On turtles in the face of adversity...
I just saw this teaser trailer for the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie.
I kind of want to rant about this. Just a little.
I know. I know. It's the Internet. A place where we have strict "no spoiler" policies but will gladly tell our fellow man our wishes of his children developing flesh eating diseases and the merits of suicide. The last thing we need is another chubby dude with emotional stability problems whining about his favorite childhood thing not being presented to his absolutely perfect standards.
No, the most important thing in the world isn't the fact that The Shredder is being portrayed by William Fitchner, who's character according to IMDB is in fact an alien within an androids body who's armor better represents his physical form.
I shouldn't be concerned that Leonardo is shown there wearing flimsy sticks for armor when his torso is in fact a much harder shell. I have bills to pay. I have pets to feed. Insurance issues. Relationship problems. Jobs, plural. Homework. Books to finish writing. Vitamins to take. Exercises and assorted yoga positions to consider getting myself into. And laundry. Oh my god, guys. Like, soooooo much laundry! AT LEAST two loads. AND sheets! Holy shit, I have more laundry than Jesus Christ himself ever had to deal with! By a lot! I just haven't had time to deal with it for the past three weeks and now I'm paying the price. The quantity of laundry I have to do exceeds that of even what a messiah would have to clean on a Thursday. Holy shit! And yet I'm sitting here, kinda wanting to rant something sarcastic about Leonardo looking more CG than he did in the last Ninja Turtle movie.
"It's kind of impressive. How did they pull that off?"
I have this whole paragraph I want to write in all caps about how they easily could've gotten Donnie Yen to play The Shredder. Like, probably with no difficulty at all. Michael Bay could've just called Donnie Yen and said, "Hey, man. You want to play The Shredder?" And Donnie Yen would've just said, "Yes. That would be fun. When do I start?" "Monday." "Cool."
I even want to find the angriest font I can to post that paragraph in.
But it doesn't matter, really. It honestly doesn't. I mean, if the trailer, the movie, the poor direction, and Michael Bay's involvement are really going to get me upset in any way, all I have to do is not click on those links. Or go to the movie. Like, if this had an impact on my life at all, which it doesn't, it's honestly a simple matter of not giving the bored teenager at my local movie theater ten dollars to watch something that I know I'll be disappointed in. Let alone give her the extra two dollars for 3D. In fact, I can alternatively go right on ahead and stay at home and watch a Ninja Turtle movie that I know I'll enjoy.
I don't even have to buy it! It's right there, via YouTube, on my own blog! And even if I would rather watch it on the couch, without the aid of YouTube, I already own the DVD! If the mood ever strikes me to watch ninja turtles fight evil ninjas and their Japanese, human nemesis, played by an actual Asian guy that isn't William Fitchner, I can do that. I even know that I'll have a good time doing that.
Man-child crisis evaded!
That said, and I'm just throwing this out there, but with Fitchner being an alien android shredder, that means we totally have to put up with the "reveal the alien" scene -if we elect to see the movie- right? And the only suitable alien they can have within an android body is Krang, right? Because if they came out and said William Fitchner was playing Krang, I probably could've gone alone with that option. But when that inevitable scene comes along of the body opening up and there being a totally different alien inside that isn't a talking brain, the Internet is going to go batshit fucking crazy. It doesn't have to. Again, the movie is in no way shape or form going to impact anybody's life is they just don't go see it. But when they do, and that happens, think of how many death threats Michael Bay is going to get.
Honestly, there's nothing to be bummed out over or even really give a second thought. My childhood wasn't murdered in the process of creating this movie. I still have all those wonderful boyhood memories of playing with Ninja Turtle action figures and making sais and nun-chucks (or however you spell it) out of stuff found in the garage. Those wonderful things, that childhood, all happened just the same regardless of any shitty movie that anybody makes. And it should be the furthest thing from my mind.
