What about it do you like?

 

Being an excellent middle ground between the comics and the '80's cartoon, the action, the character arcs and drama. That's essentially why I like it. That being said, the '80's cartoon and the comics are really fun.

Also, it has the best theme. That's right. I SAID IT!

 

I absolutely love the newer cartoon series, though I'm woefully behind on it (barely started the space arc when I last watched), and the IDW series is phenomenal. Both the best versions of TMNT I've ever read/watched.

I will not speak of the new films. Ugh. (Still not as bad as Turtles in Time, the live action TV show or the music tours, though.)

I've got a friend who collects every TMNT issue and appearance ever made, btw. Total, absolute nerd, and we both got to see Kevin Eastman this weekend at the con! Good times.

 

Okay.

My favorite is the Nick cartoon. That's partially since it was the show got me into the franchise in the first place, but I think it found the sweet spot between the '80s and '03 shows; The humor is extremely funny, but the show can also do drama and character development quite well and go to darker places. The animation is also really good for TV CGI and the fight scenes are some of the most fluid in the franchise.

The '03 cartoon never quite drew me. I think its partially that the animation and voice acting seem stiffer in comparison and the show humor falls like a lead balloon. I also think that the Turtles/Foot Clan feud wasn't quite as good as the levels it's been taking on the Nick show. On the other hand, '03 did some good shows. "The King," "Same as It Never Was," and Turtles Forever do stand out as greats (even if I do think that Nick's "Trans-dimensional Turtles" did Forever one better despite a shorter run time). So, not bad, just not as high on my favorite Turtles' list.

Not sure I agree, but fair enough. (It was cool the way they updated the theme to reflect the status quo of the series, like the status of Shredder).

 

I don't recall the theme, but as I mentioned earlier, the 2003 series was absolutely fantastic imo. I loved how it incorporated elements from the comics, the original cartoon, and the original movie. In a way, it almost seemed to be constructed in a similar vein as Batman: TAS, skillfully merging aspects of campy to dark and emotional. It was brilliantly done.

If I'm not mistaken, at some point, the show received concerns about the arcs being too grim and somber, so they retooled it as that godawful Fast Forward season, wherein it became a typical, non-inspiring generic Saturday morning cartoon show without any depth or purpose other than to hold up a 30 minute time slot. They made an attempt to return to form in the final season, but I don't think I saw it--though I did see the great Turtles Forever special before (?) Nick purchased the franchise.

I haven't seen the Nick version yet, though.

 

I went to Toys R Us a few weeks ago. Saw some old school 80's Turtle toys like the Leonardo with he Military gear. The same one I still have up in my attic somewhere.

I about lost my ****. I really shouldn't go there. Jumping up and down with joy when you're a kid is one thing, doing it when you're 30 is another. You get looks.

Astonishing how the 80's versions of the turtles have piggybacked onto the Nick versions. For every modern piece of merchandise you see, you'll see something related to the 80's versions.

 

There is a lot of nostalgia for the '80s cartoon, the Nick show draws heavily from it, and the '80s Turtles have appeared a couple of times on the Nick show.

 

I mostly like the new Super Shredder. They were foreshadowing this for some time, with him getting a mutagen infusion episodes ago (the explanation is that Baxter Stockman figured out a way to have a precisely controlled mutation -- in contrast to other ones, where anything could happen -- but the process takes a long time). I was a little surprised that it involved fixed blades all over the place; the way the first ones sprouted on his hands in "The Insecta Trifecta" made me wonder if he was going to have retractible blades, like Wolverine.

Ironically, the armor makes sense in the Nick show; one episode had a cockroach outfitted with spy technology mutated into a giant roach cyborg and another had a car mutated into a monster. (The idea is that mutagen needs to be perfected to work outside of Dimension X, and without that, the mutations are unpredictable and could affect anything, although it seems to be possible to "seed" the mutagen with DNA to mutate a subject into a specific animal and, as mentioned before, there's a slow process to have complete control over the final mutation).[/quote]

 

Looks like there won't be a Turtles 3 according to the producer. I didn't see either film, but at least it can be said that TMNT got to big budget films in a reboot 20 something years after the originals.

I'd like to see how the ratings for the Nick cartoon are, as well as toy sales. Turtles killed He-Man in less than a year. Power Rangers killed Turtles. Though Turtles lasted from 87 to 95 I think. My point is we should be getting close, if not already, to another downward spiral for the franchise. Those who were 6 when the show started are almost 10 now, which is usually the big target for toy lines. So those kids should be growing out of it, and it'll be interesting to see if they will be replaced.

 

To bad, I was curious how a third movie would've turned out.

Don't know. There will be a fifth season for sure.

 

The Nick TMNT episode "The Super Shredder" airs today. Nick has also made a trailer for this new story:



While it remains to be seen exactly how long the arc lasts, it looks like Super Shredder could be a problem for the Turtles over multiple episodes. Personally, I hope so. Also interesting to see that Donnie is sporting a high-tech backpack, like his movie counterpart did in the Michael Bay-produced movies.

On a more silly note, they also released a video of Kevin Michael Richardson, who voices Shredder on the Nick show, reading classic Shredder lines in a variety of voices:



It also appears that the current TMNT movie series will not be featuring a third movie. I'm kind of sad to see it go, although I will concede that the series wasn't the greatest representation of the heroes in a half shell.