Oroku Nagi, "pointless" or just removed for the kids? - Page 2

*Andrew NDB* · 03-24-2021, 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FrederikWolferson

I feel like we are going in circles...he wasn't heroic anyway. He was running all of organized crime in NY. But thats okay,because he avenged his brother,I guess?

You're again missing the point. It's not him ending up being heroic... it's us understanding on even a very basic level why he's doing what he's doing. If we don't have that, we don't care. Or at least, we care a good deal less.

FrederikWolferson · 03-24-2021, 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

You're again missing the point. It's not him ending up being heroic... it's us understanding on even a very basic level why he's doing what he's doing. If we don't have that, we don't care. Or at least, we care a good deal less.

Which every other version had without Nagi.

*Leo656* · 03-24-2021, 11:05 AM

I am in no way ever more invested emotionally in Lex Luthor as a character because he was childhood friends with Clark or that he "turned Bad" because Superboy accidentally made his hair fall out.

That, to me, is "dumb". He's a Bad Guy because he's trying to kill Superman. That's plenty, that's all a reader "needs" to know about him. Like yeah, the more modern retcon that he was a misunderstood boy-genius whose Daddy beat him helps a little, but I'm still not inclined to care much. The fact that he's The Villain is infinitely more important than the Why of it all.

I mean, like it or not, "boring" or not, all these story outlines begin with "There's a Good Guy, and a Bad Guy, and they fight." The "Why" is always added later. So, yeah... it all really is just "Good Guy does Good Things, Bad Guy does Bad Things". That's how stories work. You can add different "sauce" but those flavors can change. The Bones remain the same, and they really are Just That Simple.

The only constant is "TMNT are Good Guys, Shredder is the Bad Guy". Every other thing can be (and has been) changed, but when you break it down to its absolute purest and most simple form, that's the fundamental bedrock of it. Every other thing is up for grabs and can be tinkered with or moved around, thus those elements become, to a point, extraneous.

Same with Superman and Lex, or Batman and the Joker. The "Why", the "How", isn't the point of the story. The point IS as simple as, "There's a Good Guy and there's a Bad Guy". Those are the only bits that are sacrosanct, the only thing you CAN'T change without breaking the entire story. Those are the only things between the characters that are a fundamental; everything else is garnish and dressing.

As to whether that "dressing" makes the story richer or "better" is an entirely subjective opinion of the individual reading/watching it. To one person, it makes the story "richer", to another it makes it "needlessly cluttered".

Most retellings aim to simplify. In that, it makes sense that characters and elements that are not overwhelmingly a factor in the Present Day story can be excised without much consequence.

I don't especially need to know WHY Krypton blew up. I especially don't need there to be a Bad Guy at fault so that present-day Superman can "get revenge" by punching them; it isn't necessary, it's only necessary that it blew up, the "Why" isn't ultimately important.

Any idea's "elevator pitch" needs to be something you can communicate to another person in two short sentences or less. Anything that doesn't fit within that can safely be excised. It doesn't mean that those extra elements make the story "worse" - again, that's subjective - it just means those elements are not in any way "necessary" to the story being told.

*frank_one* · 03-24-2021, 01:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leo656

in my life I've been "blessed" to know a LOT of bad people. And most of the time they ARE just Bad People. Like yeah, some people had a "tragic" backstory, but not all or even most.

It is possible that there are aspects of their lives you don't know, even if you've known them for 30+ years. Maybe stuff they are not confortable with so they never talk about that. People tend to hide what caused them trouble, anxiety and unhappy periods. Out of pride, shame or fear of being judged. Or just because they don't want to remember that sh*t.

*Leo656* · 03-24-2021, 02:15 PM

I'm not saying that doesn't ever happen. It does.

I don't think it excuses a damn thing, frankly, because all life is about Choices and everyone, on some level, does fundamentally understand Right vs. Wrong. Even if a person had something "bad" happen to them, it in no way excuses the bad things they do Here and Now. They are still completely responsible for their own actions, regardless.

It's also a proven fact that some people simply lack empathy and only care about themselves. There's been people who from birth displayed sociopathic tendencies. Maybe they had a "secret origin" that somehow "pushed" them into being the way they are, but I'm not inclined to think that's the case all or even most of the time.

