More content so quickly?! WHAT’S GOING ON HERE??? XD

Yeah, I was obviously inspired to mock up the poster that comprises Dusty Plastic HELLside #34 by the recent controversy over Michael Bay’s revelation that the Ninja Turtles in the 2013 movie will be “from an alien race.” I admittedly don’t have a whole lot to say about the matter (ha ha, of course I do), but I will say this — that’s completely stupid. Not because it’s inherently or necessarily stupid, mind you; I’ll grant that it is entirely possible to tell a great story about four alien creatures who touch down from outer space and just happen to know martial arts. But that story won’t be the story of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and there’s absolutely no good reason to go about making such radical changes to their origins.

It just seems to me like another case of Michael Bay getting his hands on a property he doesn’t actually like — like Transformers — and fucking it up in such a way that it appeals to him but loses the heart of what made it appealing to the fans in the first place. Why fuck with it? In his response to the fan outrage over his original statement, Bay said, “Relax, we are including everything that made you become fans in the first place” — but I think that’s kind of a bullshit statement. I mean, I guess that his Transformers movies had nearly “everything that made me become a fan in the first place,” but they also had a lot of painfully unfunny “humor” and unnecessary bullshit and hard-to-follow battles between jagged shrapnel things that just made the movies completely loathsome to me. (And actually, the part about the movies having everything that made me a fan in the first place isn’t true. The cartoons also had interesting and likeable characters among both the heroes and the villain, but I didn’t give a shit about the underdeveloped robots in the movies and Sam Witwicky was an irritating jerk. But the movies did have transforming robots, and those were among the things that made me a fan of the property, so… yeah.)

But it’s probably more likely that Michael Bay just doesn’t understand — and perhaps can’t understand — what actually makes people connect with properties on a deeper level, which is why his movies are all shallow ‘splosionfests that fail to inspire genuine excitement and devotion even among those who would defend them. This is pretty evident in his comment that, by making the Turtles aliens, they’re somehow “building a richer world.” Right, because the TMNT universe was painfully lacking in richness. 🙄

As far as the graphic goes, the “Turtles” are an alien I picked up from Dollar Tree a few months ago, with a belt and plastron from a 2K3 TMNT figure from Playmates. (All of the Turtles in the image are played by the same toy; I just took several photos of it with the arms posed differently.) The background is a random background I got from googling “space texture.” And the text at the top of the image is also a haiku! I love haiku.

Aaaand that does it for this entry. Don’t forget about our “Todd & The Book of Pure Evil” DVD giveaway — the deadline to enter is Monday — and stick with us. There’s more content on the way!