**Caution! This article contains SPOILERS for the 2003 TMNT Cartoon!**
“When you see this movie, kids will believe one day that these turtles do exist, when we’re done with the movie. These turtles are from an alien race, and they’re going to be tough, edgy, funny, and completely loveable.”
Nerd rage abounded. Aliens?!? Well, there goes my childhood! Personally, I normally try to hold my judgement until I see the final product, but this seemed a bit too much even for me. All I kept thinking was, "Oh great...now Bay is going to do for Turtle fans what he did for Transformer fans." The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I mean, screwing up everything people loved about the Transformers is one thing...but this is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles we're talking about here!
Well, thanks to the Major Spoilers Podcast, I have a new theory on Bay's statement, which actually gives me a bit of hope for the new movie. In the podcast, they briefly mentioned the idea that maybe these Ninja Turtles were created by aliens. "These turtles are from an alien race." "From" is a pretty important preposition here. It could possibly mean the Turtles might not be an alien race in and of themselves, but the result of an alien race's technology. That might actually be a very good thing!
Way back in 2003, Fox started airing an updated Ninja Turtles cartoon that actually was a lot closer to the original comic books of the 80's than the original cartoon. I've never read most of those comics, but what little I have, it looks as though there were complete story lines taken straight from the comics and reworked into the new series. A major part of this series was a mysterious company called Techno Cosmic Research Institute, or T.C.R.I. It was from this company that a certain canister of Ooze was lost into the sewers, transforming four turtles and a rat into the TMNT and Splinter. As it turns out, T.C.R.I. was created and ran by little pink brain-like aliens who were stranded on Earth centuries ago and run around in robotic suits designed to help them blend into humanity.
So, in some incarnations of the Ninja Turtles, the titular characters actually were "from an alien race," in that they were created (accidentally or not) by an alien race. The '03 animated series is probably tied with the original movie series as my favorite versions of the Ninja Turtles, so if the new movie decides to follow a similar story line, I would very much approve.
Of course, we are speculating about Michael Bay here...so I better be prepared to be disappointed...
