Saturday 14 July 2012

The nostalgia boom trilogy: Could Ninja Turtles be a good film ?

Part 1 of a look at the nostalgia boom in cinema:


So with the heroes in a half shell drop kicking their way onto the big screen, let's take a sensible rage-free look at if the film could be good and appraise fans and cinema goers alike.

The pros:

One of the original creators is on board:
The origins of the Teenage mutant ninja turtles draws back to an indie black and white comic book in 80's designed to parody the ninja obsessed media of the time. Kevin Eastman Peter Laird may have disagreed about the tone of the franchise but Eastman is set to be involved and has publicly pledged his support and has even popped out some concept art.

The source material can be suitably adult:
Wacthing the cartoon itself can be considered quite childish and would be probably bore anyone above the age of 13. Though the cartoons and previous films display the franchise can play with adult themes confidently for an family film. Looking at how Batman transitioned for a campy Adam West to a dark gritty Christian Bale shows it can work.


The cons:

Michael Bay lack of interest in source material:
As can be seen with Transformers Bay has very little interest in following the source material as shown in the Transformers film which had very little coverage of the actual robots themselves but focused on the human characters who can be considered very one dimensional and generic.

Mass audience appeal:
To look at how geek properties can sometimes fall on their face let's use Stargate universe as an example, a typical sc-fi franchise with pulpy romanticism and complex plots. The universe franchise however plays out more like a normal drama with affairs, pregnancies and day to day regular issues. Studios want money and the fans make up a small minority of ticket sales so they have to advertise to a wider audience. It's thought every film follows a formula of a previously successful films so sometimes the quirks and selling points of the source material may not translate to the big screen. This is what may hinder the fight scenes. Looking at shooting techniques from Bays film it tends to make the plot hard to follow especially for fight scenes as we only catch glimpse of obscure parts of the shots.  

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