The Bay Way (News Post)

It’s no secret among filmmakers that, as successful and hugely popular as the man is, even the mention of the name Michael Bay draws a cautious wince. True, he gave us some of our best action films (The Rock, Bad Boys franchise, Transformers, all of Meatloaf’s good videos), but Mr. Bay has taken the cliché of gunfights, car chases, huge explosions and pretty women and somehow managed to make them boring by the end of his films.

Yawn.

Let’s not even talk about the franchise reboots Mr. Bay has helmed as producer. It takes a lot of work to take already dead horror series like Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13^th and kill them even further. Mr. Bay has managed to perform this feat several times. Given this track record, it seems unlikely that he can be trusted any further with beloved (albeit stagnant) franchises of yesteryear.

Oh, wait. Profit. No it doesn’t.

Reaganomics!

“At the annual Nickelodeon upfront presentation last week, über-producer Michael Bay revealed details for Platinum Dunes’ upcoming live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, including a new origin story for the half-shell heroes that is sure to raise the ire of diehard fans.”

This can’t end well. Franchise reboots are risky enough without Michael Bay (see Hulk), but nobody celebrates when a man as volatile as Michael Bay throws around words like “new origin story”. The only response that can come from it is “What the heck was wrong with the original origin story?”

For those who lived deprived childhoods and aren’t in the know, the Ninja Turtles used to be regular turtles with no discernible martial arts training who lived in the sewers below Manhattan, presumably abandoned pets. In the sewer, they got mixed up with some radioactive ooze and became teenaged mutant turtles. Also, there was a rat once owned by a Japanese martial arts master. I guess he learned ninja skills before he also ended up in the Manhattan sewers and also ran into some ooze. After oozing up, this rat saw fit to train the turtles in the martial arts. Then they were teenage mutant ninja turtles.

Got all that?

That’s a pretty lousy origin story, but it works. It’s what we grew up with, it’s what we know, and dammit it’s what we love. Leave it to Michael Bay to screw that up for us. According to him, the Turtles reboot will see the turtles not as mutated sewer dwellers, but as an alien species. As in space aliens. From space.

It makes me wonder at what point in the already ridiculous history of the Ninja Turtles did Michael Bay say to himself “sewer mutants just won’t work, so let’s do aliens. That’s never been done in movies, right?”

Sigh.

http://popwatch.ew.com/2012/03/19/michael-bay-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-aliens/

http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/michael-bay-changes-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-origins-for-new-movie-.html

Product or Service Review

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