Times you felt like your intelligence was insulted in TMNT media?
 

Self-explanatory title, I guess.

In FW:

- Middle aged and old short and skinny or fat mad scientists giving the Turtles a TON of trouble when the Turtles could easily mop the floor with them in a fist fight. Seeing the Turtles getting captured by a toy manufacturer named Weasel was just embarrassing. They're supposed to be the heroes of NYC. They can beat Shredder and Krang easily dozens of times but struggle at beating an old short and out of shape mad scientist that never threw a punch in his life? Not even when I was a kid could I buy that;

- Donatello being outsmarted by a family of hillbillies: ...I rest my case. It speaks for itself, really.

- Shredder talking about Leatherhead beating the Punk Frogs as if it was some impressive feat: Yeah, I don't think so.

- Making the audience believe Scumbug and Anthrax were in a previous FW episode: When I watched Night of the Rogues and saw both being introduced I immediately wondered "wtf did I miss an episode or two?!" And some years later went online to check the episode guide on the old TMNT website... and yeah, I didn't.

- Being told Mondo Gecko was there ALL ALONG: no he ****ing wasn't. BS.

- Humans mistaking the Punk Frogs for the Turtles and the crooked Turtle Gang from episode 6 as well: Even as a 6 year old kid I found that stuff insulting to my intelligence. Made me believe people got dumber after turning 18. :lol:

- Implying that Splinter took on a random student before: Black Belt, White Heart(or wtv the title of the episode was) was overall a pretty good episode, but it's pretty much implied Yoku at some point trained with Splinter and the Turtles. Again, I thought I had missed an episode or two when I first watched this episode as a kid.

- The Turtles not using their weapons much despite being ninjas: I'm not sure if this is the series fault per se or due to backlash from the media and parents back in the day. I guess by 80s standards, the FW series seemed a bit too violent compared to its contemporaries. That being said, the Turtles went back to using their weapons regularly in season 7, so who knows...


In 2k3:

Basically giving us the idea that this series was more mature and closer to Mirage and then having Mike making childish and cringeworthy jokes afterwards or Donatello building the toy of the week. Plus, it's like Mike and Raph got more flanderised as the show went on and the show eventually stopped taking itself so seriously. Other than that, I can't think of much else, really.

Mirage, from what I've read, has not insulted my intelligence yet. The 1st movie never did and I barely remember the other two anymore since it's been ages since I last saw them.

Haven't really watched the Nick show. The Next Mutation? Irrelevant. I don't even bother at getting annoyed at Venus being shoehorned in and the we're not really related!" excuse.

Platinum Dunes? Literally everything about it was an insult to me as a TMNT fan. And to think we were this close to getting a White Shredder and the Turtles being aliens and that the whole thing could be even dumber... *shudders*

What about you? What times have you felt like your intelligence was insulted in TMNT media?

A better question would be, "Times you felt like your intelligence WASN'T insulted in TMNT media."

Because I'd have to go back quite a ways.

Same. You beat me to it.

Every time I watch any episode of Fred Wolf or Nick TMNT, it slaps me in the face. I'm pretty sure Rise would be like smashing my own face into a brick wall.

A series has a thinned-line tight-rope to walk across, doesn't it? It has to find a middle ground of sorts. It can't take everything within itself seriously, and there are times when it should.

When there are rushed deadlines, lack of communication, script-writers that are doing everything from going on vacations to going drinking in order to get some additional ideas to keep a series going, then it is common to get the 'errors of cartoon logic.'

The rubber suits and animatronic head masks for Next Mutation were cool to look at, but I never watched the series. So, I cannot comment much about it.

OT TMNT hardly took itself seriously. TMNT'03 tried to and, I'm sure that the suits for 4Kids head-butted with the producers & directors in multiple ways. TMNT'12 was on-the-air for a station that had tightened its belt on what can be aired since shows like Rocko's Modern Life, Ren & Stimpy, and the like are no longer considered acceptable.

PDMT might have been an attempt to reach out to the fans, and it ended in a train-wreck in just two movies. However, there are 'Dromers here that felt like the TMNT'90 movie series became a train-wreck just after the first movie.

