What DO you want, then?
 

Okay, in all of the other threads on this board, I've seen the bashing, the fighting, the hate and venom fly in every direction either for or against the 2014 TMNT film. I personally think it was a movie with a LOT of stuff wrong with it, had a few tiny things that I liked, and just passed it off as a mediocre popcorn summer flick- I don't love it, but I don't hate it, either.

But the question I pose in this thread is; what DO you want in a good TMNT movie, first in it's series? What characters, setting, tone, etc., are you looking for? This isn't a thread to just pick up arguing over the movie we got- rather, this is the place to talk about what we would have gotten had Bay just say back, put his name on the picture, and raked in the cash from a film with a director who knew what he was doing? I want to know what you'd would have wanted to see, and what you'd hate seeing. No fighting or yelling about other versions or other people's tastes. Discuss the ideas, fine... but don't fight over em!

Now, I'd personally have loved to see a fell done origin, with 4kids in tone, and characters from the OT; Yoshi becomes Splinter, Shredder as the main villain, human rocksteady and bebop as his henchman, setting up their transformation in the sequel. Cycle of vengeance story kept in the form of shredder destroying Yoshi's life as a human. Ninja action and violence on the level of most PG-13 Hollywood action flicks where the good guys can hack, chop and slash their way through the grunts and kill them.

What I would not go see is a full-blown Mirage tale, with the gore, blood, and grit of 300. It personally holds no interest for me, I've seen enough frank miller angst-ridden bloodfests to last me a lifetime. But that's just my tastes, I know many others would love to see that. Also, I'd expect a good story, and good characters. I'd hate another summer popcorn flick without any sense of direction or tone.

So, what would all of you like to see in a TMNT movie? If you're opinion is different that everyone else- great! We all have different ideas on what we'd prefer. But I hope we can all agree that we'd rather have a coherent, quality movie, regardless of supporting characters and tone.

Oh, and no bringing up the film we got, except as an example of what you do or do not want! I don't want the fight in the other threads to spill over to here!

how about some turtles..

:lol: Okay, how about some ideas beyond those that are a given?

Give the turtles, you know, actual personalities.

And I'm not saying, like, "Raph is the angry one, Don is smart, Leo is leader, Mikey is funny". No. I want the characters to have reasons to like or dislike each other. Reasons to do what they do.

Hopefully with the sequel, We can see Raph bonding more with Casey Jones, The reality is, Both Alan Ritchson and Stephen Amell know each other in RL, They used to work together on a TV show, So there's the potential for Raph developing more as a character, When he meets someone kind of like him.

More ass-shots.

"What do you want, then?"

A NEW REBOOT WITH DIFFERENT DIRECTORS, WRITERS, PRODUCERS AND ACTORS. Well, keep Pete, Jeremy, Noel, and Alan, and possibly Stephen.

Everyone else: get out.

yea right..they can bro fest in 1 minute and be best bros for life bro bro

Not arguing with your stance; but again, these are all a given, mentioned in my first post. What are you looking for, story, plot, and character-wise?

*Sigh* Please, both of you, stop this... :ohwell: I didn't ask about a sequel, I asked about a hypothetical moive made instead of this one.

What do I want, something that was more like the first Transformers, that had a decent story, good characters, and a good balance of comedy and seriousness. I thought the first Transformers was the way to go in bringing cartoon characters to life.

but it shouldnt be our job to write it for them..we should be vague and tell them the basics...especially since this team doesnt get it.fnot to pat lyself on the back but the first post shouldnt have been we want turtles..fans shouldnt baby a studio....we want turtles and a good story..thats the bones of it...its not my job to write the story for them to tell me...if it was i should get paid for it

But truth, I'd love it if they went along the grounds of the first Kick Ass movie, but I knew we would never get something like that.

But this has nothing to do with the movie we got, or writing the story for them. It was a question about what people personally want to see in a tmnt movie.

and i told you want i wanted...the turtles...as ninjas

Ok, fair enough

Turtle focus and perspective (why is that hard for the film makers to grasp). April's perspective: do not want. As been mentioned - ninjas. (Cutting ninja stuff out is like cutting out the fact that the Turtles are, you know, green.)

