The bottom panel banned in the UK.
So the teaser for the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles project from the IP’s new owners at Nickelodeon (and thus Paramount) just dropped. It’s not too far from what I expect from the guy who ruined Green Hornet to be honest. And because it’s a teaser there isn’t a whole lot to talk about. The internet is going crazy discussing race-swapped April, which is certainly no surprise, I’m not a fan of the Turtles designs…and is Splinter sporting an afro? Is that cultural appropriation since he’s Japanese? Or did they turn Sho Nuff into a rat? See, the problem with teasers is you don’t really learn a lot. We get a look at the style of what’s coming and not much else. We don’t know the quality of the final work but we can at least tell the quality of the adaptation and frankly…I’m not impressed.
However, even I on occasion have to take advantage of what’s hot to form a discussion topic, so how do I do that with barely nothing to go on and little new to add to the conversation? Even if I got this out the day the teaser dropped I’d have been late to the part with my posting schedule even if I’m on time. Instead, I want to use this teaser as a model to discuss a related topic: why Nickelodeon has not done a very good job adapting this franchise, and the adaptation seems to get worse with each incarnation…which is also worth discussing in this article. Let’s start by looking at the teaser and I’ll go over each of the issues. I’ll save April for the end so those of you sick of that topic by now can just scroll to the final paragraph but I do plan to expand a bit on that as related to the idea that Nickelodeon might have sounded good in theory to sell the franchise to, but may not actually be a good idea in practice.
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