My problem isn't a new iteration airing, in fact, I am always happy to have more and more flavours of TMNT!
But we lost Rise a few years ago... then we lost Tales and we lost The Last Ronin live action movie just months ago! So I am questioning the why of it.
Rise was overall so good that younger audience could enjoy it, but also the adults could get their dose of seriousness as well, and walked a fine line of silly stuff and serious stuff AND I WANT MORE OF THOSE GOOBERS STILL!
Tales is also funny and good and captivating and teaches you good lessons that a younger audience could understand, heck, my bro is 10 and I will forever praise how much he loves it and actually uses the stuff he learned from it daily! It's a children's show spiced with realistic teenage stuff that he can slowly relate to!
BUT NOT EVERYTHING SHOULD BE FOR KIDS! Not every damn media type should be forced into this child-friendly category, which companies are so fucking obbsessed with!
The Last Ronin is an amazing, heartbreaking story that brought me to tears so many times, and shows us just how not child-friendly TMNT actually is, how serious it can be if you let the creators just be. It deserves a movie of its own, one that I was waiting for honestly.
And if you look around, everything is forced into this child-friendly zone, from books through the entire fucking internet and social media (khm the current Discord restrictions) 'till damn movies, because brain-dead zombies gave their children phones and forgot to actually raise them, and then whine that the kid watched something they shouldn't have.
This is once again a problem I once added a loooong rent to about censorship, and about people excepting companies and government to tell you what can you watch and what kind of media you can consume. This is the main problem.
Look at literally every comicbook superhero story! They were never intended for little children, but since they were popular and cool, slowly, companies started to baby down everything and they made child-friendly versions that are either actually a good addition (like the Lego Batman movie), or that Avengers and Spiderman serieses made for fucking babies, while the original media NOT for kids is facing every. single. fucking. restrain. that you can imagine a story to have.
Look at Jurassic Park/World! That wasn't intended for kids either, but the lack of actually good dinosaur movies made the kids drawn to this amazing action, AND I WAS ONE OF THOSE KIDS! I was 7 when I begged my mum to watch it, with the promise of looking away when they tell me to, and I loved it! I looked away, and after a while, sneaked glances at the not child-friendly scenes because I was a curious idiot. Did I have nightmares sometimes? I absolutely did, but I also found those nightmares cool, because it made me feel like living through my own Jurassic Park stories! But, it was okey, because you cannot keep your kids away from graphic stuff forever.
And then as the Jurassic World era came, you could tell they now had to take in account that adults who have zero idea how to parent and slowly introduce their kids to graphic media will just bring in their 5 year old into the cinema to watch scary dinosaurs. They had to take in account that it became a popular movie AMONG CHILDREN because cool dinosaurs! That's understandable!
Companies then tried to solve this problem with making child-friendly versions of everything. Lego Jurassic World?? Ngl it's a fucking funny parody of it's own, but clearly intended for just children audience. Then look at Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous. That wasn't intended for kids but was forced into the child-friendly category anyways, with nothing too graphic in it.
Now let's circle back to TMNT.
2012 was as child-friendly as it could be, in it's own quirky, sometimes weird way. But I always found it, even as a kid, rather frustrating that the story didn't match up with what we were seeing, because a serious scene happened, but there was absolutely no injury or blood visible, like it should be irl.
Then look at Rise. Even with it's funny, lighthearted and silly episodes, it could be serious, BUT EVEN THEN, the censoring and forcing it into a child-friendly category was still clearly visible, which btw IS NOT THE CREATORS FAULT!!! It's the company forcing it into this category.
They got a pass with the movie, because they could finally explore just how serious they can be, but even then, the most graphic scenes were still censored with the pink-liquid impact scenes and then not showing too much in the actual scenes (Yes I'm talking about the scene when Raph got captured for example).
Then let's look at Mutant Mayhem and Tales. It was meant to be more graphic as well, and even now, they're still walking a fine line of being silly and semi-graphic with the ooze.
And suprise suprise, just right when both Rise and Tales started to get serious, they got cancelled. The Last Ronin, that was supposed to be a really serious story, got cancelled, BUT THEY HAVE MONEY FOR A NEW ITERATION FOR 5 YEAR OLD KIDS???
It's not that I hate they're finally getting an actual child-friendly version. It's that companies are so caught on this fucking censoring serious media away from children that shouldn't even touch the internet yet, that we are loosing several pieces of media forever. And for what???
Lemme tell you, its for the neglect of a few strangers who shouldn't even have children in their care.
And it may sounds like a nobel and logical reason, but I said it before, and will say it again, CENSORSHIP GOES BOTH WAYS! How long will it take till every damn story that isn't full on live-action will be forced to be watchable for even 2 years old Tony you don't even know??? How long will it be till every new iteration of TMNT will be forced into these non-graphic limits to restrict both the story and the characters and the visuals?? How long will it be till Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will completely loose the meaning of the Teenage and the Ninja titles?
This isn't about the children, and was never about them. It's about censorship. If it would be about the children, then the adults and teenagers wouldn't loose media after media so cruelly and out of nowhere. We lost 3 iteration's meant for 12+ audience if not more, for a child-friendly adaptation.
This is why I'm mad. Not at the new version, but at the loss every fan suffered for it, and where this is going.
