Brad Fuller talks about the TMNT Movie
 

Just noticed this new interview with Brad Fully talking about the TMNT movie, Here's what he had to say about it.
http://moviepilot.com/posts/2014/11/...,manual,manual

The film was made directly for the Kids, Which I have no problem with, The previous films were also kids movies as well.

Hmmm... I didn't know jail was an option.



Joking aside, yeah, I have no issue if they make a film in a way that includes kids in mind as part of the intended audience. Part. With a property like this, don't forget the adult fans however. Seriously. Because deciding to trap TMNT in the binds of "just a kid's thing" mentality yet again (which they deserve to be free of) and ignore adult fans who have a much longer, deeper love for the franchise... Well that's like taking all the people who were at Woodstock, telling them there will be another Woodstock - oh, but it's only going to feature Justin Beibier and what ever singing Disney tv kids they can fill it with. Don't be surprised if you crush a few hearts in the process who let it be known.

By kids, I assume Fuller meant the adult viewer who remembered saying Cowabunga as a kid, and could finally say again with the Turtles, and had a crush on April.

"Shell's tightening, I call dibs on her"

I'm beginning to hate Brad Fuller.

They all belong in jail.

And screw that interviewer as well. Ass kissing is the benchmark of citizen journalism. Somebody grow some balls and ask the real questions. They never say outright what needs to be said.

Kids will watch almost anything. They could have dug a little deeper. Kids watched Barney. Kids are not the yardstick to measure success for a 30 year old property. If they'd pleased the adults, the kids would still love it. Massive cop out.

This whole interview makes me angry. Arrest the fools already.

Sexual harassment, terrorism, horrifically ugly heroes who are "drained of all their blood", yeah, sounds like a kids movie!

LOL, you know this guy is a real scumbag when he spelled "lore" as "lure."

Too old for cartoon? Lazy explanation for like 20 minutes of effortless research imo...

Oh brother. :trolleye:

That is QUITE the over-exaggeration...

Looking at it again, now I'm not sure if it's a spelling error like you mention, and very well may be, or if they really do mean Turtles lure as in things used for audience bait.

You sure? Because it seemed as though the majority of time Mikey was on screen, he just wanted to get in April's pants.

The way Mikey acts with April, The Foot activity is terrorism, the turtle where designed to not be pretty or cute, Sacks orderd his underlings to drain them empty even if it meant death.

Doesn't sound too over-exaggerating.

I think there's more than a little revisionist history here. Certainly the impression they were giving throughout the making of the movie is that this was not purely a kids movie hence why they were promising that it would be respectful to the source that "we" grew up, it would take things more seriously and that it would have action scenes like The Raid movies and so on.

Certainly it doesn't come off as purely as a children's movie with it's PG 13 rating and it's use of sexual humor and the action while lacking teeth was stylistically intense for young children. If I had children I don't think I'd mind them watching it but I can understand why some parents would and did think it was inappropriate.

Like many "kid" movies what they were surely trying for is more of a "family" movie which I think would be the sweet spot for TMNT. Something that is aimed at children but keeps in mind adults will want to watch. Disney/Pixar know how to do emotional character stories that have just the amount of edge to appeal to all ages or even some of the Marvel movies...heck the 1990 movie did brilliantly in the context of what you could do back then. That certainly kept the idea it had to keep parents interested

They definitely shot for that but played the "adult" aspects so wrong that I don't think any adult fan who wasn't going to be satisfied with TMNT just being back would walk away happy now they are seemingly trying to pass off it was always 100% meant for children.

Also while I know a lot of kids did like the movie I've heard a few reports of kids really not taking to the designs.

Also I think that no one really thought that the movie would outright flop. Especially when you had three people connected to it saying that even people who hated the changes they made would come anyway because we love these characters. That right there should signal that they were banking on adult fans seeing it.

Ughh..

Every-time I read or hear an interview with him and his loser-trio, the angrier I get. I'm tired of this "It's just a kids movie" mentality; Just because it's aimed for a younger audience doesn't necessarily mean it can't be a smartly written film. Seriously, kids deserve better than this.

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Hate this.

