten.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Tatsu is a bad character? Tatsu is one of the best and most memorable characters the TMNT franchise had ever produced. For a character only in two movies from the 90's, he's had enduring popularity for 30 years.

Eh. He's not much better than Karai in the Platinum Dunes movies, if you ask me.

He had potential to be used elsewhere and expanded upon, but he never was in any substantial way. (No, being a boss in Sega Genesis TMNT doesn't count.)

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

No mention of Nickelodeon Bebop and Rocksteady

[Galactus]

Well this is Screenrant who seems to just skim wikis of comic book characters to get information on comic book character histories, even Watchmojo looks for deeper cuts when doing these kinds of lists...in fact their TMNT lists are pretty decent even if they too are heavily weighted on Fred Wolf nostalgia.

Well, to be fair, they seem to have stuck with the most memorable ones from across the spectrum for this list. As in "characters most TMNT fans have heard of".

True but even the characters that most TMNT fans have heard of is still probably not famous enough. I think that should be the takeaway from Out Of The Shadows floppage. Krang is pretty much #2 most famous TMNT enemy, Bebop and Rocksteady joint #3 and yet it all with the freakin' Technodrome thrown in couldn't convince people to give the move a shot.

In hindsight it's not that suprising. I'm sure everyone has had a conversation with someone that went along the lines "I loved ninja turtles as a kid, my favourite one was Ralph and I loved that thing with eyeball on top and when they fought the rhino and the pig".

I saw more than a few comments on the trailer for Out of The Shadows that wondered since when did TMNT fight aliens. Most may have loved the show as a kid but that doesn't mean they vividly remember every detail. It's not like the show has been regularly re-aired also people tend to conflate the show with the 1990 movie hence why concepts like the turtles being Splinter's sons and the turtles referring to each other by shortened nicknames is seen a trope of the 80s turtles even if they weren't a thing in the show.

There's probably also a generational thing too. For people that grew up in the 2000s they are all about Utrom Shredder, Hun and the Triceratons etc. For those that grew up in the 2010s it's Dogpound and Fishface and Kra(a)ng is a race that speaks in funny sentances not a singular entity that watches John and Marsha.

[CyberCubed]

Tatsu also had such memorable dialogue as, "Hmph!" "Never lower your eyes to an enemy." and "Go, play, have fun."

Probably the best dialogue ever put to a script in a film.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Tatsu also had such memorable dialogue as, "Hmph!" "Never lower your eyes to an enemy." and "Go, play, have fun."

Probably the best dialogue ever put to a script in a film.

Take me now, you irresistible Lothario. :tlol:

[Prowler]

Take me now, you irresistible Lothario. :tlol:

A lot of seemingly ordinary posts look more "interesting" when posted by CyberCubed. If anyone else had made that post you'd not care.

It's quite an interesting thing. :trazz:

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

A lot of seemingly ordinary posts look more "interesting" when posted by CyberCubed. If anyone else had made that post you'd not care.

It's quite an interesting thing. :trazz:

Nah, if anyone made that particular post, I'd bust a gut laughing.

Tatsu has about as much dialogue in the TMNT movies as Black Bolt had in Inhumans. I guess. I don't know for sure, because I didn't watch Inhumans, because I'm not a fvcking moron. :tlol:

[pferreira]

I agree with some of the choices but not others. Tragg was a good villain and Tokka/Rahzar were threatening but only when directed to a target.

Not a single damn mention of any Mirage, 4Kids, or IDW characters.

I'm shocked. Only embrace the kiddie parts of TMNT, toe the party line, blah blah blah.Kiddie parts? Karai is kiddy? Eric Sachs?

Tatsu is a bad character? Tatsu is one of the best and most memorable characters the TMNT franchise had ever produced. For a character only in two movies from the 90's, he's had enduring popularity for 30 years.Thank you. :)

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

I agree with some of the choices but not others. Tragg was a good villain and Tokka/Rahzar were threatening but only when directed to a target.

Kiddie parts? Karai is kiddy? Eric Sachs?

Thank you. :)

They ain't talking Mirage Karai, pallie. They're talking cartoon Karai.

And Eric Sachs came from a franchise aimed even lower than kids... lead paint eating mouth breathers.

[pferreira]

They ain't talking Mirage Karai, pallie. They're talking cartoon Karai.Is CG Karai really that different to 2007 Karai?

[Myko]

In the Tokka and Rahzar section does the author thing Tokka was CGI!?