It's not even something anybody should take seriously in the first place. We want to. But honestly, it's a two hour feature about giant ninja turtles beating people. No matter what the story is, no matter how much more money was spent on that over feeding people in third world nations, no matter what Oscars are going to who over the next few years, this is just another piece of entertainment in a world where we're so saturated with entertainment that we don't have time for more than fractions of it. Just turtles beating people. Sometime with ninja weapons.
I should've spent more time this afternoon regarding my poor flossing habits than I did writing about a trailer for a ninja turtle movie. Or if I had to write about ninja turtle movies today, I probably could've done a much more focused blog entry discussing portrayals of April O'Neil in the different iterations of the franchise, regarding the original live action movie's April as a severely underrated, humanized, strong female lead with all sorts of depth and nuance to her character being tragically replaced by Megan Fox as "the hot chick." And that's still despite having never actually seen the new movie. I just know how women are very typically portrayed in movies associated with Michael Bay. And I think better people than me could very justifiably write a rant that the 1990 April was a stubborn career woman with an antique shop who's life came off as a lonely and sentimentally sad, and how audiences were perfectly happy with this mature interpretation of the character, and in the new movie the character is more likely than not reduced to a hotty a in yellow jacket.
I of course leave that paragraph entirely open to rebuttal.
I could've even written a few good paragraphs about Hummers and you really only see them in Michael Bay movies now. And somehow I find the presence of a Hummer in a 2014 movie offensive. I don't even know why. I just know gas prices are kind of high and don't even want to think about how much it would cost to keep one of those things going. But I'm starting to think that Michael Bay gets them on a discount. I mean, nobody else is buying them.
I do have a lot of good jokes about Michael Bay trying to make a movie that doesn't feature military special forces, Hummers, and shaky cam close ups. We did just see a ninja turtle trailer that featured all three just as much if not more than the title characters. And that's kind of fucked up.
Anyway, I'm sure tons and tons of people are ranting and arguing and making a big noise out of the Ninja Turtle trailer. And I got my couple of jabs in. It's silly, really. Entirely stupid.
I kind of want to rant about this. Just a little.
I know. I know. It's the Internet. A place where we have strict "no spoiler" policies but will gladly tell our fellow man our wishes of his children developing flesh eating diseases and the merits of suicide. The last thing we need is another chubby dude with emotional stability problems whining about his favorite childhood thing not being presented to his absolutely perfect standards.
No, the most important thing in the world isn't the fact that The Shredder is being portrayed by William Fitchner, who's character according to IMDB is in fact an alien within an androids body who's armor better represents his physical form.
I shouldn't be concerned that Leonardo is shown there wearing flimsy sticks for armor when his torso is in fact a much harder shell. I have bills to pay. I have pets to feed. Insurance issues. Relationship problems. Jobs, plural. Homework. Books to finish writing. Vitamins to take. Exercises and assorted yoga positions to consider getting myself into. And laundry. Oh my god, guys. Like, soooooo much laundry! AT LEAST two loads. AND sheets! Holy shit, I have more laundry than Jesus Christ himself ever had to deal with! By a lot! I just haven't had time to deal with it for the past three weeks and now I'm paying the price. The quantity of laundry I have to do exceeds that of even what a messiah would have to clean on a Thursday. Holy shit! And yet I'm sitting here, kinda wanting to rant something sarcastic about Leonardo looking more CG than he did in the last Ninja Turtle movie.
"It's kind of impressive. How did they pull that off?"
I have this whole paragraph I want to write in all caps about how they easily could've gotten Donnie Yen to play The Shredder. Like, probably with no difficulty at all. Michael Bay could've just called Donnie Yen and said, "Hey, man. You want to play The Shredder?" And Donnie Yen would've just said, "Yes. That would be fun. When do I start?" "Monday." "Cool."
I even want to find the angriest font I can to post that paragraph in.