That is so not a movie aimed at kids. Guy's totally covering his ass because that's the overwhelming majority of people who liked it. Nothing about the movie except the fact that it's incredibly juvenile and poorly thought-out makes it seem as though it was aimed at kids, as others mentioned.

Even if they had made a movie "just for kids", that's insulting and alienating to the other 2/3s of the fanbase.

Not one person who had anything to do with this pile should be allowed anywhere near a TMNT project again. They don't Get It.

The guy is clueless.

Funny how the Avengers never gets this kind of treatment, or Batman v Superman, or The Dark Knight.

Why are we the ones who get boned?

I have had enough!

To be fair, the Avengers is a pretty overrated film. It really has no plot at all. I expect big things from the Infinity War saga though.

So they made the movie for kids.

What does that make the actually good current cartoon?

I'm confused here, see. How low of an opinion does this guy and the people involved in this movie have of kids to say "here! we made this for you you little morons!"

When you say "we made this for kids" instead of "we made this for kid fans and adult fans alike" you're saying "our opinions of kids are so low that we know they will shovel damn near anything into their mouths as long as it's bright and flashy and loud and has a fart joke in it. So we're just gonna sh*t something out to turn a profit."

A recent example of something made both for kid fans and adult fans is season 3 of the cartoon. Most kids today probably won't recognize a Jason Voorhees tribute, or The Thing tribute. That stuff was made by and for adult fans of the show. The kids will get enjoyment anyway because it's Ninja Turtles fighting monsters the way Ninja Turtles do(and kids enjoy being scared on an unconscious level).

That's the f*cking key here. The kids WILL ENJOY IT ANYWAY. Pretty much no matter what, as evidenced by the crap they shoveled into the kids mouths with this movie.

Another example. Avatar The Last Airbender. Great show. From beginning to end. Original property that garnered adult and kid fans alike. They made it for EVERYBODY and had the talent to do it.

PIXAR are movies made for kids and adults. The first half hour of Wall-E doesn't even have any goddamn dialogue in it.

These shows and movies don't feel the need to talk down to kids and leave adults wanting to like it in the dust.

Oh, I agree, absolutely. I didn't love Avengers, infact, I felt the story was pretty empty.

What I'm saying, is that those brands are given a gravitas that the TMNT never get. There's a respect level, that while the films are problematic, it's never shrugged off as only a kids film.

*i should amend that - the season 2 finally of Nick got close. The first time there's been a spark of the real TMNT in anything for a long time.

Worth a watch if you havn't seen it.

Yeah... :( I don't get why they're so stuck with that. What, is it because they're not quite human? Just humorous "talking animals" that lack super powers? Please, there is more humanity in them than 90% of Hollywood. Maybe that's why these people don't get it. :roll:

Gladly accept the big green people as closer to human than big Hollywood people who mostly see a different kind of green.

I did enjoy it, but I took it for what it was - a mindless, fan service summer blockbuster. Couldn't believe people were saying it was better than the Dark Knight etc. I thought Dredd was a better comic book film in that summer.

Yeah, I know what you mean and should have taken that from your post. There's a level of care and attention which goes into those franchises, and that love wasn't given to the recent film.

I've seen the season 2 finale. Loved it.

See, the thing is, I think Ciro actually gets it. He takes from other sources, but him and his team totally get what it is they are making. They know the roots, they give subtle winks to the audience, and they understand the type of heart that TMNTneeds at it's core to be enjoyable.
It's not the TMNT from the comics, nore the FW series or 2k3. It's living on it's own, but still feels the same.

The Bayturtles, they were human-ish, but had the wrong qualities. They were, idk how else to say it, losers. They were too nerdy, and oddball. Creepy is the best way to characterize it.

I think the brothers could be outsiders, without feeling like rejects. I totally get that you could portray them like that, and it has some logic to it, but they tossed out the cool factor. Mikey was a cool optimist in the 1990 film. They were the sort of characters that you want to spend more time with, not less.

Every "joke" every line in Bayturtles was cringe inducing, for me.

Agree with all of that.

The problem with making movies based on comic book properties, Your usually only given 2 hours to explain the whole thing, When in Comics and TV Shows, They spend several issues and episodes to tell an entire story.

