If memory serves, Mr. Bay said some months ago that in the new movie, "these Turtles are from an alien race". That's a pretty straightforward comment which I think anyone could reasonably take to mean that the Turtles in the movie Mr. Bay is producing will not be mutated Earth turtles, as in the first twenty-five years of the property's history, but Turtles from an alien race of Turtles. I believe that the script which made its way onto the Internet also made it quite clear that -- at least at some early point in this movie's development -- the Turtles were, in fact, to be alien Turtles from a race of alien Turtles. Taken together, I think that's fairly good evidence of the intention to make the Turtles aliens.
If that was NOT in fact Mr. Bay's intent, he could have easily corrected this misapprehension months ago, instead of letting it go on this long. I suspect in part that might be due to the fact that he probably has a lot more pressing things on his plate, and this was of minor importance. I can't say for sure because I don't know him, and I have nothing to do with this new movie. I am grateful for the clarification, because -- as I pointed out in an earlier blog post -- I thought the idea of making the Turtles aliens was creatively bankrupt.
That's not to say that there might not be a really great story to be told about a race of anthropomorphic alien turtles -- just that it seemed to me to be a totally pointless exercise to change the TMNT origin story in this way.
Now, I suppose one could kind of maybe sort of wiggle out of that original statement by claiming that the ooze which mutated the Turtles and Splinter in the original comics was created by the Utroms, who are aliens, so
well, the ooze was FROM them, see
and THEY are an alien race
and
and
It's either total spin now, or a colossally inept articulation in the original statement, in my opinion. Regardless, I think all TMNT fans should be happy that this issue has finally been clarified.
