Dave Green in talks to direct TMNT 2

[TrickOrTreater]

Originally Posted by Bry

...gives me a slight bit of hope. I want to hope that Paramount recognizes that this movie was a mess and that they plan going to address that with more than switching directors for appearances' sake. I'd love it if this was just the beginning of a behind-the-scenes "creative differences" thing that slowly turns the next movie into a full reboot with a totally different creative team, but I recognize that's a pipe dream and I'm getting way ahead of myself here.

Bay's back, writers are back. They were rewarded for their crap and are probably going to follow it up with more crap.

Like... you get that this itself is derailing the thread, right? Don't instigate and we'll be fine.

That irony is usually lost.

[jenna]

Originally Posted by Bry

Exactly. And that's also the total wrong perspective to make a movie from, and exactly why this one was such a mess - they were more concerned with cramming in empty fan service than telling a good story. All I want is for them to make a good movie. I don't need Bebop and Rocksteady or pizza or cowabunga or the Party Wagon or the Technodrome. Those things are all fine and well if they compliment a good story, but in this movie they were just a distraction from a bad one.

This is exactly what I was trying to say. You've both just said it much better than I did, so quoting out of respect for the articulate and for emphasis.

[Panda_Kahn_fan]

Originally Posted by TrickOrTreater

What work? He's made one apparently mediocre kids movie.

That's it.

And a few shorts, but my point is that that is still work, and not enough to judge how good the next movie will be. I think declaring it's already a succsess or a disaster is foolish, until we know more.

And yes, we still have Bay and the writers behind this guy, but behind them we have a Paramount who wants to try a new direction- a Paramount that, might've realized that while they did make a profit with this, had thier bottom line hurt by this mess of a movie. This was a movie that did make money, but could've made more had it been at least decent.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by jenna

Hmm. Ok. Will watch this space with an open mind. But I will say this...

I don't know Dave Green, but I do know that found-footage movies are not even remotely comparable to New Hollywood Cinema. Basic fundamental rules for camera work, script, editing, getting the best out of actors are irrelevant in found-footage films, so the quality of his existing work tells us nothing.

The most important factor to me is whether or not he cares about the franchise. Is he a fan? What's his experience of TMNT? Is his main contact with TMNT the OT and if so, will he broaden his horizons and research other incarnations? We need someone who gives a sh!t.

For all I know, he respects the franchise. If that's the case then, Dave, congratulations! Good luck to ya. I look forward to your work.

As for Bebop and Rocksteady...

Leibesman was banging on in another interview about the reason the turtles only had limited screen time was a budgetary one. By introducing more CGI characters they are going to either a) have to massively up the budget in order to give the turtles more exposure; or b) have the turtles as secondary characters again. I could deal with that in the first film because it seemed appropriate to introduce them through the eyes of someone relatable, but now it's the TURTLES' TURN to have central focus. I for one am very sceptical of that happening if there are more CGI characters in the mix.

As someone said above, Bebop and Rocksteady will have to be done very well in order to deliver any kind of threat to the turtles and based on the first film I don't believe PD can do it - just look at the design and character of Splinter - a much more important character and a massive fail. Personally I'd rather see the turtles have more screen time and some character development than see another rehash of OT characters. The film will need to be nothing short of amazing to convince me that Bebop and Rocksteady have any place on the big screen.

Promising fans OT villains at this early stage - before a script even exists - is just more smoke and mirrors. Right now I don't want to hear which characters are in it. I want to hear that they will do their best to make a coherent film with a plot that makes sense. All they're doing is pandering to the market that regards the OT as the source material and boasting about a cinematic spectacle (like the snow chase) as if that somehow exempts the movie from any other minimum standards. "We don't need the villains' plan to make sense - we have an awesome snow chase scene...." It just reeks of arse-about-face plotting, building a plot around a concept or character designed to capitalise on the mass-market, rather than utilising a concept or character that genuinely serves and benefits the plot. That's how plot-holes appear. Going public with this information at this very premature stage sets a worrying precedent for how this film is going to be treated.

Not meaning to sound negative - I know a lot of you really want Bebop and Rocksteady. I just want a film that has its priorities right, ie a decent plot where the turtles are the main characters, and character development.

People shouldn't just want bebop and rocksteady. People should want them done right.

This movie is a sequel to a crapstorm. Of course it has a lot against it from the getgo. I do not envy this guy. It will take a lot to get the bad taste out of people's mouths and make this a good movie and yer somehow make it seem like a sequel to the first one. After all how many movies have we seen where the original was a mindless plot disaster.... And then have a sequel suddenly have more character development and deeper family themes? If anything the sequel will probably develop April further as we go deeper into her lovelife and career and oh yeah, the turtles happen to be there. Remember how transformers went from Sam getting his first car in high school to moving up to college to his big job as an adult? Yeah. Didn't need to see The Saga de Witwicky in a movie that's supposed to be about giant alien robots.

To succeed this has to stay as far away from this one as it possibly can. A kinda/sorta but not really sequel like the Incredible Hulk was to The Hulk is the only way this going to work.

