Your honest thoughts on David Wise
 

Be 100% honest.

I'm thankful to him for writing some of the best FW series episodes, even though he wasn't the one who wrote the Shredderville episode! But I also think he has a huge ego and tries to claim too much credit for "creating" the Turtles as we know them today, which leads me to think he's a bit arrogant.

What about you?

I have a very negative opinion of him.

It would be one thing if he was simply a terrible writer, then I wouldn't really care about him beyond thinking his work sucks. What makes it worse is that he's a bad writer who thinks rewriting (already sold) scripts to fit unrelated shows is perfectly fine because his audience are children. As a student of creative writing and drama, that really shows how little passion and respect he has for the craft and the audience. What's even worse than that is his willingness to steal credit and conjure up a narrative in which he's essentially the creator of TMNT, despite that being objectively wrong and there being conflicting stories about how the show's alterations came about.

I guess the only positive thing I can say about him is that the episodes of Fred Wolf he wrote are the least boring, even if they are complete nonsense taken from other shows.

I don’t know much about him tbh. I guess I neither like nor dislike him. I enjoyed most of the episodes he wrote for the Fred Wolf series. Him recycling scripts doesn’t bother me, as I never watched any other shows he was involved with. He does come off as a bit arrogant in interviews alright, though maybe he’s just being sarcastic.

He sure loved to recycle scripts. I can see why that would annoy people who watched other shows written by him.

He's fairly pompous, responsible for creating and popularizing pretty much all the things I don't like in TMNT (which isn't necessarily a slight against him... if he didn't, someone else would've) and getting butt-hurt when he doesn't get enough credit.

Also, a pretty staunch liberal.

I don't care about him personally at all.

Enjoy the episodes he wrote though immensely, and I thank him for helping make the 80s tmnt show into the show I love today.

How do you even know that LMAO. I've literally only read things he said in relation TMNT. Have no idea what he thinks about other issues, including that big one, nor do I care much tbh.

He's one of those people who enjoys posting daily "Look at the awful thing Trump just said today!"/"ANY DAY NOW!" kind of stuff over social media.

Tbh that kinda stuff makes you look cool nowadays, so I'm not surprised that celebrities and other people with some notoriety might do that just to get a few more fans.

So... Like MovieBob except he used to have an audience of children who only payed attention because they didn't yet understand his content was crap?

... Scratch that, he's exactly like MovieBob...

Not a Trump supporter by any means, but the criticism of Trump and the effort to "take him down" is rather tired. Elections are starting up next year, so he could very well not be the president around this time in two years.

Then why can't it be left that he's the easily butthurt, egotistical type, rather than throwing the word "liberal" in there as if it's supposed to explain everything. (edit: He sound more like someone who grew up a spoiled brat.)


Personally, I never knew much about him either as I don't tend to look all that far into the people behind this stuff, but going by what neatoman said... wow. Never fails to amaze me how anyone can have zero conscious. (Honestly, based on some similar personality traits you'd think he'd LIKE Trump.)

It's true. Elizabeth Warren could win. :lol:

Well, how did a thread about David Wise turn into politics? best we go back to David Wise, the man himself, and his contributions, whether good or bad, to TMNT. ;)

Jephael
 

Back to David Wise, Jephael interviewed him on 10 December 2010 and published it on his fansite.

http://www.jephael.com/cartoon.shtml

I don't know much about him as a person, but I do know he likes to take credit for TMNT's success. Yet Eastman and Laird did come up with concepts that are introduced in the 1987 cartoon like henchmutants Bebop and Rocksteady and robotic foot soldiers yet what was David Wise original? Dimension X, rock soldiers maybe the Turtle Van? I love what he did as a great innovator no matter what he did create or was simply given. He made gold out of it.

We interviewed him in 2013 for the Shellshocked Podcast. Here.

I sort of cringe when I hear him talk. He gives himself a lot of credit for stuff he probably didn’t decide on or make up.

It must have been embarassing for him to hear the fans remember so much more about his own works than he does.

And what do you think of the Batman TAS episodes he wrote?

I've hardly ever thought about him much at all, but I've rolled my eyes at a few interviews I've read. More recently I've seen him say some downright laughable things on Andrew's FB page, which makes me very glad I've never spoken to him myself. :lol:

To be perfectly honest he seems like a giant tw*t. F*ck 'em.

