Look, I'm not going to apologise for Michael Bay - in fact I'm pretty sure he owes me an apology or three - but aren't all these sudden, instant Ninja Turtle fans forgetting a little something? The turtles of the original comic books were (indirectly) created by an alien race, and they also spent a few of their first ten issues in the far reaches of space.
This is the cover of the first Ninja Turtle comic I ever bought (back in 1989 I believe). It's Eastman and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #7 and it features them fighting aliens on the cover. And no, that is NOT Krang! Sigh.
Join me after the jump and we'll sort this shit out...
Now let's spoil some black and white independent comic book stories from the eighties! When Raph, Don, Mike and that other guy begin to investigate their origins they are led to a secret laboratory known as TCRI. In the second TMNT movie the cheap bastards changed it to TGRI: Techno Global Research Institute, but it's original name is Techno COSMIC Research Institute and all the scientists working their are ACTUALLY ALIENS.
Did that blow your mind? Well don't get too excited because I'm going to keep blowing it like crazy.
Each "human" scientist was actually a humanoid robot exoskeleton housing a purple, squishy, tentacled alien in its belly. These aliens are called "utroms". They are not Krang. When the mainstream cartoon did what all mainstream cartoons do, it dumbed down the origin story completely, cherry-picked the utrom design and turned it into Krang from Dimension X: a dumb-fuck Skeletor-esque super villain with no discernible plan. But in the original comics, the utroms weren't even evil... they were just happily working away in secret on Earth, experimenting with dangerous chemicals.
Sure, they kind of had a bit of a run-in with the turtles, but only because they were trying to protect the sanctity of their sweet gig. And what they didn't realise was that their escaped alien cannister had been responsible for bonding with the baby turtles and mutating them into catchphrase spewing teenage freaks. Except they weren't catchphrase spewing freaks in these comics, and they didn't even eat much pizza. They were just badass stealthy ninjas who would stick a sword in your heart for kicks. Even Leonardo. And Leonardo is a pussy.
So the turtles origin is already alien in nature, and what's to say that such experiments couldn't have happened in space instead of New York City. It doesn't seem like that big a stretch to me to twist these elements into a new space-based origin that could possibly finally bring the utroms to the big screen? Because I've personally been wanting to see that crazy shit since I bought issue 7, and have always been disappointed at how bland and grounded the movies to date have been, and how offensively stupid the cartoon was.
And fuck you if you revere that eighties cartoon and want Krang and crap like that in a movie. That's like saying you want Adam West Batman instead of The Dark Knight Rises. And that's something a creepy old backwards uncle would say. You're not a creepy old backwards uncle are you? So shut up about Krang already and let maestro Michael Bay punch some old skool turtle action down the back of your throat.
I trust that clears up everything.
I don't mind an Alien origin for the Turtles at ALL. I *AM* a little scared of a MICHAEL BAY inspired origin for them though...space or no.
ReplyDeleteHere's a secret though...as much as the Transformer movies sucked to guys like me who have been fans all along, they also injected BILLIONS of dollars into the franchise, which allowed them to make all sorts of cool old school toys for fans like myself ALONGSIDE the crappy movie stuff. So it doesn't matter how bad the live action movie is...it's still WIN-WIN!
Well, the stinky thing is that the plan is to use it as a way to keep adding turtles, which I think is kind of boring.
ReplyDeleteSo if the turtles are aliens, does that mean Splinter is out too?