In the case of some people in my own family, it's not even a "secret origin". Their parents used drugs and alcohol and abused them as kids; now that they're adults, they in turn use drugs and alcohol and abuse their own kids. Is the link clear as day to see? Absolutely. Does it in any way excuse their behavior? Absolutely not. In some ways, it makes them worse, because they ought to know better but they act that way anyway. Especially when they, without irony, will use their own childhood trauma as an excuse to why they're so screwed up, oblivious to the fact that they're perpetuating the cycle. One doesn't need Freud to see what's going on, yet these people still see themselves as merely the "misunderstood hero" of their own story and don't realize that they've since become the villain of someone else's. At times, I've almost fallen victim to that trap myself, but thankfully I've been able to maintain balance because I fundamentally want to be a Good and Moral Person above all else. I had a lot of trauma in my own past, but I refuse to let it define me. And it certainly does not excuse the bad things I've done, that is 100% on Me and Me Alone.

All data is relevant. BUT. All Life Is About Choice. Both of those things are true. Doing things you know are wrong isn't in any way excused because you had a sh*tty childhood. Not for one second.

*frank_one* · 03-24-2021, 02:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leo656

Even if a person had something "bad" happen to them, it in no way excuses the bad things they do Here and Now. They are still completely responsible for their own actions, regardless.

I'm totally with you on this. Knowing what pushed a person toward evil can help you understand why that person acts badly but that doesn't makes him even an inch less evil.

*Leo656* · 03-24-2021, 02:36 PM

Yeah, that's why I'm not sold that Saki's older brother being killed (or even existing) is all that relevant. Saki's still a scumbag when we meet him, and forevermore after that. So something bad happened to him, and he let it warp him. Alright, I still don't care enough to empathize.

To clarify, I'm not saying this as an argument as to why "Nagi shouldn't be in the story." He can be in the story. I'm merely saying, he's not a fundamentally necessary part of the story. The larger story still works just as well without him, and I think by now that's been proven given the fact that most iterations of TMNT excise him completely and still function just fine.

Sometimes Krypton blows up from natural causes, sometimes it's Brainiac or something else. Either works. The only thing that's written in stone is that Krypton Blows Up.

Likewise, Shredder being the Turtles' main villain is what's sacrosanct. The "Why" of it simply is not. He can be a "bad guy" for a hundred different reasons but the story would remain fundamentally the same.

To the thread title's question, I don't even think Nagi is often removed "for the kids". I think he gets removed because it gets the audience through all the Origin Set-Up a few steps faster. I remember as a kid reading the novelization of the 1990 movie, and while the movie has no Nagi the novelization does. And I remember being really confused because they spend an entire extra page worth of backstory on something I knew I did not watch in the movie. And then I realized, "they cut all of that out and the movie was still Exactly The Same." That whole page worth of stuff simply wasn't necessary. Shredder was still The Exact Same Character in both the movie and the novel even though Nagi, in the movie, didn't exist. Point of fact, the novelization never mentioned him again anyway outside of that one scene. It's not like Saki ever pined for his fallen brother or even thought about him again. It was just extra steps. And as a kid I'm like "Yeah, I'm just not gonna regard this, it has nothing to do with the plot." I had to re-read it a few times to get what the heck they were talking about, because at a glance I just assumed they'd spelled Saki's name wrong. Then I'm like "Ohhhh it's his BROTHER... ehhh, this is just padding." It did nothing but make That Version of the story needlessly more complicated. Because it never has any bearing on the plot and Nagi is never mentioned again outside of that. But, go figure, the movie still works Just Fine.

I get why he was still in the novelization because that was obviously based on the early shooting script, which was in turn based directly on Mirage. But cutting him out of the movie itself was a good decision. It wouldn't have made any difference whatsoever on the movie's plot. It just would have been longer.

superstaff · 03-24-2021, 04:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frank_one

Not heroic but more real, three-dimensional. The death of his brother was a trauma that pushed him toward evil. No one is born evil, that's just a stupid assumption of the worst writers.

Well, sociopaths and psychopaths exist.

*Galactus* · 03-24-2021, 05:15 PM

Some villains suit being just pure evil. Largely universe conquering villains like Darkseid and Annihilus but some suit having an understandable triggering event or events that lead them down the path to villainy.

Strange that Mirage never mined that beyond the first issue but you could argue it was at least somewhat explored in a small way in the 2012 series. Tale of the Yokai had Saki as the antagonist but I would argue not irredeemably evil until after he accidentally killed Shen. So you don't necessarily even need Oroku Nagi to even portray Saki as twisted by circumstance but he exists in the canon I don't see why another version of the property wouldn't use. It's unlikely for many of the reasons already stated on this thread but it's possible.

Wentos · 03-24-2021, 10:03 PM

IMO Oroku Nagi is hugely important. Not the character himself obviously, but the circumstances behind his death and what came afterwards.

