Corrections officer by Day, Vigilante by night
 

That isn't Casey Jones

That's literally Nobody

Does it really need its own topic ?

Doesn't "corrections officer" mean prison guard? Holy crap! They gave Casey an actual job!

According to a Wiki.

Corrections Officers are responsible for the care, custody, and control of individuals who have been arrested and are awaiting trial while on remand or who have been convicted of a crime and sentenced to serve time in a prison or jail. They are also responsible for the safety and security of the facility itself.

If cybercubed can do it

While it has been discussed why this isn't a job that really suits Casey and his more blue collar, street tough vigilante should really have but Casey is an important enough character that it probably deserves it's own thread.

I know Amell has said we may get more of the traditional Casey 'look' in other sequels and maybe some will hold out for more of the more traditional Casey personality too but isn't that antithetical to what the character is supposed evolve? If you think about it every version of Casey which is part of the regular cast starts off with a tougher personality but by befriending the turtles and April gets some of his rough edges smoothed out. Here fans hope it's the other way around which does't make much sense. Likewise by the time we always meet Casey he's been a vigilante for a while and we can buy that he's set in his ways enough so doesn't upgrade his weapons or ways of fighting even when in more bizarre situations he finds himself allied with the turtles but a more stable Casey just starting out would have no reason not pick up one of Don's gadgets or learn ninjutsu?

There's nothing wrong with presenting Casey's origin but why invent a new one when they could have used the one that already exists in the canon and generally liked by fans?

Like the OP said if they are really married to the idea of a corrections officer turned vigilante there's already a character exactly like that in the canon; Nobody but rather than figure that out they have to turn Casey into that. Just like with the previous movie they really wanted a military antagonist and instead of using one that already exists in TMNT they tried to alter the main villain to be that.

NOBODY... just like the number of people at Platinum Dunes who had read any of the TMNT comics!

<ba dum tish>

What was wrong with him having been a bouncer?

Because then he'd be busy with his job during night.

Yeah but it's New York, the city that's fabled to never sleep.
He could easily work a shift at a bar and then go out knocking heads.

It'd give him far more freedom, because being late for work, and showing up beat up, not exactly smiled upon in the prison system.

If Casey Jones has to have a job I think bouncer at a dive bar would be the perfect one

Him being a corrections officer actually has to do with his backstory with Bebop and Rocksteady. I think that's why they try to kill him in that one scene where their on the bikes, well other than the fact he's an enemy of The Foot

Yeah, Stephen Amell at WonderCon did mention that Casey Jones has a beef with Bebop and Rocksteady.

Him being a correction officer makes sense when you take Bebop and Rocksteady into account, probably causing all sorts of trouble with Casey Jones at the workplace.

Casey Jones probably doesn't like how the system isn't working, Bebop and Rocksteady not staying in jail and being set free, which probably irks him.

Except him being a bouncer actually works better for that too -- Bebop and Rocksteady are exactly the type of punk criminals who'd start trouble at a dive bar, which gives a way more natural reason for them to know who Casey is without having to completely alter the character.

yep. I give them credit for the idea but the way they're going about it seems over complicated. How hard would it have been for them to have crossed paths with Casey while he was doing his regular vigilante thing. They could've just been thugs (or maybe members of the purple dragons as an easter egg) that he's beat down a few too many times. You'd get the same results without changing the core of the character.

Cool. Glad this doesn't incorporate any of the weird fascist undertones Bay productions always seem to ooze for one reason or another.

Yes. Because the writers wrote it that way.

They could have easily NOT done that and wrote it a different, BETTER way.

That would require them to have something resembling talent though.

Hey, somehow these hacks keep getting paid. That's a talent all it's own.

I'm sure all the writers involved have an enormous amount of talent for whipping up drafts of filmable tentpole film scripts with minimal effort so they can churn out as many projects as they can within a year, because that's the sh*tty system they're part of and what studios demand of them. You don't make end's meat in Hollywood scripting pouring your heart into a script like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 when it's going to be a Frankenstein of rewrites anyway and you're being asked to shove in certain marketable elements. You do what you can to get that sh*t out the door and don't think to hard about it.

Hate the game, not the players.

That said, someone--either at the executive or script-level--pitched this idea, and it's a terrible, tone-deaf one, but they didn't care, no one else involved cared, and I can't blame anyone for not caring one bit. If I worked in their industry and saw projects like this clean up with audience time after time, I'd be cynically efficient at all times too. Easy idea? Okay; we're doing it. It gets filmed. If you hate this, don't give it ticket money.

I do appreciate the point you're making, but in this case, it's not really applicable. The two schmucks who wrote it had a lot of terrible ideas that made it in, don't know how to write dialogue or seal gaps, & at every turn seem to make it abundantly clear how little they know/love TMNT. This whole Casey as a jail cop thing, they've been pushing it from the jump, son. It's in The Blue Door. So it's safe to assume they're recycling even more material from that thing, they clearly think it's solid work.

