Teenage Mutant Ninja... Shrek?

Since their creation back in 1984 the world has seen many incarnations of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Every generation has THEIR turtles, being only one year older than the turtles myself I have witnessed first hand most of them as I am unashamedly proud of my early years obsession with all things Ninja Turtle and have kept a close eye on the ever evolving revamps they've had over the years.

From the original comic book, the first animated series and live action films of the 80s and early 90s the franchise was never limited to just one style, genre or even age group even from the very start, so it's hardly surprising that it has been constantly rebooted over the years. It's also no great leap to assume that hollywood's latest obsession of rebooting and remaking existing franchises instead of coming up with new material would eventually make it's way to yet another big screen outing for our mean green fighting machines!

So who could possibly take a product of the 80s with a large childhood following that are now conveniently in the key age range that most action blockbusters aim for and make it gritty and dark and well basically do what they did with Transformers and make an 80s cartoon into a movie for grown men... with lots of fighting and presumably some explosions, boobs and maybe a vague resemblence of a plot incase anybody isn't destracted by all the action! Oh I know, lets just hire Michael Bay and he can do everything exactly the same as he did on Transformers... including hiring Megan Fox!

Yup, as soon as that news hit, geeks all around the world thought Megan Fox was going to be the thing that ruined the new Turtles movie... guess what folks, it turns out she probably isn't going to be the worst thing in the movie!

The release of the trailer for the movie started out looking and sounding so much like a trailer for a Transformers movie that you would be forgiven for thinking it was just that until you got far enough into it to see a glimpse of Turtle! Now I know film makers have distinctive styles and it's to be expected to see similarities but come on... when the trailer even sounds like a Transformers movie, that's probably not a good sign! Now don't get me wrong, I actually kind of enjoyed all three Transformers movies, not because they were good films, but simply because they made my inner child and outer geek very happy with all the shiny exciting "real" looking Transformers! plot wise, yeah they pretty much were all stinkers!

Despite the blatant Transformers rip off feeling to the trailer, even that wasn't the nail in the coffin to my excitement for the new movie, I was still getting excited and totally prepared to give it a chance as any true geek and lifelong Turtles fan would! That was until I saw the face of Michaelangelo!

Look at it, that is not our beloved, dorky, pizza eating, skateboard riding, sewer surfing party dude! That's Shrek with a turtle shell!

Now I completely understand they wanted to go darker, more mature, take a slightly different route with the film to make it worth rebooting again, but what the hell were the designers thinking! It barely looks like a Turtle, if it didn't have a shell I really would just think Shrek, Ogre, hell I even thought for a second that it was the most hideous thing i'd seen since I was traumatised by the appearance of Sloth from The Goonies as a child!

The over all appearance of the Turtles looks pretty good, and it's really only the face that seems to let them down, with the brief glimpse of Leonardo immediately before Michaelangelo looking less grotesque but more like the The Dragon Lord (from the short lived live action Turtles TV series of the late 90s) and still not really very Turtle like!

I have to say I am really dissapointed in this discovery and I can honestly say I don't know if it will be possible to sit through an entire film where beloved characters from my childhood have been turned into hideous Shrek like creatures, I think the constant distraction the hideous appearance will cause will just constantly rip me out of the moment and cause myself and others to simply not enjoy the film.

I always feel bad slating the hard and presumably very time consuming work all the animation team have put in to create the Turtles in this film, to map them over the live action actors who wore those huge bulky suits on set - so I will say this, I am absolutely not criticising the quality of the work. From the brief look at the quality in the trailer it sure does look like they have done a great job to blur the lines between reality and CGI and for that I applaud them, but I cannot forgive the horrific disfigurement of my beloved childhood characters!

Have a look at the trailer yourself and let me know what you think about the new appearance of the Turtles and if you agree that Megan Fox might be off the hook if this one absolutely fails at the box office!