In the original Mirage comics, the ongoing blood feud isn't between two men, it's between two clans. By the time the turtles are sent to kill the Shredder in issue #1, every participant in the original inciting incident is already dead. Only the feud itself remains, embroiling more and more people in the cycle of violence and reprisal.

I also feel it's important that Yoshi killed Nagi in a fit of rage because it makes the feud much more morally complex. Neither Nagi nor Yoshi are innocent. There's no good guy or bad guy, only a grudge where both sides have a legitimate point. And this extends to Eastman and Laird's TMNT run as a whole. There aren't really any value judgements being made. The turtles aren't portrayed as heroes or role models, they just deal with the circumstances they're put up against. They never go out looking for trouble, trouble always finds them.

Not to say that the turtles are bad guys of course, just that there aren't any easy answers. Half of City at War was the turtles grappling with their role in what was happening and figuring out what the right thing to do was. In the end the turtles brokered peace with the Foot so are the Foot really evil? And if they are, what does that make the turtles for making a truce with them?

Obviously none of this is going to play very well in a cartoon designed to sell toys, so I understand why the edges were sanded off to make it easier to merchandize. But IMO if you lose Nagi you lose a lot of the core complexity of the original Mirage comics.

FrederikWolferson · 03-25-2021, 03:18 PM

Which also makes the Turtles kinda hypocritical when they preach against vengence to other people. Like the whole Leo/Cha Ocho rivalry.

Chet · 04-16-2021, 05:20 AM

I always see it as streamlining. Nagi complicates the story, and if included, is still mostly a brief mention. I could see Nagi being important in a version where we spend a lot of time in Japan with Nagi, Saki, Yoshi and Tang before anyone goes to New York, and that could be cool to explore, but it seems unlikely because we'd just be pushing back the introduction of the main heroes, the turtles.

EDIT: As far as the whole villain motivation/sympathetic discussion... What about people who desire to be powerful leaders of companies and organizations that are good or neutral? Wealth, influence and an upper class lifestyle can be enough to drive someone to become a powerful leader, and whether they are good or evil can simply be a matter of what local organizations were around to "climb the ladder". If you're born into a location where crime or evil ninjas are in control, then you're just using that organization to achieve power and riches instead of something more honorable, and in that case, a person could simply be numb to the wickedness around them and view it as getting their hands dirty to achieve their goals. In that way I do think a character can be evil without being sympathetic, but still be something deeper than cardboard.

*neatoman* · 04-16-2021, 05:52 AM

I did have this idea of making a version including Nagi in a twist sort of way.

The idea is that it starts off the same as Mirage, Nagi and Yoshi being rivals with Saki as the younger brother outside of it. Nagi does eventually decides to beat up Tang Shen, Yoshi still gets enraged and tries to kill Nagi. The difference here is that Saki steps in to help his brother but Yoshi accidentally kills him instead of Nagi. Nagi then goes on to be the Shredder in Saki's place and the rest of the story unfolds more or less the same.

Not sure how many people would be on board with Yoshi being child killer or the Turtles going off to avenge such a person, so maybe there should be the element of them not being aware of the horrible thing he did? It would help highlight the questionable morality of what they're doing at the very least.

superstaff · 04-17-2021, 10:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by neatoman

The idea is that it starts off the same as Mirage, Nagi and Yoshi being rivals with Saki as the younger brother outside of it. Nagi does eventually decides to beat up Tang Shen, Yoshi still gets enraged and tries to kill Nagi. The difference here is that Saki steps in to help his brother but Yoshi accidentally kills him instead of Nagi. Nagi then goes on to be the Shredder in Saki's place and the rest of the story unfolds more or less the same.

Not sure how many people would be on board with Yoshi being child killer or the Turtles going off to avenge such a person, so maybe there should be the element of them not being aware of the horrible thing he did? It would help highlight the questionable morality of what they're doing at the very least.

It's not a bad idea. However, unless you want to paint Splinter in a more morally wrong light, him killing Saki should be portrayed as an unfortunate accident.