Absolutely nothing about this project or the previous movie would incentivize anyone involved to know or love TMNT. Or even to stop to think for a moment about what a weird and politically awful choice making a presumably sympathetic character a combination prison guard/vigilante is. There's no reason to rethink the first, easily digestible idea that lets the script work.

Every moment they could be pouring more effort into this assembly-line script built around toy-advertising and flashy effects, they could/have to be spending two more on all the other scripts they'll touch this year that may never be made, that may need rewrites based on all sorts of executive requests, etc. The system does not reward caring.

My fault is not with the writers, who have a hard job and are molded by large studio systems to work that way. It's hard to say it's even with the executive producers and studio heads who spearhead projects like this (although it absolutely is). It's pretty squarely with audiences who support it again and again.

No one in this thread should be pre-maturely dumping on the writers and still purchase a ticket to this film.

EDIT --

Or maybe they really think prison-guard Casey is an awesome idea because it's a hell of a lot more filmable for this kind of lowest-common-denominator movie than Casey being a pastiche vigilante who's watched too many movies. Maybe they're terrible writers and this is truly reflective of their interests and the best of their abilities. Either way, nothing is encouraging spending any more effort on this than has already been spent.

I thought he was just a security guard in Blue Door.

Lemmie just say this, having seen you post earlier today that you've not watched the film, take it from me, if/when you do, this defense for those two hacks will have been your most shameful moment. :tlol: I don't care what mandates, pressure, or paychecks they had. It was unforgivably bad for many reasons that they themselves are responsible for.

Oh, yeah, that's right. My bad. Still, it comes to mind for him being in a position of loosely governmental authority (he was guarding that testing facility last time).

I don't know if I'll ever see the film, because I'm not that much of a masochist and I really don't want to support it even on a streaming service, but I just find something fundamentally wrong-headed about attacking the writers when they're the bottom rung in the system and everything about their work demands they pump out many, many dumb, quick scripts each season.

Not that there aren't hacky writers. It's just really hard to blame them for a number of reasons related to how films like this work.

That's a significantly less-bad idea, so somehow it got even worse this time around, but again--if it's easy, there's no reason for anyone involved to care.

Maybe we can talk about how f*cking problematic it is that Casey's a prison-guard/vigilante now though, and anticipate the many, many thinkpieces on this that will come out if this movie sees even a modicum of success.

If you knew the history, what kinda douche bags these guys are, you'd make an exception. Take my word, man.

By all means! Everything is problematic.

The whole idea that Casey is a vigilante because he watched too much TV thing has never been his origin in any version. Sure Kevin Eastman humorously phrases his concept of a vigilante that doesn't need a traditional origin. I doubt that to be his actual origin otherwise..y'know he would have done it.

It's strange to me people accept that as his origin even though it isn't in any version of the canon and I think it goes down to the belief that Eastman and Laird played everything as a goof. The little joke doodle that became a pop culture phenomenon, the parody that became bigger than what it was poking fun at. I'm not saying the early TMNT comics were the most well thought out stories ever (although as they developed they did what I would say objectively good stories) but they from concept to print they did develop their ideas beyond the initial humor based concepts otherwise Shredder would still be called "Grate Man" and the turtles would have their weapons strapped to their arms.

Now all this being said it wouldn't be too hard to make an origin like that for Casey and make it work. It strikes me that perhaps Steve Barron was channeling it in the deleted scene in the 1990 movie were Casey is flipping through tv channels and every news report he finds is about violence and decides to do something about it. Wouldn't that be easy to film?

Not involved in the plot enough? Well how about taking the only origin the character has ever had in the canon involving the Purple Dragons. You can easily say Bebop and Rocksteady are members of that gang. Given how they are saying they are taking elements of everything and being more faithful than the previous movie this one was handed to them on a silver platter.

As a fan I appreciate there's aspects of TMNT that on the surface seem a bit too strange to adapt on film without a lot of thought and effort but Casey Jones isn't one of them. I'd say he's the simplest aspect of the whole canon, the fact they this character right speaks volumes about incorrect this sequel will be.

The "I'm Casey Jones the Corrections Officer"approach, still sounds weird to me.

The tweet that he shot back at an individual who also wasn't impressed with the movie and what direction that it's taking (the "You'll get used to it" response that another poster left on the TMNT 2 Discussion Thread), has left me even less impressed w/ Stephen Amell.

No, but for years and years that was all we had on the guy, and for the tone of the series and Casey's character, it worked.

I'm looking at pages 134 and 135 of the TMNT Ultimate Edition #1.
First appearance of Casey Jones. He's sitting in his bachelor pad watching a cop show with a protagonist named T.J., which I'm going to assume is T.J. Hooker. A police procedural starring William Shatner and Heather Locklear. Not exactly what I would consider great television, but there's no accounting for taste.

