Live-Action Ninja Turtles Return for 2011

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In geeky movie news this month that makes me feel like a fifth-grader again, TMNT co-creater Peter Laird con­firmed in Vari­ety rumors of another live-action Tur­tles movie planned for 2011.  The announce­ment comes on the heels of TMNT’s 25th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion.  Other than mak­ing me feel old, I’m also damn excited.  Because in Hol­ly­wood, every­thing I loved grow­ing up in the 1980s is sud­denly cool again.  The new Tur­tles film will be pro­duced by Scott Med­nick of Leg­endary Pic­tures, who is cur­rently pro­duc­ing the soon to be released Where The Wild Things Are, another live-action fan­tasy film (which hap­pens to be based on yet another com­pletely awe­some thing from my child­hood).  And if these screen­shots are any indi­ca­tion of what’s in store for the next TMNT, then color me green with excitement.

After the orig­i­nal live-action movie, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles films went from bad to worse, though 2007’s ani­mated TMNT was OK.  Then again, I’m of the opin­ion that the first Tur­tles movie is one of the great­est if under­rated comic book movies of all time—but I may be a lit­tle biased.  I was obsessed with all things Ninja Tur­tles as a kid.  Like really obsessed.  If it had a TMNT logo on it, I owned it.  I could quote the movies word for word (prob­a­bly still can).

My wish­list for the new live-action Tur­tles movie:

  • Darker, grit­tier, edgier Tur­tles truer to the orig­i­nal Mirage comic books.
  • Curse words.  Most TMNT fans have grown up, and so should the movies.
  • Sex (if only to sat­isfy my mor­bid curiosity). 
  • Real­stic CGI that doesn’t look like CGI.
  • Back to basics origins/roots sto­ry­line. (Think Bat­man Begins.)
  • April O’Neil, and any­one other than Paige Turco to play her.
  • Blood, weapons, and graphic violence.
  • Moar Raphael.*

Things I could live without:

  • Shell-tastic tur­tle puns.
  • Any char­ac­ter who exists solely in the Archie comics series.
  • No Venus.
  • Ran­dom kid-who-meets-the-Turtles char­ac­ter (a’la Keno in Turltes II, and later Yoshi in Tur­tles III).
  • Any sto­ry­line involv­ing time travel.
  • A Turtles-themed rap song.
  • A PG rating.
  • Cow­abunga.

The sucky part about all this?  Wait­ing two years.

*Raphael is still the coolest tur­tle, and if you don’t agree with me, I’m not shar­ing my Ninja Tur­tles fruit snacks with you.

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