Can We Please Not Have a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Culture War?
I don't ask a lot. I don't really ask anything. Absurdities come and go. I roll with what I can and let the rest fade away. We're similar in that regard, aren't we? We won't agree on everything, but we're adults who ultimately respect each others' tastes and accept — resentfully or not — that in this destabilized, hyper-reductive cinematic climate, even such fare as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot has a place in our culture. It's big enough for all of us! So with this in mind, and in light of the vicious media sparring currently underway among the TMNT establishment, can we please, please just lay down our nunchucks and let this skirmish go?
To wit, can we please not make an international incident out of producer Michael Bay's context-free acknowledgement that "[t]hese turtles are from an alien race, and they are going to be tough, edgy, funny and completely lovable"? Judging by the fan reaction, you'd think that Bay proposed changing the heroes to rabbits or literally stomped on a live turtle in the middle of the Nickelodeon upfronts.
And to that point, can we please no longer spotlight the bottom-feeding likes of Robbie Rist, who provided the voice of Michaelangelo in the original live-action TMNT films and who inveighed against Bay [via TMZ, of course]:
"You probably don't know me but I did some voice work on the first set of movies that you are starting to talk about sodomizing. [...] I know believing in mutated talking turtles is kinda silly to begin with but am I supposed to be led to believe there are ninjas from another planet? The rape of our childhood memories continues ...
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Alicia Witt Amanda Bynes Amanda Detmer Amanda Marcum Amanda Peet Amanda Righetti Amanda Swisten Amber Arbucci