[TrickOrTreater]

Originally Posted by Panda_Kahn_fan

And a few shorts, but my point is that that is still work, and not enough to judge how good the next movie will be. I think declaring it's already a succsess or a disaster is foolish, until we know more.

And yes, we still have Bay and the writers behind this guy, but behind them we have a Paramount who wants to try a new direction- a Paramount that, might've realized that while they did make a profit with this, had thier bottom line hurt by this mess of a movie. This was a movie that did make money, but could've made more had it been at least decent.

So we've got the people partly/mostly who were responsible for the first movie sucking back, Bay/writers, we've got a new, completely inexperienced director, and the same studio that put Bay in charge in the first place is also back...

Why in hell should I bother to be optimistic about this movie?

[Bry]

Originally Posted by TrickOrTreater

Bay's back, writers are back. They were rewarded for their crap and are probably going to follow it up with more crap.

Oh yeah, that's very likely the case. It's really that I want to be hopeful, but they haven't given me a reason to be. Realistically, you're probably right.

Originally Posted by jenna

This is exactly what I was trying to say. You've both just said it much better than I did, so quoting out of respect for the articulate and for emphasis.

Just consider it a tag-team match.

[Panda_Kahn_fan]

Originally Posted by TrickOrTreater

So we've got the people partly/mostly who were responsible for the first movie sucking back, Bay/writers, we've got a new, completely inexperienced director, and the same studio that put Bay in charge in the first place is also back...

Why in hell should I bother to be optimistic about this movie?

The same people who made the last minute changes in the mess of a movie out of fear of fan backlash, who aren't going to be stupid enough to try to get away with alien turtles and white shredder again. And a studio who wants more money out of thier superhero franchise that it earned. I say again, TMNT was a sucsess, but it was supposed to be a bigger succsess. Bay did not strike gold this time.

And you shouldn't be optimistic, but I think it's foolish to be pessimistic at this point, ethier. Paramount wants a new direction, what bay and From and Nemec produced last time was half-baked goods, that could have been more profitible. I don't care how much clout Michel Bay has, if the studio thinks changes will make more money, there will be changes. Yes, the studio will see problems and fix them when $$$ are involved.

And by the way, for the first movie haters; I do think the last movie was a mess. I'll not be defending it on here.

[TrickOrTreater]

Originally Posted by Panda_Kahn_fan

I don't care how much clout Michel Bay has, if the studio thinks changes will make more money, there will be changes.

And so far, their first change is a mediocre one at best.

Hiring a guy with one average, low budget, found footage kids movie to his name.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by Panda_Kahn_fan

The same people who made the last minute changes in the mess of a movie out of fear of fan backlash, who aren't going to be stupid enough to try to get away with alien turtles and white shredder again. And a studio who wants more money out of thier superhero franchise that it earned. I say again, TMNT was a sucsess, but it was supposed to be a bigger succsess. Bay did not strike gold this time.

And you shouldn't be optimistic, but I think it's foolish to be pessimistic at this point, ethier. Paramount wants a new direction, what bay and From and Nemec produced last time was half-baked goods, that could be more profitible. I don't care how much clout Michel Bay has, if the studio thinks changes will make more money, there will be changes.

And by the way, for the first movie haters; I do think the last movie was a mess. I'll not be defending it on here.

I'm more of a mutual don't really care camp unless I hear of a reboot. It can't be that much worse but not that much better either. It doesn't matter if they go for a new direction because being a sequel already limits. If they go too far into some new direction that actually does the franchise justice... Then they'd be better off just making it a whole new movie and not a continuation to this tripe.

[Panda_Kahn_fan]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

I'm more of a mutual don't really care camp unless I hear of a reboot. It can't be that much worse but not that much better either. It doesn't matter if they go for a new direction because being a sequel already limits. If they go too far into some new direction that actually does the franchise justice... Then they'd be better off just making it a whole new movie and not a continuation to this tripe.

Coola, I'd be fine with a reboot, but only if we got something like; the Turtles and shredder are already at war, and Shredder makes rocksteady and Bebop because his foot soldiers have failed so much. No orgin retelling and no retelling of the first meeting with april- let's dive right into Bebop and rocksteady and baxter stockman- and leave the backstory open for those who liked or hated the first movie, to ethier treat it as the movie's backstory, or pretend it doesn't exist.

[Davetello]

Never heard of the bloke, although a quick glance at his wiki page shows that he supports Man City and that he has directed on Emmerdale. The former is a good thing, the latter isn't.

[d_osborn]

It also sounds like the same writing crew is back. I'm personally not holding out a lot of hope for a drastic shift in tone from the first PD TMNT movie.

For such a young, new director, it must be pretty cool being handed the keys to a large project like TMNT. There's a chance he could bring some interesting things.

Hell, his previous film was a found footage, right? Maybe the whole movie will be footage from Donnie's shell cameras.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by Panda_Kahn_fan

Coola, I'd be fine with a reboot, but only if we got something like; the Turtles and shredder are already at war, and Shredder makes rocksteady and Bebop because his foot soldiers have failed so much. No orgin retelling and no retelling of the first meeting with april- let's dive right into Bebop and rocksteady and baxter stockman- and leave the backstory open for those who liked or hated the first movie, to ethier treat it as the movie's backstory, or pretend it doesn't exist.