A really good well written, solid story. (That does not include stupid short cuts like ninja books or complicating some details in unnecessary ways because you're trying to be creative, while the parts that could use more creativity didn't get it.) As for the story itself, hell, I'd be perfectly fine if they told NEW stories (and in their case maybe that would be easier and less likely to get as much grief) just as long as they start out with a well told 96% intact classic origin, then move on to a new story once that is in place.

As for new ideas: I'd still love to see those horrid looking "alien" turtle design concepts repurposed and show up as alien enemies that our Turtles fight against. (Keeping our Turtles as born Earthlings.) That could be cool. They can show me something new like this, I'm OK with that - but (too late) do not screw with the foundation.

For starters, I don't want choppy stories with plotholes. I would've liked the first movie much more if they kept Caucasian Shredder, due to the fact that they had so many plotholes in the version we got.

But storywise? Give Shredder a rest. Don't use him as the main antagonist for the first movie unless you're using him to introduce him to someone else, such as Krang, and have the series build up towards him. Use villains like Baxter Stockman, Slash, Rat King, Krang, Lord Dregg, Triceratons, BISHOP, etc. as main antagonists. And then, once the dust settles, give us Shredder in the 2nd or 3rd movie.

What I would like:

- no Bay attached to the project at all, or Nemec/Applebaum. They're not the right people for this property.
- ninja fighting and focus on the Turtles at least equal to the 1990 film
- no sexist treatment of April
- coherent, cohesive story and original plot which doesn't retread the exact same ground as previous films; we know the origin, we don't need another "set up" movie to explain who everybody is
- a strong, fun soundtrack with some memorable songs
- well shot with no use of the current aggravating trends like shaky jump cuts and lens flares
- emphasis on practical effects where possible, using CG to complement
- good production design (inc. Turtle design)
- casting of people with strong acting/stunt/VA chops
- more mature tone; not necessarily UltraGrittyDark with gore and f-bombs a-flyin', but less kiddified than say, SoTO.

This has been done so many damn times around here, and the results are always the same.

NOBODY WANTS THE SAME THING. We all have our wish list's of head cannon and flights of fancy.

The Turtles are essentially a Rorschach test. It's like asking a room full of mothers which of their children is the most attractive.

They were never going to satisfy everyone.

Agreeing that we don't want PDMT is simple. Agreeing on what we do want...

LOL. Have fun with that.

I'm fine if they want to go the bloody, gory Mirage route. But for now, I'm very pleased with the OT route they are taking. :D:tlove:

^^ point proven. Thanks Sharkie.

We've been through this a few times already, but what the hell. I posted out a fan-casting/plot pitch kinda thing here a while back. Gimme an excuse to repost it and I'll repost it. :trazz:

And I wrote out a brief trilogy outline in this thread last year, which I mostly kinda stand by? Anyway:

Basically... don't mess with what works. The Mirage comics made a great outline for the 1990 movie, and they still work as a rock-solid story. Update some stuff, take in some elements from more contemporary versions like the 4Kids show, the Nick show, the IDW comics, but keep the focus where it should be - the themes and the characters are laid out very well in the original material, and that should be absorbed and considered first of all.

This sounds pretty good to me.

Platinum Dunes just took TMNT and put it through the Transformers grinder machine...TMNT isn't hot cars, hot women and explosions.

A good script written by a single screen writer
a director with a solid vision
a passing mark on the Bechdel, Sexy Lamp, and Mako Mori tests

I googled the last two, but didn't come across concise examples of them. Care to elaborate?

Well it's simple what I want, a story that makes sense and decently developed characters. That's the ticket to make sure any movie is at least passable.

EX: Pretty much Megan Fox's character in the Transformers movies. She was a sexy lamp. Stood around and looked pretty. That's it. Also was a "conquest item" for Shia.

EX: Basically also Megan Fox's character in the Transformers movies, the opposite of Mako Mori.

Funnily enough, she kinda sorta passes these two tests in the TMNT movie though, despite her character being written as SO GODDAMN DUMB AND AWFUL AT HER JOB.

