You ever have that feeling of being slapped in the face with a huge ass trout? I mean, really being hit hard to the point where you have to pick the scales off individually. I just had that happen when I heard Nickelodeon purchased the world-wide rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. What the hell are the guys at Nick doing? I don’t know whether to think they’ll treat the property well, or treat it like Doug and view it as an investment to offload later. Isn’t this confusion exactly what I ranted about just a few days ago?
Excuse me while I pick my scruffy-assed chin off the damn floor with a forklift. I seriously don’t know what to think about this. Paramount, Nick’s parent company, is in the movie business and wants to turn out more turtles movies. After the disaster that was TMNT, I’m hoping they don’t keep going down that fucking track. The train went all fugitive long ago and has been rusting away in a pit of despair somewhere.
So what do they plan on doing with the franchise, that they’ve told us that is: a series and a movie. Ok, sounds sane; let’s check who’s working on it. The guys behind The Madagascar Penguins and Kung-Fu Panda are doing the series? Hot damn! Wait, they didn’t work on the movies, just the series based on the movies? Fuck, and here I had my hopes up. How about the movie? Oh, the guys behind 10,000 BC and TMNT…well…shit.
Nick, how about you try something actually worth doing and taking the turtles really back to their roots where it was violent action with a lot of emotion, and not some stupid-ass slapstick joke of a product. They sliced and diced robot foot soldiers in the original series, but did you know they actually killed people in the original comic? I doubt you’ll have the cojones to really go after the roots, so just make sure there’s enough violence. They are the teenage mutant NINJA turtles after all; last I checked, ninjas actually fought and assassinated people.
Take the series, and dump it on the production studio that did Avatar. That would be amazing to see. Don’t fuck this up. Don’t you fucking dare fuck this up! You have a chance to resurrect one of the best franchises in the history of franchises at the cost of $60 million. That’s one huge investment and whatever you plan on doing, you’re going to finally solve my age-old problem with where your company, channels, and whatever else you touch is going. You’re either going dive bomb the company into the grassy knoll with cowboy hat riding a bomb, or you’re going to be sailing away in the clouds like Aang.
I wrote off the franchise years ago as a casualty of the marketing greed that exists in the production studios as they made shitty product after shitty product. They kept trying to force their crap down everyone’s throats and it was met with harsh criticism. Anybody remember Venus de Milo? Exactly! Fuck you, Nickelodeon, for confusing the shit out of me with this deal.