A question

(Note: I wrote another really long answer to the following comment/question, much longer than the HTML rules allow in one comment space, so I'm going to turn it into a separate post. -- PL)

"An American Mar 25, 2012 03:40 PM
Peter, I'm so glad you commented on this. Could you go into detail specifically what it is about making them aliens instead of mutants that matters?"

It seems people are having trouble pinning down exactly what it is about it that changes the essence of who the turtles are, while those in support of it are stating that it doesn't change anything other than possibly the name. (They state that only a couple of the storylines had anything to do with them being mutants, and unlike X-MEN it doesn't play into who they are or the conflicts of the characters.)

Can you express in words what many of us are having trouble doing, why it's more than just a meaningless backstory that's almost never brought up in the series?"

That's a tall order, but I'll see what I can do. I predict, though, that my answer won't be satisfactory, as this whole issue is extremely subjective.


Before I get into it, I have to say that in my opinion, the bit in your question re: the X-Men betrays some fairly specious reasoning. You could make all of the X-Men aliens and you'd have essentially the same set of conflicts, only instead of people hating and fearing them because they're mutants, people would hate and fear them because they're aliens. Bigotry of that nature is very adaptable.


And I have to say that -- at least as I see it -- the Turtles being mutants, and ninjas, and turtles is inextricably woven into the nature of who they are and what their lives are like. (Truth be told, I never really thought the "teenage" part was all that important... thought it helped to make a cool name for the property.) And to claim that the Turtles' backstory is "meaningless" and has been "almost never brought up in the series" is really pretty preposterous.


Okay, now to try to answer your question… 


There is the fact that the origin of the Turtles as set forth in the first issue of the TMNT comic book is the same basic origin story (with a few details changed) which has been used in the comics, both animated series, as the basis of all four movies, and all the toys and merchandising, for close to twenty-eight years. Obviously, this origin story has worked pretty well… so why change it? To use the old saying, "Why fix what ain't broke?"


When Kevin Eastman and I decided to do that first TMNT comic book back in 1983, we knew we had to figure out a way to explain why the characters were teenagers, mutants, ninjas, and turtles. It seemed like a preposterous combination of elements, but we bent our minds to the task and quickly came up with what was, to us, a satisfactory solution. It was quirky and weird and required a healthy measure of suspension of disbelief… but it WORKED. And it worked WELL.


And there was something about it which is not easy to define, something nutty and joyful and funny and possessed of a strange but compelling creative energy. That energy has sustained the idea through its much-longer-than-expected life.


(I also think that a big part of the Turtles' appeal is something that is an understated but key part of their backstory -- much like Spider-Man, for example, they are "accidental heroes". Random elements of fate played a huge part in how they came to be what they are… and there is something about that which is very attractive. I am not sure why.)


It's true that the new owners of the TMNT property can do pretty much whatever they want with it, including mess around with the origin story. They can decree that the TMNT aren't mutants, but aliens -- no, wait, they're robots or androids -- no, they're humans with psychic powers who can project the image of anthropomorphic turtles -- no, they're new creatures created by bioengineering -- no, they're cartoon drawings brought to life by a magic crystal -- no, they're ancient super-evolved prehistoric turtles from Earth's past who have been hiding from humanity in a pocket of fifth-dimensional spacetime -- and so on, and so on…


It may be that changing the origin story -- however that is done, and IF it is done -- might be a good thing for the future of the property. I assume the new owners want to keep and use the name "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" -- it only seems logical -- so if they can come up with a new story which doesn't hew to the way WE did it way back in 1983, but still retains enough of those key elements (ninja, teenage, mutant, etc.) to have the name of the property continue to make sense, and if that new origin story is something that the public responds to more positively that they did to the original, then more power to them. 


As I think I have stated elsewhere, I have never said our ideas for the origin story were necessarily the best. They worked really well, though, and served as the basis for an INCREDIBLY successful property for the better part of three decades as of this writing, but maybe there's something better. Who knows? I guess if we wait, we will see. -- PL

More musings related to "Turtles as members of an alien race"

I meant to do this as a response to the following comment...

"63d11238-744c-11e1-b864-000bcdcb471e Mar 22, 2012 11:26 AM
What a cop out. Whether or not you could legally do something to prevent such a bastardization, Peter, I expected more of you as a godfather and originator of the legacy. Your voice is an important one, and you seem to be saying to all those who've grown up with TMNT, that the Turtles origin and history shouldn't really matter."

... which was posted in the comment section of my first "Musings..." post, but the limit of comment length was bugging me, and rather than break up my comment on this comment into several smaller separate comments, I decided to turn it into a whole new blog post. So what follows is my response to "63d11238-744c-11e1-b864-000bcdcb471e"'s comment. -- PL

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63d11238-744c-11e1-b864-000bcdcb471e, I fail to see where -- in anything I have written about this issue -- I have said anything close to "…the Turtles origin and history shouldn't really matter."  I think it's clear that most people -- and I count myself one of them -- don't have any idea of what the true intentions of the new TMNT film's makers are regarding the origin story of the TMNT in the film. All we have to go one, really, is an off-the-cuff comment by Michael Bay which SEEMS to be somewhat ridiculous. But as I wrote earlier, though my gut feeling is that this is NOT a good direction in which to head, it is POSSIBLE -- if not necessarily LIKELY -- that some incredibly talented creative team might take this goofy idea and turn it into something really good. I am not sanguine about that possibility... but who knows? Not me, and certainly not you.