03-24-2021, 11:05 AM	#23
Leo656 The Franchise Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: nWo Country Posts: 27,696	I am in no way ever more invested emotionally in Lex Luthor as a character because he was childhood friends with Clark or that he "turned Bad" because Superboy accidentally made his hair fall out. That, to me, is "dumb". He's a Bad Guy because he's trying to kill Superman. That's plenty, that's all a reader "needs" to know about him. Like yeah, the more modern retcon that he was a misunderstood boy-genius whose Daddy beat him helps a little, but I'm still not inclined to care much. The fact that he's The Villain is infinitely more important than the Why of it all. I mean, like it or not, "boring" or not, all these story outlines begin with "There's a Good Guy, and a Bad Guy, and they fight." The "Why" is always added later. So, yeah... it all really is just "Good Guy does Good Things, Bad Guy does Bad Things". That's how stories work. You can add different "sauce" but those flavors can change. The Bones remain the same, and they really are Just That Simple. The only constant is "TMNT are Good Guys, Shredder is the Bad Guy". Every other thing can be (and has been) changed, but when you break it down to its absolute purest and most simple form, that's the fundamental bedrock of it. Every other thing is up for grabs and can be tinkered with or moved around, thus those elements become, to a point, extraneous. Same with Superman and Lex, or Batman and the Joker. The "Why", the "How", isn't the point of the story. The point IS as simple as, "There's a Good Guy and there's a Bad Guy". Those are the only bits that are sacrosanct, the only thing you CAN'T change without breaking the entire story. Those are the only things between the characters that are a fundamental; everything else is garnish and dressing. As to whether that "dressing" makes the story richer or "better" is an entirely subjective opinion of the individual reading/watching it. To one person, it makes the story "richer", to another it makes it "needlessly cluttered". Most retellings aim to simplify. In that, it makes sense that characters and elements that are not overwhelmingly a factor in the Present Day story can be excised without much consequence. I don't especially need to know WHY Krypton blew up. I especially don't need there to be a Bad Guy at fault so that present-day Superman can "get revenge" by punching them; it isn't necessary, it's only necessary that it blew up, the "Why" isn't ultimately important. Any idea's "elevator pitch" needs to be something you can communicate to another person in two short sentences or less. Anything that doesn't fit within that can safely be excised. It doesn't mean that those extra elements make the story "worse" - again, that's subjective - it just means those elements are not in any way "necessary" to the story being told. __________________ "I left some words quite far from here to be a short reminder... I laid them out in stone, in case they need to last forever..." "But hey... I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know." nWo Tech: The Official Thread Poison of the Technodrome Forums https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxr...awnHgDz1ceDcfA https://theroxxshow.blogspot.com/

03-24-2021, 02:15 PM	#25
Leo656 The Franchise Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: nWo Country Posts: 27,696	I'm not saying that doesn't ever happen. It does. I don't think it excuses a damn thing, frankly, because all life is about Choices and everyone, on some level, does fundamentally understand Right vs. Wrong. Even if a person had something "bad" happen to them, it in no way excuses the bad things they do Here and Now. They are still completely responsible for their own actions, regardless. It's also a proven fact that some people simply lack empathy and only care about themselves. There's been people who from birth displayed sociopathic tendencies. Maybe they had a "secret origin" that somehow "pushed" them into being the way they are, but I'm not inclined to think that's the case all or even most of the time. In the case of some people in my own family, it's not even a "secret origin". Their parents used drugs and alcohol and abused them as kids; now that they're adults, they in turn use drugs and alcohol and abuse their own kids. Is the link clear as day to see? Absolutely. Does it in any way excuse their behavior? Absolutely not. In some ways, it makes them worse, because they ought to know better but they act that way anyway. Especially when they, without irony, will use their own childhood trauma as an excuse to why they're so screwed up, oblivious to the fact that they're perpetuating the cycle. One doesn't need Freud to see what's going on, yet these people still see themselves as merely the "misunderstood hero" of their own story and don't realize that they've since become the villain of someone else's. At times, I've almost fallen victim to that trap myself, but thankfully I've been able to maintain balance because I fundamentally want to be a Good and Moral Person above all else. I had a lot of trauma in my own past, but I refuse to let it define me. And it certainly does not excuse the bad things I've done, that is 100% on Me and Me Alone. All data is relevant. BUT. All Life Is About Choice. Both of those things are true. Doing things you know are wrong isn't in any way excused because you had a shtty childhood. Not for one second. __________________ "I left some words quite far from here to be a short reminder... I laid them out in stone, in case they need to last forever..." "But hey... I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know."* nWo Tech: The Official Thread Poison of the Technodrome Forums https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxr...awnHgDz1ceDcfA https://theroxxshow.blogspot.com/