It could be done. If they could pull off all that jazz in 5 episodes I see no reason why shredder can't already be with krang in the Technodrome right off the bat. And after the tmnt best the foot in the first fight or so in the movie shredder can send bebop and rocksteady out for the rematch... In the same movie.

Honestly it shouldn't take an entire movie to make shredde realize if my enemies are freaks then I need freaks of mine to take them out.

[TigerClaw]

I hope the sequel is bigger, If they put Krang in it, I expect a scene where we see the Technodrome showing up, Maybe some sort of invasion like the one shown on the Nick series.

[Leo656]

I'd curb your expectations until we see an announced budget, Champ.

With this last move they were apparently tweaking the SFX on a video toaster up until the last minute, in the car on the way to deliver the movie to theaters (maybe I'm exaggerating a tiny bit), exhausting every last possible dollar and second they had to spare, and the movie STILL looked like ass in a lot of places. They're gonna have twice as many CGI Hulks to work into the mix if they do Bebop, Rocksteady and Krang... and we still don't know exactly what they're looking to spend on this thing. But it's probably not a LOT more than they spent the first time, which makes me wonder how they think they're going to do twice the work for the same amount of money, with (very likely) the same running time.

They'll probably have SOME of what you're hoping for, but not to the scale you're probably expecting. If anything, it could pretty much be like the second Fantastic Four movie... "Yeah, we kinda don't know how we're gonna do Galactus because we spent all our money on Silver Surfer, so here ya go. Space Locusts." I doubt they're gonna spend the money on a full-blown "Invasion" just yet.

I mean, if it turns out the second movie has a much higher budget and is gonna go another 40 minutes, then I'll recant, but I doubt either of those things will be true.

[TigerClaw]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I'd curb your expectations until we see an announced budget, Champ.

With this last move they were apparently tweaking the SFX on a video toaster up until the last minute, in the car on the way to deliver the movie to theaters (maybe I'm exaggerating a tiny bit), exhausting every last possible dollar and second they had to spare, and the movie STILL looked like ass in a lot of places. They're gonna have twice as many CGI Hulks to work into the mix if they do Bebop, Rocksteady and Krang... and we still don't know exactly what they're looking to spend on this thing. But it's probably not a LOT more than they spent the first time, which makes me wonder how they think they're going to do twice the work for the same amount of money, with (very likely) the same running time.

They'll probably have SOME of what you're hoping for, but not to the scale you're probably expecting. If anything, it could pretty much be like the second Fantastic Four movie... "Yeah, we kinda don't know how we're gonna do Galactus because we spent all our money on Silver Surfer, so here ya go. Space Locusts." I doubt they're gonna spend the money on a full-blown "Invasion" just yet.

I mean, if it turns out the second movie has a much higher budget and is gonna go another 40 minutes, then I'll recant, but I doubt either of those things will be true.

Another thing I'm hoping for is a longer running time, If they are gonna cram more characters in the sequel, It needs to be longer then 102 minutes.

[Lou 500]

Originally Posted by BlueKatanas

He made this:

http://vimeo.com/23464277

I trust him.

I'm having flashbacks to Pizza Face. The spaghetti even sounded like Xever.

[Galactus]

What is somewhat disconcerting is that out of the three writers responsible for TMNT 2014 Evan Daugherty is not reported to be returning, He was seemingly brought in specificaly because he had at least a passing familiarity with the the old show.

Now we're stuck with the two responsible for the Blue Door.

[IndigoErth]

Originally Posted by jenna

Leibesman was banging on in another interview about the reason the turtles only had limited screen time was a budgetary one. By introducing more CGI characters they are going to either a) have to massively up the budget in order to give the turtles more exposure; or b) have the turtles as secondary characters again. I could deal with that in the first film because it seemed appropriate to introduce them through the eyes of someone relatable, but now it's the TURTLES' TURN to have central focus. I for one am very sceptical of that happening if there are more CGI characters in the mix.

Yeah, that's my main concern if they're adding in a whole bunch of characters, esp CGI ones. Don't really want to see the Turtles lacking screen time again, or lacking even more, because new characters have to receive enough to make their addition worth it.



If this guy does direct, I hope for his own sake he's got the backbone to not just be a 'yes man' for the company. Would not put it past that industry to allow a new-ish guy like that take the fall for them it if doesn't go over well, and then what, it becomes "so-in-so has never made a good movie, why should they direct this next thing..." Shame if that happens and someone hasn't had much chance to prove themselves. Stand your ground Mr. Director. Fight back against the tide of insanity. (And hell... lock Bay in a room and just let him scream in there until premier day.)

[TheSkeletonMan939]

Originally Posted by Galactus

What is somewhat disconcerting is that out of the three writers responsible for TMNT 2014 Evan Daugherty is not reported to be returning, He was seemingly brought in specificaly because he had at least a passing familiarity with the the old show.

Now we're stuck with the two responsible for the Blue Door.

I guess the other two writers consider themselves TMNT experts now, and don't need him anymore.