A lot of Fred Wolf episodes, TMNT III, OotS and all of the Next Mutation are pretty good examples of insulting intelligence.

Because I really can't see anyone, even a moron, write down something like: "Then the ninja man brings the unexplained purple crystal to a science man, who turns it into goo and then the ninja tranqs the two unwitting morons with it, which turns them into a pig and rhino because humans totally evolved from those. Also the morons are just fine with this and does whatever the ninja tells them from now on."

And think it can't be improved.

A lot of 1987 episodes from season 2 onwards, TMNT: Secret of the Ooze, The Next Mutation, Nick 2012 and TMNT 2014. Can’t think of any others.

I agree with Prowler about ‘87.

Yeah....that has to be the primary example I would point to.

There's a lot of craziness and out-there sci-fi-ish stuff because it's the Turtles, fine. I can even happily accept the 'normal' mutations like the Turtles and Splinter (esp Yoshi as Splinter), by assuming the ooze affects their own DNA and traces of DNA from other creatures they've been in contact with. Maybe real science doesn't work like that, but for fiction at least the basic components are still accounted for and enough to sate the average viewer with a basic understanding of science.

But Bebop and Rocksteady turning into mutants based on DNA of those animals SOMEHOW being in their ancestry is too far and entirely lacks ANY explanation of how the hell it got there in the first place. For that to work they'd have had to dedicate part of a film to explaining that fact alone, not just jarringly throwing it in there and expecting it not to ruin the immersion by leaving it an absurd mystery. You would think a creationist film writer was behind it and pretending to understand evolution and clearly failed.

Going from that angle it would have only made sense if they physically devolved into something resembling a "missing link" (Big Foot?), looking a bit more ape-like but retaining a human mind. And at that point... don't use Bebop and Rocksteady for it.

As someone who thought the Bayfilms were 'aight'. It doesn't get much worse than how the mutagen was explained to work in OotS.

What makes it so awful is all they had to do was have Stockman say "I spliced in some rhino and warthog DNA" There you go.

It was ssssoooooo stupid. And this is going by standards of totally made up nonsense as the foundation.

Exactly, it's so lazy that they failed to even recognize the simplest explanations that would have taken all of three seconds of dialogue to explain.

You're not wrong... :tlol:

Lol this image seems like it's originally a shot at the Scottish football club Aberdeen :lol:

Certainly the Bay films. Not much else, really. When it's aimed at kids, you can easily forgive plot conveniences & silly humor.

I'm pretty dumb so if anything, my intelligence insults the media.

Poor Little Rich Turtle
 

When the turtles were in a telephone box to call April O'Neil Poor Little Rich Turtle? How about their Turtlecoms?

Ok, but I can see this potentially working in a totally different context and situation. You'd just have to do a new story from scratch.

I'm not going to expect a Silicone Valley technician to know how to navigate the deep woods of the Appalachian Mountains.

Appalachian Mountains
 

I agree, that episode should be set in the Appalachian Mountains.

(I edited my original post down because I thought I was going overboard).


If anything, I could see it being a "Tales of the TMNT" kind of story.

Just a one-off of somekind. Don has to go to Appalachia for some reason. He camps out on the "property" of a local hick family, and gets it in his head that they won't be a problem because he's "smarter than them". They jack his stuff to "teach him a lesson", a chase happens, he almost mistakes a copperhead snake for a tree branch. Eventually he gives in and apologises. He makes friends with one of the family young'uns and offers some basic tech lessons to boost up what little electricity they use, in exchange for survival skill lessons.

(Maybe Leatherhead is there, thinking that he'll adapt well to the environment by proxy of it being his "natural environment" and immediately has trouble adapting, because barely lived in the environment and was raised in a sterile research facility by aliens)

Season 4 in general is considered one of the weekest. Just compare it to the early episodes, when the turtles smash robots in the Technodrome without any big problems, and the problems they have with defeating the toy manufacturer's robots in Michelangelo Toys Around.

So you thought that was a case of brilliant writing.