03-24-2021, 02:36 PM	#27
Leo656 The Franchise Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: nWo Country Posts: 27,696	Yeah, that's why I'm not sold that Saki's older brother being killed (or even existing) is all that relevant. Saki's still a scumbag when we meet him, and forevermore after that. So something bad happened to him, and he let it warp him. Alright, I still don't care enough to empathize. To clarify, I'm not saying this as an argument as to why "Nagi shouldn't be in the story." He can be in the story. I'm merely saying, he's not a fundamentally necessary part of the story. The larger story still works just as well without him, and I think by now that's been proven given the fact that most iterations of TMNT excise him completely and still function just fine. Sometimes Krypton blows up from natural causes, sometimes it's Brainiac or something else. Either works. The only thing that's written in stone is that Krypton Blows Up. Likewise, Shredder being the Turtles' main villain is what's sacrosanct. The "Why" of it simply is not. He can be a "bad guy" for a hundred different reasons but the story would remain fundamentally the same. To the thread title's question, I don't even think Nagi is often removed "for the kids". I think he gets removed because it gets the audience through all the Origin Set-Up a few steps faster. I remember as a kid reading the novelization of the 1990 movie, and while the movie has no Nagi the novelization does. And I remember being really confused because they spend an entire extra page worth of backstory on something I knew I did not watch in the movie. And then I realized, "they cut all of that out and the movie was still Exactly The Same." That whole page worth of stuff simply wasn't necessary. Shredder was still The Exact Same Character in both the movie and the novel even though Nagi, in the movie, didn't exist. Point of fact, the novelization never mentioned him again anyway outside of that one scene. It's not like Saki ever pined for his fallen brother or even thought about him again. It was just extra steps. And as a kid I'm like "Yeah, I'm just not gonna regard this, it has nothing to do with the plot." I had to re-read it a few times to get what the heck they were talking about, because at a glance I just assumed they'd spelled Saki's name wrong. Then I'm like "Ohhhh it's his BROTHER... ehhh, this is just padding." It did nothing but make That Version of the story needlessly more complicated. Because it never has any bearing on the plot and Nagi is never mentioned again outside of that. But, go figure, the movie still works Just Fine. I get why he was still in the novelization because that was obviously based on the early shooting script, which was in turn based directly on Mirage. But cutting him out of the movie itself was a good decision. It wouldn't have made any difference whatsoever on the movie's plot. It just would have been longer. __________________ "I left some words quite far from here to be a short reminder... I laid them out in stone, in case they need to last forever..." "But hey... I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know." nWo Tech: The Official Thread Poison of the Technodrome Forums https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxr...awnHgDz1ceDcfA https://theroxxshow.blogspot.com/ Last edited by Leo656; 03-24-2021 at 02:45 PM.

04-16-2021, 05:20 AM	#32
Chet Thug Join Date: Feb 2019 Location: USA Posts: 95	I always see it as streamlining. Nagi complicates the story, and if included, is still mostly a brief mention. I could see Nagi being important in a version where we spend a lot of time in Japan with Nagi, Saki, Yoshi and Tang before anyone goes to New York, and that could be cool to explore, but it seems unlikely because we'd just be pushing back the introduction of the main heroes, the turtles. EDIT: As far as the whole villain motivation/sympathetic discussion... What about people who desire to be powerful leaders of companies and organizations that are good or neutral? Wealth, influence and an upper class lifestyle can be enough to drive someone to become a powerful leader, and whether they are good or evil can simply be a matter of what local organizations were around to "climb the ladder". If you're born into a location where crime or evil ninjas are in control, then you're just using that organization to achieve power and riches instead of something more honorable, and in that case, a person could simply be numb to the wickedness around them and view it as getting their hands dirty to achieve their goals. In that way I do think a character can be evil without being sympathetic, but still be something deeper than cardboard. Last edited by Chet; 04-16-2021 at 05:32 AM.

03-24-2021, 05:15 PM	#29
Galactus Foot Elite Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 2,949	Some villains suit being just pure evil. Largely universe conquering villains like Darkseid and Annihilus but some suit having an understandable triggering event or events that lead them down the path to villainy. Strange that Mirage never mined that beyond the first issue but you could argue it was at least somewhat explored in a small way in the 2012 series. Tale of the Yokai had Saki as the antagonist but I would argue not irredeemably evil until after he accidentally killed Shen. So you don't necessarily even need Oroku Nagi to even portray Saki as twisted by circumstance but he exists in the canon I don't see why another version of the property wouldn't use. It's unlikely for many of the reasons already stated on this thread but it's possible.

03-25-2021, 03:18 PM	#31
FrederikWolferson Foot Soldier Join Date: Feb 2021 Location: Sewers Posts: 199	Which also makes the Turtles kinda hypocritical when they preach against vengence to other people. Like the whole Leo/Cha Ocho rivalry.