Because the Ninja Turtles movie was basically her story, beginning to end. She's responsible for the Turtle's and Splinter's survival as a kid, her father is the one killed(sorta) by White Shredder, she's investigating them(poorly but still doing it), gets fired, she gets the final blow on the villain, saving the day.

Although...not too sure that it counts as a narrative arc, as she didn't really grow or change as a person. She lost her job though and didn't get it back, so maybe that counts.

Don't think she passed the Bechdel test though. If you count the Turtles as the characters she's talking about as "men" when she discusses them with Whoopi Goldberg and her roommate. If not, she passed that too.

Despite being terribly written and acted.

Seems reasonable enough.

I watched the extra scene on the blu-ray and she made a reportage with Vernon about the destruction. The turtles even drive with their car around the scene.
So she did got her job back.

That's not in the cut, though.

She might be back into her job in Half-Shell, but the first movie ended as far as the finished cut is concerned; unemployed.

Putting that one to the Bechdel test almost gives me a headache.

Requires at least two women characters: Uh... sorta? Two were in it for like three minutes. One to give the plot a small push forward, while the other could have been that lamp.

Talk to each other: In a very basic sense... Plot reasons. Room mate never really said much.

About something other than men: Er, yes and no? Heavily human-like humanoid characters that can interact equally as any other person; prob count as men. But suppose it passes because the discussion wasn't from that angle. However, only way a second or third film won't fail it is if the Turtles never have another female friend and/or she never knows April.

lmao sorry but..... lmao. There is no more or less gore, blood and grit in the Mirage comics than any other comic nowadays. Comparing Mirage to 300 is a gross exxageration. It's just you guys are so used to cutesey wutesey turtles that rarely cause so much as a bruise to the bad guys that seeing them actually draw a drop of blood in the comic is suddenly considered a bloodfest.

Wow. Seriously? Comparing 300 to Mirage Vol 1?
That's uh...that's special right there, is what that is.

You know what this thread title makes me think of?

http://i.imgur.com/bxGqU0R.jpg?1

Half the people who draw a thick line between Mirage and their TMNT of choice, never even read the damn thing.

I mean *I'm* not in love with it, but it's fine. It's just not my kinda comic book. But at least I've read most of it. I notice a lot of people haven't.

OH it's certainly not for everyone. Hell, it's my canon of choice and even I will willingly admit that it's far from perfect.

But...seriously...300?
Not on its darkest day could it ever come close to the pornography that is"We will fight in the shade."

Well, maybe this one:

What it kind of is, is I grew up reading super-heroes and I like my comic books as completely over-the-top and dense with that type of stuff as possible, and for other types of stories I read other things. I think TMNT works just fine as a comic book, but the comic books aren't my favorite way to experience TMNT. If that makes any sense.

It feels like, in comics, they kind of limit the types of stories they can tell with TMNT, in a strong attempt to completely avoid being like a "traditional super-hero comic". There's times reading Mirage where you can almost feel the reigns being pulled hard when stories start to "creep" into that territory. Whereas in the cartoons and other media, they're more like "Eh, just do whatever", like there's fewer "rules" involved.

I'm in it for the Slice of Life stuff, personally.
And that goes for pretty much most of my comic enjoyment. It's great and all that these characters can destroy a city with a thought, but...what do they do on a stray Monday night when it's cold and rainy?

Characters should be more than a list of stats, and stories should be more than body counts and property damage calculations.

My favorite Mirage stories, heck my favorite stories regardless of publisher, gave me characters to root for. Not just...pecs and pouches.

I want my turtles to be hideous freaks of nature, in the shadows because...they have absolutely no idea how to interact with people...unless it's hurting them. Because they've been trained to hurt them.

I've always wanted a continuation where the turtles are older and Shredder stayed defeated. Maybe have Karai be the new Shredder or some other threat rises.

I don't think this will happen though. Not for a really long time. The movies and cartoon are meant to appeal to everyone. Keeping the same villains and plotlines is what's most memorable to the public.

Even if Nick gave up the franchise or a new studio made separate movies they'd most likely start over from the beginning again...turtles meet April, rise from the sewer, mutagen origin etc...