Quote:
Originally Posted by Spitfire
The second film works perfectly fine for what it was. It crosses no weird lines like the first film did. It stuck with it's established tone and played like a live action version of the cartoon. People's distaste from it seems to mostly come from them expecting it to be like the comic and it still baffles me that 20 years later no ones figured out it wasn't trying to be like the first movie and most importantly anything like the comic. You can blame whoever for why it turned out the way it did but the only people you really have to blame are parents who were campaigning against violence in kids movies. Honestly with all the swearing and fighting the first turtles movie would never be rated PG today, or even a few years after it came out.
I don't hate his ideas but I can see why they never happened. That stuff would have been very very expensive to pull off back then. They didn't have cheap CGI so all the effects would have had to be practical. With the right team it would have looked amazing I'm sure but it'd be a lot cheaper to do it all now. It's impossible to say what audiences reactions to any of this would have been because honestly TMNT was so hot people would have accepted anything.
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As the kids would say, "This." SOTO was in a "damned you do/don't" position, as any sort of sequel would have to deal with the shadow and success of the first movie and the OT. Plus, with the heavy censoring in the 90's, it was a perfect storm. Despite its flaws (the weapons issue, no Casey, the Ninja Rap), SOTO had several interesting concepts in its favor (Tokka/Rahzar, Professor Perry, Paige Turco as April and arguably Super Shredder). I see it as more of an execution problem, and what came out was an enjoyable-but-campy/dopey movie.
(Personally speaking, camp doesn't bother me too much, as per years of viewing the OT and similar fare, and more recently, Lost In Space and the Irwin Allen TV canon. If I can handle a walking carrot and not laugh my brains off, I can handle just about anything. Heh.)
Utrom! Baxter is a good idea, but after witnessing the badass ness of Shredder and the Foot in the first movie, could Baxter and his robots compete with that in a direct sequel?* By the time the third one would debut, enough would have established enough to allow for a different change of pace and he would have been just fine in that.
The Triceratons would be good, except as CyberCubed pointed out, "how do you make their first arc not suck?" I love the characters, yet I found both the Mirage and 4Kids version chores to read and view. Not to mention, after the street fighting to immediately go into space?
As always, it's the "what ifs?" that truly fascinate. If nothing else, you have to admire Laird for his ambition. I can easily imagine such a film, today, especially after the 2003 series.
*Now that we know this, it does give obvious foreshadowing to Shredder in the 2003 series, doesn't it? I often wondered where the pre-existing character-as-Utrom concept came from, and until Laird discloses his notes, we at least have some inkling.