Did it bug you that the TMNT always sounded like adults?
 

Honestly, it never seemed too hard to imagine that they would still follow the development patterns of turtles (really quick maturity). But, did ianyone find it really frustrating? Someone should ask Kev & Pete if that was always in the back of their minds while they were in charge.

Are we talking voice actors or even the TMNT's dialogue in the comics?

Voices, mainly...

When I was kid watching the shows, or movies, it never bugged me.

I agree it never once crossed my mind until Nick's new TMNT. I assumed like you said that Turtles matured faster maybe, but honestly I doubt I even thought of it at all. But with Nick bringing the whole teenage thing to an extreme (which is cool cause it's different) I see that they really didn't sound much like young teens in the films and even the cartoons really...more young adult sounding.

Not when I was a kid, but as I grew up, especially movie and 4Kids Raph all seemed to have voices that were way to deep. I guess it can be chalked up to having adults do the voices. Even the FW Turtles sounded too old. Can't say it bugged me, but I've often wondered how to make them sound like teenagers.

At the very least, the guys always come across as "College-aged Mutant Ninja Turtles" to me, especially the 4Kids series.

As a guy who grew into having a deep voice when it changed, the Turtles' voices never bothered me at all and seemed quite normal even to this day.

I think from watching the OT when I was small the Turtles have always seemed "older" then me even when they are not :tlol:

So it never really bothered me because it seemed correct I guess.

Can't say it ever bothered me.

Teenage turtles have more adult-sounding voices than teen humans do. That's my rationalization.

As long as the voice suits the character and doesn't look out of place, or anything, all is well.

I've honestly never really thought about it, so it never bothered me.

Meh. I can't think of a single cartoon from the 80's or 90's that featured characters voiced by anyone other than adults. Even the ones who tried to imitate childrens' voices didn't sound realistic. I think it was just too common for me to notice or care.

At times, 4Kids Raph's voice made me wonder how long he had been battling the smoker's lung, poor kid.

Otherwise, never took much notice.

Can't say I ever had any qualms with it, I knew who they were before I knew what "teenager" meant. They always lived pretty adult lives anyway. That and I always knew most voice actors are adults and can only sound so realistic as youths/children.

It didn't "bugged me" particularly, but yeah obviously they always did sound more like snarky 20 or 30 year olds than teenagers, lol.

I'll take the adult voices over squeaky teenagers any day. :p

The acting in the first movie seems very teenage to me, however, so the voices don't seem out of place.

I've honestly never thought about it until now. :ohwell:

I agree, I think the teenage vibe was stronger in the first movie.

It never bothered me, and it still doesn't. Despite being teenagers, the Turtles had to grow up fast anyway, at least in the 4Kids series with everything they went through.

It wasn't until an OT episode had Leo say "will you guys cut it out... you're acting like a couple of teenagers." to which Raph replies "could it be because we ARE a couple of teenagers?" that reminded me that yeah... they were teenagers. They always acted like young adults, especially whenever they encounter normal human teenagers. The difference in attitude and age maturity always stood out.

Well being 4 or 5 at the time, I actually though real teenagers sounded like young adults given how somebody 13 or 14 (let alone 15 or 16) seemed almost like my parents. I just didn't realized that teenage turtles were voiced by mainly late twenty/thirtysomethings at the time (though Mike is an exception and all of his voices do sound like a teenager since his voice is quite different from the VA's normal voice). It never bothered me at all however except for the alternate voices. Like I was back then, few young kids will realize that the Nick's Donnie is voiced by a 55-year old, practically old enough to be their grandpa. But then again, the turtles did come in contact last with a human before their mutations. I'm surprised though that Leo is the only one with any Oriental traits. This must mean that Splinter is not 100% Oriental. Finally, I felt that the turtles' senior citizen counterpart voices in Once Upon a Time Machine sounded pretty good.

Yeah it always was weird to me. I never thought they acted like teenagers (especially Leo and Don in the comics!) or sounded like them. They were a bit more teenage in the movies.

In the 4kids show, yeah, Raph sounds like a 40-year old chain smoker. But the voices were okay in the 2k7 movie, although they still did sound a bit old.

I remember the creator of Daria once pointed out in an interview that most teenage characters on TV don't talk like "real teenagers." Which makes sense when you think about it. They have to be able to carry a certain amount of sophisticated humor to entertain the audience that "real teenagers" don't necessarily have.

That in turn reminds me of a documentary on The Partridge Family, which talked about how child actor Danny Bonaduce was under an enormous amount of pressure because he was this little kid having to produce much of the show's wise ass, grown up jokes.

When you think about it, how much like genuine little children did the characters of the Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes comic strips sound? I'm referring to the dialogue and vocabulary, not necessarily any animated specials.

As for the 1987 cartoon, the Turtles acted enough like teenagers with elements like skateboarding and pizza, so how they sounded wasn't too critical-they're mutant turtles after all. I saw the first movie and the Turtles did have more "teenage" sound and behavior.

When I was little, Teenagers seemed big and scary, so the voices never seemed off to me. They're still fine as far as I'm concerned. :)

I'm anxious to hear the Nick turtles' at length.

No but what did bug the heck out of me was when the va changed. And they sounded differnt in differnt episodes.

Yeah, that happened a lot in the OT, which is my only real quirk about it. Shredder's voice changed so many times in the show, it got annoying as hell because sometimes it sounded ok, other times it was horrible.

I disagree. I thought the turtles in almost every version I've seen sounded young enough. Especially Leo and Don from the 4KIDS series. How can you say they didn't sound like teenagers? The only turtle who I thought didn't sound like a teen at all was Don from the 80's toon, and Raph from the 4KIDS toon.

I don't know how to describe 80's Don voice. It not high like a boy's or deep like a man. But some how doesn't sound like a young person. :ohwell:

4KIDS Raph just sounds like he eats cigarettes like they were pretzel sticks. :lol:

The closest to accurate teen dialogue seems to be "My So-Called Life." Dialogue is my biggest strength in writing, and, yes, I can certainly see what the Daria creator meant. Not only that, we overuse words or repeat them or ramble into side tangents, etc. Hard to do in a 22 animated episode, so such dialogue revising is quite understandable.

The 87 Turtles said in the first episode that they picked up many things from television, so it's a rather legitimate excuse for having extra snarky or tighter dialogue than one would expect (from a mutant turtle or anyone else). I'm a smart guy, but I couldn't do even half of 87 Raph's lines, especially when on the spot.

Lol, very true. That reminds me of Madison from the movie Splash, how she learned English from watching TV and in one scene started speaking in commercial catchphrases:

Madison: Did you see this? It's wonderfully delicious and so good for you!
Allen: While you're here, watch a little less TV. How long are you going to be in town?
Madison: Six fun-filled days!

It never bothered me. When I was a kid, teenagers seemed like they were so much older than me anyway, and 90210 teens were played by adults :) , so it didn't make any difference to me. I didn't know better.

Ha! All of these chain smoker remarks have amused me, but this on in particular had me laughing so hard, I had to chill out and breathe before managing to properly type this.