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10.31.2016

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: A 3rd Film Probably Won't Happen

     As a long time fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I both like and dislike the newer Michael Bay produced films.  The 2014 TMNT made a whopping $493 million, while the sequel TMNT 2: Out of the Shadows only grossed $245 million.


     Steve Weintraub at Collider brought up the thoughts on the future of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies from producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller during an interview about their recently produced film Ouija: Origin of Evil.

     Form has some good thoughts on what didn't work.
"We were obviously surprised at the box office results. We loved the movie. We loved making the movie. From our first Super Bowl teaser to everything we launched, we felt so good about our material, and for some reason it did not find the audience that the first movie found.
It’s just one of those things where we feel like we made a great movie. We thought at the time that our release date was great, and we added all these new characters with Bebop and Rocksteady and Krang, and Baxter Stockman had a big role in the movie, and Casey Jones, and for some reason when it came to opening weekend… it just didn’t find an audience. We really don’t know why. 
I think one thing we did learn is you really need to give- you can’t just add characters to a movie and expect that to be what’s fresh. It’s a sequel. You have to give the audience something that’s really new and fresh. Maybe just adding characters from the canon- that wasn’t enough. 
We set out to make a poppy, colorful, fun- add all these fun characters that people had grown up with—and like you said, bring the cartoon to life.
I don’t think there’s [going to be a] Turtles 3, but I wouldn’t say there’s never going to be another Turtles movie."
     I like the idea that they tried to bring the old cartoon to life, but they missed the essential change that the 1990 feature film did- they made it real and meaningful, while maintaining the feel the old cartoon had.  I fully admit I do enjoy the new films, despite the many, many problems contained in them.  As for Out of the Shadows, they really did bring an episode of the 80's cartoon to life.  Everything from the humorous idiocy of Bebop and Rocksteady to the absurd nature of Krang.  It is something worthwhile to watch for those that might have some turtles nostalgia, and they did build off of what the first reboot did.

     It does make me a bit disappointed to know there may not be another film, but then again, there's always a chance they'd get even worse.  I mean you can tell the writers weren't the best, resorting to making everything about action and cheap laughs.  It completely lacks the depth of the 1990 film.  I really think the problem comes down to the writers, Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec just don't quite understand the characters.  It's all superficially written, with many of the characters sounding to similar.  They need some true distinctions between them all, they need more "show, don't tell" to really hammer home the differences.

     If a third film does get into production I can only hope that they find writers worthy of continuing the TMNT legacy.  Maybe they should get Bobby Herbeck and Todd W. Langen from the 1990 movie, or the unbelievably brilliant writers of the made-for-TV 25th Anniversary movie - Turtles Forever - Roy Burdine, Rob David, Matthew Dredk, and Lloyd Goldfine.  That is easily the most well-written Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles product of any sort I can think of.  The team had a fundamental understanding of not just the characters, but how they've evolved and changed over time, and getting them to work on a full film would be the most brilliant move that these producers could take.

     Related posts [ TMNT ]

     Source [ Collider ]

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