But it doesn't matter, really. It honestly doesn't. I mean, if the trailer, the movie, the poor direction, and Michael Bay's involvement are really going to get me upset in any way, all I have to do is not click on those links. Or go to the movie. Like, if this had an impact on my life at all, which it doesn't, it's honestly a simple matter of not giving the bored teenager at my local movie theater ten dollars to watch something that I know I'll be disappointed in. Let alone give her the extra two dollars for 3D. In fact, I can alternatively go right on ahead and stay at home and watch a Ninja Turtle movie that I know I'll enjoy.
I don't even have to buy it! It's right there, via YouTube, on my own blog! And even if I would rather watch it on the couch, without the aid of YouTube, I already own the DVD! If the mood ever strikes me to watch ninja turtles fight evil ninjas and their Japanese, human nemesis, played by an actual Asian guy that isn't William Fitchner, I can do that. I even know that I'll have a good time doing that.
Man-child crisis evaded!
That said, and I'm just throwing this out there, but with Fitchner being an alien android shredder, that means we totally have to put up with the "reveal the alien" scene -if we elect to see the movie- right? And the only suitable alien they can have within an android body is Krang, right? Because if they came out and said William Fitchner was playing Krang, I probably could've gone alone with that option. But when that inevitable scene comes along of the body opening up and there being a totally different alien inside that isn't a talking brain, the Internet is going to go batshit fucking crazy. It doesn't have to. Again, the movie is in no way shape or form going to impact anybody's life is they just don't go see it. But when they do, and that happens, think of how many death threats Michael Bay is going to get.
Honestly, there's nothing to be bummed out over or even really give a second thought. My childhood wasn't murdered in the process of creating this movie. I still have all those wonderful boyhood memories of playing with Ninja Turtle action figures and making sais and nun-chucks (or however you spell it) out of stuff found in the garage. Those wonderful things, that childhood, all happened just the same regardless of any shitty movie that anybody makes. And it should be the furthest thing from my mind.
It's not even something anybody should take seriously in the first place. We want to. But honestly, it's a two hour feature about giant ninja turtles beating people. No matter what the story is, no matter how much more money was spent on that over feeding people in third world nations, no matter what Oscars are going to who over the next few years, this is just another piece of entertainment in a world where we're so saturated with entertainment that we don't have time for more than fractions of it. Just turtles beating people. Sometime with ninja weapons.
I should've spent more time this afternoon regarding my poor flossing habits than I did writing about a trailer for a ninja turtle movie. Or if I had to write about ninja turtle movies today, I probably could've done a much more focused blog entry discussing portrayals of April O'Neil in the different iterations of the franchise, regarding the original live action movie's April as a severely underrated, humanized, strong female lead with all sorts of depth and nuance to her character being tragically replaced by Megan Fox as "the hot chick." And that's still despite having never actually seen the new movie. I just know how women are very typically portrayed in movies associated with Michael Bay. And I think better people than me could very justifiably write a rant that the 1990 April was a stubborn career woman with an antique shop who's life came off as a lonely and sentimentally sad, and how audiences were perfectly happy with this mature interpretation of the character, and in the new movie the character is more likely than not reduced to a hotty a in yellow jacket.
I of course leave that paragraph entirely open to rebuttal.
I could've even written a few good paragraphs about Hummers and you really only see them in Michael Bay movies now. And somehow I find the presence of a Hummer in a 2014 movie offensive. I don't even know why. I just know gas prices are kind of high and don't even want to think about how much it would cost to keep one of those things going. But I'm starting to think that Michael Bay gets them on a discount. I mean, nobody else is buying them.
I do have a lot of good jokes about Michael Bay trying to make a movie that doesn't feature military special forces, Hummers, and shaky cam close ups. We did just see a ninja turtle trailer that featured all three just as much if not more than the title characters. And that's kind of fucked up.
Anyway, I'm sure tons and tons of people are ranting and arguing and making a big noise out of the Ninja Turtle trailer. And I got my couple of jabs in. It's silly, really. Entirely stupid.
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