That's why I prefer television to film. Can't wait for Daredevil on Netflix.

I have higher hopes for Infinity War though since it will have two parts. Gives them 4-5 hours.

That's just one of the kickers for me though, they didn't even use the whole normal two hours most movies do these days (or even three sometimes), there was still room for them to add in things that might have helped... Hell, do it right and I'd gladly watch the Turtles three.

And yet, I own dozens of movies that actually did a good-to-great job translating comics to film. Go figure.

I totally agree that film has certain limitations that make more serialized, long-form storytelling a chore to adapt. That doesn't excuse anyone, at all, for taking the easy way out. They needed to try harder on the TMNT movie, it's as simple as that.

It's literally like, every wrong decision they could have made, or every opportunity they had to MISdirect their focus, they did exactly that. No excuses. There's "doing it wrong", and "Doing It SO wrong that it had to have been on purpose."

Not denying what you guys are saying, I was just expanding on my general preference for television over film, since Tiger Claw mentioned a drawback of cinema.

Oh you're not at all incorrect, bud; I've long said that when it comes to comics, TV is much more closely related to the way comics tell stories. They're both more long-form, where movies are like a quick snapshot of a larger story. It's definitely easier to adapt comics to TV than to film.

It can and has been done very well a hundred times, though, so I still get cranky at movies like the new TMNT where it's like they didn't bother trying.

And yet The 1990 movie breezed through the origin and back story in under five minutes.

I don't believe a more detailed one that incorporated TCRI and perhaps a bit more on Yoshi and Saki would have taken much longer. Pretty much every modern comic book movie manages it well enough.

I don't believe it was because they were trying to keep it simple for children as not only were the origins done in a short time in all three animated series but the origin they did come up with was pretty convoluted.

We got the whole stuff with April and her father and Sacks. Heck Sacks gets an origin himself, at what age do kids learn about Vietnam war? Another sign this wasn't made purely with kids in mind.

Time wasn't an issue because they wasted twenty minutes on the above. They didn't do it because they didn't want to. They set out to make what they felt was an really great epic about aliens, ancient prophecies and military hunts and they scratched their heads when people didn't care for it and then grudgingly changed it without really understanding why fans wanted it in the first place.

Agree, there have been some good comic films. And I suppose you can argue that the time constraints can also be seen as a benefit as it can lead to a more coherent, tightly structured plot whereas there's more room for filler in a television series. Sort of like setting lower word limits in essays to keep the writer focused and eliminate waffling.

What's your favourite comic book film other than the 90 film? With you being a Superman fanboy I'm guessing it's the original Reeve film.

Mine is the Dark Knight or Batman 1989. Not exactly original, but they were great.

Well, I'm looking forward to the sequel, If Bebop and Rocksteady are in it, It'll be interesting to see how they will do there origins under under 2 hours

Well technically they did it, they just didn't do it the way you expected them to. I mean the entire film was about their origin and what their existence means, it just wasn't the standard version of that story.

I just hope they don't take so long to set that up and give so much focus to those characters that the Turtles get shorted a bit again like they did this time with the abundance of April.

I hope it's not something where they only show up as Mutants in the 3rd act, It be nice to see them early on.

Seeing as R&B were introduced in FW in under 21 minutes, I'm sure they can manage.

Oh, wait, it's Fuller and co again?

Maybe you're right. Gotta leave room for all those Vernon quips.

Boy, how I just love that...8)

It shouldn't be hard. Their actual origin was done in a 20 minute episode.

In fact if you take the relevant bits of the origin in 'Enter the Shredder' and let's say their small role in the series pilot as a back story then does it even come to five minutes of set up?

Then again I'm guessing that the animated series origin might be a bit too complicated for them and instead it will be something like Casey Jones' mother was a vet at the central park zoo when one night the zoo was raided and a rhino and a warthog were stolen and Casey's mother was left in the coma. Years later when Casey sees April's news reports of warthog and rhino creatures harassing the good citizens of New York he seeks her out to try and convince her they are the same animals he used to care for with his mother. Turns out they were mutated Shredder as part of Project: Convoluted to fulfill an ancient Japanese prophecy.

...oh and turtles show up and fight whatever.

Talking about yoga...and foam...