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FREE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTAGEN OOZE AND ILLUSTRATED BOOK PDF Running Press | 48 pages | 10 Jul 2014 | Running Press | 9780762455928 | English | Philadelphia, United States FCBD Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Kevin Eastman Normally we try to sugarcoat this sort of thing with an air of neutrality and hope for the best, but Michael Bay has effectively decided he wants to see a film made under the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles banner that actually doesn't have anything to do with teenagers, mutants, or turtles. In one of the most boneheaded "updates" yet made by a "director" or "producer", Michael Bay has decided that in order to capitalize on the believability and lovability of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's brain-children reptiles they should be aliens instead. That's right, Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo are now aliens. However, in so doing, he's casting aside the role of mutation as a minor plotpoint - but is it minor? Nope, it's really not. The Teenage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutagen Ooze and Illustrated Book Ninja Turtles weren't originally a toy franchise or even a cartoon, they were a comic book by Eastman and Laird, and a rather violent and bloody one at that. Instead of Leonardo just sticking his katanas into the ceiling and bicycle kicking a foot soldier, he'd cut the poor guy down a a few easy slices. Mikey Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutagen Ooze and Illustrated Book bash skulls in with his nunchaku. Raph would perforate the guys. Donny would give them a nice bludgeoning. Therefore it made complete sense that the comic book would be refitted for a younger audience with the turtles becoming goofier and in the cartoon the foot soldiers were changed from flesh, blood, and bone humans to robots - because who cares if turtles beat on and blow up robots? However, even as those changes kicked in, Eastman and Laird gave it their blessing because the founding elements of wackiness was already in their creation, the cartoon and spin-off comic books just embellished it. That PG-rated take on the Turtles worked so well that it worked its way through multiple cartoon series, 3 live-action films considerably sillier as they went alongand the recent animated TMNT which was beautiful at points and whose success opened the eyes of studio execs that, once again, the shelled heroes' time had come. I'll say this: when the news broke a few months back that Michael Bay would be producing the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film and not directing, that seemed like a great place for him. Put a guy who loves action behind the film so that it meets his expectations, but leave the film in the hands of an actual director to develop the story, characters, etc. Turns out that joy was a bit premature. Though the cartoons and live-action films got considerably sillier as they went along due to their overuse of the mutagen's ability to transform animals whether they're geckos or people in metal outfits into simultaneously sillier and more badass versions of themselves, it was an element of the TMNT mythology that ultimately worked in its favor. Depending on when you started to pay attention to the TMNT saga and in what format movie, cartoon, video gamethe mutagen, the green substance that originally gave the turtles their human qualities, would have varying effects on the turtles were they to be re-exposed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutagen Ooze and Illustrated Book it. Some versions said they'd change back into normal turtles, others said the mutagen's effects were long-term and they'd continue mutating further, and so forth. The first take on mutagen actually gave Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutagen Ooze and Illustrated Book series a sense of peril: if the turtles could be transformed back into normal turtles, then Shredder, Krang, the Rat King or whoever could easily dispatch them for turtle soup, etc. And because it was consistently established that the turtles were unstoppable if you tried to take them on in their mutant forms, that ability of mutagen to revert them back to normal turtle Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutagen Ooze and Illustrated Book posed their biggest threat, and even gave the turtles an odd sense of heritage. While evolution says our ancestors stepped forth from a primordial ooze we can no longer find, the turtles had a very accessible "primordial" ooze they could seize upon. Their ancestry, or at least the ability to return to it, was readily available in a lab somewhere. So what happens to that idea when you decide the Ninja Turtles are actually aliens who just look like turtles? Both concepts go out the window. So aliens, who've taken the time to learn ninjitsu even though the capacity for interstellar flight suggests they should be able to just cook up a laser and who look a lot like turtles, have decided to come to Earth. That's already ridiculous not that mutant turtles isn'tbut then combine that with the decision to live in the sewers, stumble upon a giant rat sensei maybe another alien race? That's right, we're turtle-aliens who share a tunnel with a giant rat and we've decided to help curb New York's crime rate, not just turn around and go home. Even if their ship has been destroyed and their ability to contact their home planet cut off in the traditional Hollywood trope of no cellphone service who wants to bet this happens? When Splinter was a shamed ninja hiding in New York who stumbled across Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutagen Ooze and Illustrated Book turtles slinking about in green ooze the only leap of faith we had to take was the ooze and its mutational properties. Hell, Splinter's backstory even helped to establish Shredder as a plausible villain and it's what made the first live-action film the only one worth revisiting from time to time. So much of the Ninja Turtles hinged upon that Splinter-relationship and the idea that the Turtles actually felt a part of the city they lived in because they grew up there. Some of the commentary on New York life in the original two live-action films is remarkable, and it goes a long way towards making their "in your face" attitudes believable. By making them wayward tourists, Bay might be giving writers the opportunity to pull a bunch of fish-out-of-water gags which inherently doesn't work because turtles can go on land and water One thing turning the turtles into aliens doesn't immediately mess up is the series attention to Sci-Fi elements. To be fair, the original cartoon series dealt with its share of Sci-Fi elements when it began, rather quickly diving into the story of Krang a brain-looking monster with a robot body and his desire to bring an army of rock soldiers from Dimension X to conquer the world. However, that whole part of the TMNT mythology had context. It wasn't just a Pandora's box Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutagen Ooze and Illustrated Book plot points like making the Ninja Turtles into aliens would be. Shredder made a deal with Krang to harness the powers of Dimension X, Shredder made Krang his gigantic robot body, and everyone would get what they wanted. There was a give and take involved, and a set point and a limitation to it all. Space is vast and limitless, and while arguably an entire "dimension" is too, the writing put limits on it. You can't do that with space: it's limitless; it's expanding ever outward. They fight aliens one movie, who's to say more won't come along? With the mutagen, Shredder, Dimension X, Krang, and the rest, there was a sense of a finite border to the story; it had some boundaries to reel in a concept that, which Michael Bay has just discovered, could lose any realistic grounding with too hard of a push. The original kept its Sci-Fi elements relatable by keeping strong ties to a sense of humanity with Splinter, Shredder, the urban setting, and staging the turtles as recognizable teenage stereotypes. If the turtles are actually aliens and in control of a spaceship that brings them to earth, why would they be immature teenagers? Bay has announced the title will actually be Ninja Turtles, so it's entirely possible the only element left of the original franchise is "Ninja". The film will be directed by Jonathan Liebesman, whose Wrath of the Titans will be in theaters on March 30th. Is it possible for a director to salvage a film whose fundamental idea has been corrupted? Is Liebesman up to the task? On the bright side, whatever happens with the film, it's been rumored that Rocksteady games, the people behind Batman: Arkham City and Batman: Arkham Asylum are taking a break from the DC universe to make a similar game in the world of the Ninja Turtles: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Manhattan Crisis. Even if the film is ruined, that news alone should brighten your day. He's a TV junkie with a penchant for watching the same movie six times in one sitting. If you really want to understand him you need to have grown up on Sgt. Recommend something to him - he'll watch it. Terminator: Genisys improves on the last two installments, for whatever that's worth. Tremors 5: Bloodlines delivers on gore and action, but misses on comedy.

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