Let me digress for a moment, 63d11238-744c-11e1-b864-000bcdcb471e. Years ago -- in 1987, I believe it was -- Kevin Eastman and I agreed to sign a contract allowing our TMNT property (at that time only represented by the original TMNT comics, a role-playing game, and a few licensed goodies like miniature metal figures) to be adapted into a Saturday morning animated cartoon series. We knew going in that there would have to be changes made to "soften" the property a bit, to make it more "kid friendly" and palatable to advertisers and parents.


The show that resulted from that process was not exactly what we would have wanted, had we been granted the kind of creative control I was able to have on the later 4Kids TMNT series. I probably shouldn't speak for Kevin, even though I think his feelings about this are similar to mine, so I will just say that I found the series to be too silly, repetitive, and lacking in much to hold my interest. In fact, I stopped watching it after the first few years. But…


… it was wildly successful. It was incredibly well-received by millions of viewers -- people who to this day remember it fondly, and many of whom who would have preferred that the live-action movies as well as the 4Kids animated series had served merely as continuations of that iteration of the TMNT. Who can say why, exactly, that the show was so successful? Was it the power of the central concept of the property? Was it the execution of the show? A combination of both? There are solid arguments to be made for each of those options.


The point I am trying to make here,  63d11238-744c-11e1-b864-000bcdcb471e, is that had I (again, speaking solely for myself and not for Kevin) been making the key creative decisions for that first animated series, it would have been VERY different. Among other things, there would likely have been no moronic henchmen like Bebop and Rocksteady. The Shredder would have been seriously malevolent. April would not have been a reporter and constantly need to be rescued by the Turtles. The Turtles would not have been so ridiculously obsessed with pizza, and the Shredder would not have had as one of his businesses a restaurant called "Ninja Pizza".  There might have been something that sort of looked like Krang, but it would have been an Utrom in a cool robotic exoskeleton. And the show would not have had a joke or gag every five seconds.


And so on.


And it might have worked. Then again…


… it's possible that it would have never reached the heights of popularity that the show as produced DID reach.


Was the show that did make it onto the airwaves back then BETTER than the one which I would have preferred to have seen? I don't know. I strongly suspect that a lot of the devoted fans of that original show would answer that hypothetical question with a resounding "YES!!!" -- something I have seen evidence of many times in such fans' responses to the 4Kids TMNT series, which is, in almost every conceivable way, the show I WANTED to see back in 1987.


I've always felt that even though I have a very solid notion of how to keep the original spirit of the comic book TMNT alive in various media -- something I tried really hard to do with the 4Kids series, especially -- I don't have, and never did have, and never claimed to have, any kind of monopoly on good ideas for what can and should be done with the Turtles. I know from past experience that there can be a wealth of really interesting, fun, creative "takes" on these characters. It's possible that there are many other very cool alternative treatments of the Turtles waiting in the wings.


Is "Turtles as members of an alien race" one such treatment? At this point, I would think not…


… but I am certainly open to being convinced otherwise.


Truth be told, though, it would take a LOT of convincing. -- PL

A few musings on "Turtles as aliens"

I have had several requests from TMNT fans during this past week to comment on the idea of the Turtles being "reimagined" as aliens for the upcoming TMNT movie to be produced by Michael Bay. A few people -- who don't seem to understand that I am no longer in control of the property -- want me to stop this, somehow. Obviously, I can't do that, even if I wanted to.

But I would actually encourage TMNT fans to swallow the "chill pill" Mr. Bay recently suggested they take, and wait and see what might come out of this seemingly ill-conceived plan. It's possible that with enough truly creative brainpower applied to this idea, it might actually work. I'm not saying it's probable, or even somewhat likely… but it IS possible.

However, as I have pondered this further, I have realized that in one way it IS truly a genius notion. Let me explain…

Over the years, I have made no secret of my distaste for what I consider to be the weak, facile, creatively bankrupt idea which can be summed up like this:

"If FOUR Ninja Turtles are good, then FIVE (or more) Ninja Turtles MUST be better!"

It was in large part this brain-dead notion that led to the creation of the execrable "Venus de Milo" character in the blessedly short-lived live action TV series  "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation". And I can't tell you how many times we got mail in the early years of the Turtles from people who thought it was simply an amazing idea to do a "fifth Turtle", and how many times those same people suggested that this fifth Turtle be named "Picasso". And many times, the brilliant idea to explain this extra Turtle was that, instead of there being just four pet shop turtles in that glass bowl in the origin story, there were really FIVE.

Sigh.

I'll admit -- I have played with the idea of more Turtles myself, a few times. There was the character of "Kirby", the "fifth Turtle" that Kevin Eastman and I came up with for one of the several movie ideas which never came to fruition. And I created the "Super Turtles" in Volume 4 of the TMNT comics published by Mirage… and they eventually appeared in one episode of the 4Kids animated TMNT TV series.

But…

… in both those instances, I was careful to make these Turtles not just MORE  of the same, i.e. just extra TMNT. In both of the above cases, the extra Turtles were from other dimensions… and the Super Turtles, especially, were VERY different from the Ninja Turtles. I don't remember all the details of the work we did on that "Kirby the Fifth Turtle" thing, but I DO remember being adamant that if we were going to agree to the idea of a "fifth Turtle", it would have to be something other than the harebrained "there was an extra Turtle in the bowl, etc." idea.

Is that too fine a line? Yeah, maybe… but to my way of thinking, anyway, it is a CLEAR line.

Anyway, to get back to the "TMNT are aliens" thing -- the reason I say it could be a "genius" idea is that -- for the first time -- someone has come up with a way to have as many freakin' Turtles as they want. I mean, if the TMNT are actually members of an alien race, there could be a whole PLANET of them!

Joy. -- PL