Oh, it'll make money.

Bay isn't a bad director, he's just a B-movie guy with a high production. The Rock and Bad Boys were awesome. I'd wish he'd stick to original stories instead of existing high value properties. The new TMNT however isn't about an artistic point of view or that Bay has always had a deep affection for the Turtles... he just wants to get paid. The producers just want to get paid, the studio just wants to get paid, the holder of the rights to TMNT just wants to get paid. With movies like this, it's not about the legit fans of the franchise.

So fuck it, I'm not going to see it... just because I like the Turtles as I remember them. If this was a passion project where a person who legitimately loved the Turtles wanted to tell their original story as they envisioned it, then yeah I'd see it. This new movie is more like a McDonalds or Wallmart or a Best Buy. There's no flavor to it, it's just sterile, corporate, and designed to appeal to the most people possible to make money.

New TMNT movie = Justin Bieber = McDonalds = MTV = everything sterile and lame

It's possible to alter source material and still have a good movie. For example the new Batman films. But that's because a good filmmaker is involved like Christopher Nolan.

But since this involves Michael Bay...it will probably be terrible.

I don't even understand why they'd need to alter the origin story at all.

This would be an interesting SOTW contest...Movies If They Were Done By Michael Bay.

I find something funny in all of this:

You all keep repeating "Micheal Bay" over and over, but he's not directing.

He's just a producer. He barely has anything to do with this movie other than backing it and getting some of the profits, odds are great that he had no creative decisions whatsoever on this one. He's too busy with Transformers and his own passion project he could only get off the ground byy directing that forth Transformers film.

Well speaking for myself...I never said he was directing, I said he was involved in it because I know he's not directing.

And as for him being a producer. Every movie he's been a producer on has either been terrible or meh in my opinion. And a portion of those films are just remakes (Mainly horror films).

Is that a joke? The reason why most adapted movies stink is because of producer's and studios forcing creative input. Executive meddling tends to be one of the worst aspects of film.

Producers tend to make a lot of creative decisions in major films. Even though a producer's job is to get the movie money from the studio (and other sources). But that's generally not what happens.

He's not? Last time I looked at IMDB and Wikipedia he was still attached as a director... either way, Crono is right. A producer has just as much influence on a film as the director. Case in point: Red Tails

The thing is being absolutely faithful can be just as bad. You need someone willing to make changes so the works can work in film.

I have no issues with film adapting (not just reproducing) source material as long as the core spirit of the source material is there (otherwise there's no point, you could have just made something inspired by it). I don't actually like it when they re-create something 100% (I think I give LOTR a pass, but it's a rare situation)

What pisses me off is taking something PURELY for brand recognition and completely revamping everything, not just adapting. The TMNT show's changes make sense for the audience they were going for.

The idea of taking TMNT and turning them into aliens, does not sound like a good creative decision to me. It sounds like an excuse to do a quick and dirty, "new people in a strange place" storyline. It's just lazy. Even the recent comic reboot has a better explanation.

The other thing is ... the movies didn't NEED to be rebooted! The only reason why this movie is getting made is because the 2007 flick was successful. So instead of making a sequel to that pretty well done movie ... they whore it out. Great.

I'm sure the end product is going to be something people equally justify and damn, just like everything else, but the fairly clear lack of respect for the essence of the source material is annoying. By making the turtles aliens, their core motivations for almost everything has been entirely removed. Even if they do a Superman story where the alien tagline is purely to explain their abilities (which is stupid, because we already have about 4 much better explanations) it still is a lazy case of rewriting something for the WORSE. It's not making it better new or innovative. (It's actually very cliche: oh they're aliens!) We'll see what they plan on doing, but this initial piece of information from Michael Bay, no less, the guy who has clearly shown he cares nothing for source material, is not a good sign for people who are fans of the characters.

If they introduce some strong religious overtones, I'll swear Michael Bay got body snatched by Stephen King.

Nope.

It's the guy who did the recent Wrath of the Titans, meaning it will most likely be pretty okay.

Why can't they reboot some shit that was terrible the first time around and give it the Bay treatment? I would have no, repeat NONE a single damn issue if Bay redid -

Robot Jox
Super Mario Brothers
Double Dragon
Street Fighter
Starship Troopers 2 through whatever they ended up at.
Highlander 2

The stuff that really sucked balls. Worst case scenario they still suck, best case scenario it ends up better than the original. As it sits now the bar with a lot of the reboots is set so damn high that unless you create the next box office mega hit than you automatically fail to the nth degree.

Here's the issue with Bay - his original stuff is good, really good. His adaptations of others work? Not so much. Transformers was ok, second one was barely passable, never got around to the third one. Now he's dipping his hands on another classic that was already really, really good so unless he somehow blows the roof off, he'll end up with nothing but hate by the haters.

So?

Here's an idea, don't watch it.

I'm not going to watch it. But I can still state that I think it will be stupid.

The "don't watch it" argument has a major flaw ... any production of the property, even mishandled, will be viewed as weighing the worth of the property itself, NOT the project that was developed.

If someone uses up a brand on senseless projects, it destroys the ability to get another project going based on the property.

So you can argue, "hey then don't see it" ... but the reality is, studios will see this movie's failure as a failure in the BRANDING, not the movie itself. And no one will attempt to make another (proper) installment for a very long time.

Even if the movie is financially successful, if it's largely lampooned by reviewers, professional and not, they will not make another one (it's basic market research, that's people telling them their movie stunk and they wouldn't watch another one)

The sad thing is ... this sort of shit won't stop happening unless people sacrifice some beloved franchises and just refuse to watch them until things change.

There's some exceptions to this, but it's very rare. There are some brands that are just so powerful like Batman, Spider-Man, James Bond, etc that you can't really kill them for long. (But even Batman went away for 8 years)

Then again, it seems today's audiences are so ADD riddled that you can reboot something 6 months later and they're fine with it

OH NO, NOT ACTUAL SENSE!!

Once again...I'm not going to see it. And I can imagine some others in this topic aren't either. That doesn't mean we have to shut up and not state our opinions about how we think it will turn out.