Home Entertainment So how bad is the NINJA TURTLES script then?

So how bad is the NINJA TURTLES script then?

4 min read
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When it was first announced that a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film was on the way, the fans were happy. Then Michael Bay was appointed to spearhead the project, and a little piece of them died inside.

I was still hopeful though. Say what you want about the Bay-man, but he knows how to make a film stylish, even if the script is complete rubbish. And then this script for the now delayed movie appeared, and I officially gave up on the reboot of the Ninja Turtles.The TMNT-NOT-TANT blog recently got its hands on the script for the movie, a move which appears to be legit, due to the fact that Paramount hit them with a lawsuit warning to remove it. Giblets of the scrip still remain however, and they paint a horrible picture of the film to come. So grab a bucket, sit back, and prepare yourself, for the worst.

 

 

SPOILERS IN A HALF-SHELL!

 

 

COWA-SPOILER DUDES!

 

 

WHAT THE SHELL IS UP WITH THESE SPOILERS?

 

 

TURTLE SPOILER POWER!

 

 

Okay, here we go. The film begins in warehouse, which is decked out with all kinds of military personnel, and their commander, Colonel Schrader. Which rhymes with Shredder, in a half-assed way, we guess.

Ok, so it looks like the Turtles will be facing some army enemies, seeing as how Colonel Shredder commands an elite unit of “Foot”- soldiers. Heck, this movie script writing is easy! Ok, let’s cut to the action, lets see some Turtles using ninjutsu to fight the army an –

What, did you really think that a film about ninja turtles would actually be about them? Nope! First, we have to suffer through some tedious romance, as the film gimps the mental vigilante image of Casey Jones, and turns him into a high school slacker who moonlights as a security guard, while his girlfriend, April, tries to convince him to leave town and join her in New York City.

So much like Transformers, instead of seeing what we paid to see, we’ll most likely get bad romance sub-plots instead. Anyway, Casey stumbles his way onto a delivery of extraterrestrial Turtles, resulting in the above piece of script, allowing us to finally see them in all their half-shell glory:

Things get quantum, as we maybe recognize what might be the Turtles possibly. Time to escape then, which calls for some vehicular action, as Casey somehow drives an 18 wheeler with the quartet of alien ass-kickers through a full-on militray pursuit, eluding them in the process.

So, with the Foot left to choke on their dust, some explanations are in order, with the Turtles now telling Casey that they are in fact mutants, and not aliens. Maybe. Sort of. I give up.

OMG, Casey is now an animal expert! Moving on, Casey feels that the lads look to similar to one another, so he hastily colour-codes them to make them more unique, throwing another nostalgia bone to the audience:

With the Foot hot on their shells, Casey decides to drive the Turtles to New York, because…stuff. And to shoehorn more awkward romance in from April, we guess. From that point on, more random stuff from the entire Turtles history appears, from Dimension X, through the ninjas finding out they’re part of an entire race of Turtles, that exist out there in the cosmos.

Oh, and the four of them are also Turtle messiahs or something.

And it just gets worse from there. For instance, take Raphael, the member of the quartet that is most likely to commit murder. In this script, his murderous blood-rage takes a backseat to his new found passion for one-liners:

At this rate, I’d imagine Micheangelo to be a Turtle with verbal diarrhoea that can’t stop spouting marketable catch-phrases, while Donatello invents all kinds of gadgets that would give a marketing department joygasms.

And even I have to admit, this script is just downright awful. I’d like to say that it’s one sole factor here at play that is tearing the beloved franchise a new orifice, but just look at it.

It’s corny romance, tasteless reimagining, characters drifiting too far away from their roots, and a whole generation beng insulted, instead of gently teased, with those constant quips and taunts to the past.

And I don’t get it. Take a look at TMNT, a CGI film from 2007 that is actually pretty damn good. The action is perfect, the comedic elements are well-timed, and for once, I didn’t want to punch the screen whenever Michelangelo appeared.

That’s the Turtles film that I want to see, not some mindless drivel that reads as an aborted Transformers script that has the word Turtles written over Autobot on every page.

How about you guys? Are we being too harsh in our assessment, or did you need a vomit bucket to read through this as well?

Last Updated: August 28, 2012

5 Comments

  1. Llewellyn Crossley

    August 28, 2012 at 15:22

    *sob* I can’t do this. This is horrible! What are they doing to the turtles!? Noooooooooooo!

    Reply

  2. Tracy Benson

    August 28, 2012 at 15:56

    This looks like… just the worst thing ever. Ever. Everrrrrrrr

    Reply

  3. Wayne Bossenger

    August 28, 2012 at 15:56

    I’ll admit that mr michael bay knows how to blow shit up, but for the love… this sounds awful…

    Reply

  4. James Francis

    August 28, 2012 at 16:04

    Purism aside, this doesn’t sound awful. At least, it doesn’t sound any worse than much of the drivel that has been made out there. And it certainly doesn’t sound as bad as the Robocop script.

    Reply

  5. Kervyn Cloete

    August 28, 2012 at 20:20

    What I found amazing about this script was the fact that the alien part of it – the part that got the most vocal response from fans – is actually the part that I thought they handled the best.

    Reply

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