He's talking back to the screen cheering on the death of bad guys.
Third panel, page 135:

Next panel.
Next panel.
Next panel
So how exactly is it that Casey Jones' origin was never, just a guy watching bad television who becomes a vigilante?

You got me there and I should probably have refreshed myself on Raphael #1 before typing ad that part slipped my mind completely (maybe I should again before posting this) but still I think when people recite the whole idea that Casey became a vigilante from watching "too much bad tv" they mean it literally rather than say it motivated him in that particular issue.

Even as early as his second appearance TMNT #10 there's a mention of his job as a bouncer I think we're supposed to assume that he's been a vigilante for a while and that his meeting with Raph wasn't his first time out.

And could work for a movie. What I thought was a reasonable extrapolation on Barron's part Plastroncafe has reminded me was another direct lift from the comics. In a movie series which has had people involved complain about origins that are "too complex" you'd think a simple one would suffice. Of course I think we all know that the Yoshi/Saki backstory wasn't all that complicated but it just wasn't in their wheel house. I think it was Ross May that said the production outright hated the origin even when Mirage was still involved and certainly what they came up with was even more complex and stupid than a rat learning ninjutsu.

By the same token I think they just shut themselves off from Casey Jones backstory (both of them) from the get-go and want their Sam Witwicky-esque Casey Jones by hook or by crook.

Given the less-than-straight-line of Mirage canon I could totally buy his first outing as vigilante was prior to Raphael #1. He does grab for that hockey mask awful quick. So I could totally see it as a: Let's go to work, rather than a montage of discovery.

Plus... there's the whole roof running like a ninja thing, which I don't think is a skill one hones while bouncing, but then again...I've never been to Stucky's.

I thought it was Torchy's? Did I make that up?

Yeah, but a better movie. A movie that could weirdly conceivably be made in an era when films like Kick-Ass and Deadpool play just fine with general audiences. But not the stupid, easy spectacle film Platinum Dunes wants to make, which is also successful.

Maybe in ten years. Even then, probably not with Nickelodeon at the helm.

Oh crap! You are absolutely right! It is Torchy's.
Where the hell did I get Stucky's from....cripes.

But not always. I mean in IDW and Nick we see Casey just starting out.But we have seen other origins, in IDW he had an abusive father and in Nick he just wanted to protect his family. So I don't think we necessary have to do the whole Purple Dragons burn down his fathers store plot.

They could have spun it from there. Have his shop burned down by thugs making it hard for his family to get by but Casey eventually succeeded in life and moves on. But learns the system is corrupt and people like Bebop & Rocksteady aren't gonna learn their lessons Cops aren't really the good guys he thinks they are. So he goes on the self destructive path of a vigilante with very unresolved anger issues and Raph is the one who eventually saves him for himself.

Yeah its ripping off Batman but whatever at least it would be something I can see from a version of Casey. If I was writing it I wouldn't give him his job back, but Hollywood gotta tie a bow for the kiddies so he "somehow" gets his job back.

You're expecting him to agree completely with him and say ''yeah this movie sucks'' ''Casey is butchered'' ''I shouldn't be doing this'' I'm pretty sure he was joking because they continued to talk afterwards unless that dude is incredibly sensitive

The IDW series spins the 4kids origin with the twist that Hun the guy who abused Jones' family is Casey's dad himself.

The Nick version is the weakest iteration of the character so far and I know I'm not alone in thinking that. It's hard to pinpoint why but I think it's partly because he's a teenager and it's hard to take a kid seriously as a street vigilante without some special skill or reason to be one. April has her mind powers/kunoichi training and her father was kidnapped starting so we buy why and how she's involved.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm remembering incorrectly but it's not like Casey started out a vigilante on the show. He was just always sniffing around April and when she get dragged into her conflicts just by being there. They did an homage to his and Raph's friendship in other versions but that is forgotten now and he doesn't really act like Casey nor does he have any reason to. I was hoping the introduction of Hun in the show might retroactively give Casey some history that would gave Casey an extra layer he needs but no such luck yet.

If memory serves, as he was introduced, he started as a vigilante. He is concerned about the mutants showing up everywhere, and decides to take up the fight to protect the neighbourhood.

The main idea for me is that regardless of the different motivations he's been given over the years, Casey Jones is just a street smart guy who thinks crime sucks and takes it upon himself to do something about it. He's never really been type to follow rules or regulations or do pretty much most of what you'd have to do to be made an officer of anything.

I read it as Amell coming off as a bit of an ***hole towards someone else's opinion, and I sincerely hope that Stephen handles comments more professionally.

Instead of "You'll get used to it", his statement could have just as easily been "I admit that this is a different concept for the character that I play as. The directors wanted to take him in a different direction for the sequel and.."

Basically a condensed version of the sentence above, but more tactful towards the readers.