Sometimes he is a ******* but you gotta admit the Strange Case of Bruce Wayne, Clock King and If your so smart why aren't you rich are excellent episodes of Batman.

It shows what cartoon writers can do when they are no longer limited by strict censors.

Guy's got one hell of an ego. But I imagine you would too if you were called the "Mozart of Cinema" at age 8. Doesn't excuse his massively arrogant persona, though.

His TMNT stuff is fine for what it is, I prefer his Batman episodes though.

mostly been nice to me. but had one odd interaction with him on FB recently that I decided might be time to lead to an unfriending.

was trying to deliver a compliment on a line that I THINK was one of his, and he kind of went on a mini rant. I Think all this political trump stuff is starting to give him derangement syndrome too. he was not a happy person in the last two years if you read some of his and his wifes feeds.

all in all i don't really have anything against him. he did write some of the better episodes.

I've already talked about him at great length over in the Random Thoughts thread so I would rather not repeat my views on him as a person again. If you want my opinion on him go check out that thread.

As a fan of his episodes (as well as other ones) that's kind of harsh, even for you neatoman? :-?

You could say that Andrew...you could say that... :o

Oh no the guy is definitely liberal, he's liberal which today is even worse when you consider how half of the standard left have become more like the far left. There are a couple of people with as extreme left values as him as his Facebook friends.

Typical Facebook posts by David (not criticising here, this is just what he posts):

- Godzilla references

- Photos of what film he's currently watching (he's doing an A-Z for the past few years)

- Photos of his pet dog

- Photos of what he's currently eating

- Posts/quotes comparing Richard Nixon to Donald Trump

Occasionally he posts something to do with Batman or TMNT but that list is mostly what he posts for better or worse.

He was taught by Harlan Ellison and is the same kind of friendly person Ellison was. Make of what what you will. :roll:

Well I talked at you and netoman at great length about him so you're not far off.

Probably had worse myself from him. One wonders if he would act this way if he didn't have fans :)

Wasn't it common among cartoon writers at the time to recycle their own scripts for different cartoons?

Any writer is guilty of it regardless of when or what type of programming.

I recall watching the Ducktales episode Attack of the 50 Foot Webby and recognizing its similairities with Attack of the 50 Foot Irma.

Fred Wolf actually worked on DuckTales first season before producing TMNT.

That episode of Ducktales is season 3.

I don't think any of his episodes are actually well written but if I were to pick out one I personally find annoying, it's Night of the Dark Turtle. I don't actually think it's the worst episode he wrote, Super Irma, Phantom of the Sewers, Enter Mutagen Man, Poor Little Rich Turtle, Farewell Lotus Blossom, Plan Six from Outer Space, Take Me to Your Leader and The Maltese Hamster are all probably way more inane.

I do however find NotDT to be awful in how it's the only Triceraton episode and completely fails to portray them in a compelling way. The Triceratons as they were in Mirage were pretty simple, a warrior race trying to obtain a device so they can win a war, this should not be hard to portray on a kids' show. In fact, it ended up being on two kids' shows. Instead Wise opted to have them be part of a B-plot in which their invasion of earth is halted due to being tricked into thinking dinosaurs already rule the world using animatronics... And the A-plot is "Donnie hits his head and thinks he's Batman".

Batman
 

I guess Night of the Dark Turtle was produced to ride the Batman populairty wave that had began with the 1989 and 1992 films, and continued with the 1992 animated Batman series.

The Triceratons were probably added because they hadn't been there before.

Take Me To Your Leader and The Maltese Hamster are genius.

Voiceover
 

First TMNT episode to begin with a voiceover.

Not my favourite as I'm not a film noir guy but I still admit it's impressive.

Big Cufflink Caper
 

He also wrote the Big Cufflink Caper, which introduced Big Louie and his mob (even if the turtles recognized them).

Good for him. ;)

Godzilla
 

Makes sense when you think of all monster films and 1950's-60's science fiction films the turtles used to watch.

Oh yeah and not just him. All the writers took stories from early horror and sci-fi B movies and updated the plots for the series. It's what made it so fun. What was old once again became new. It's interesting...Wise and co's view of sci-fi was routed in old sci-fi and retro futurism while Eastman and Laird's sci-fi was cyberpunk. Nothing wrong with either, just interesting to me how the differences between them meant different storytelling for sci-fi plots.

Also, the Archie comics went the cyberpunk route with their future issues.