TMNT: Family
May. 18th, 2013 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkI've been asking myself why I prefer 2003 TMNT's writing to 2012 TMNT's writing, and I think I've finally hit upon a reason.
It boils down to how the two iterations write about families.
I'm a complete sucker for stories about familial, especially sibling, relationships. In TMNT 2003, in nearly every scene, you can tell that even when they're angry with each other, the Turtles care deeply and fiercely for each other. Whenever they've been separated, their first thought is to find each other. If they think a Turtle is injured/under the weather/suffering somehow, they show great concern and distress. And as much as Raph bullies Mikey, there are a couple of scenes where they work together and fistbump afterwards; as angry as Raph gets generally, he is usually the first to leap to his brothers' aid. Leo's greatest fear is failure--not because he's a perfectionist, but because he shoulders the full responsibility for keeping his brothers safe, and it kills him if he thinks he put his family's lives in jeopardy. The list goes on and on, really. The show might be about mutant turtle heroes who defeat bad guys, but it's also about family and friendship, and the lengths to which the Turtles will go to save one of their own.
The 2012 TMNT, by contrast, doesn't feel the same. The Turtles snark, bully, and make fun of each other a lot more, which is funny, but it comes at the expense of establishing substantial brotherly relationships. There are a few scenes that show the brothers' concern for each other (ep. 14 when Raph panics when Snakeweed knocks Mikey out; ep. 15 when Raph gives Leo a pep talk about Karai while sparring), but those are relatively infrequent, and oftentimes the "humor" crosses into "dude not really funny"/"do they actually care for each other?" territory.
So...yeah.
It boils down to how the two iterations write about families.
I'm a complete sucker for stories about familial, especially sibling, relationships. In TMNT 2003, in nearly every scene, you can tell that even when they're angry with each other, the Turtles care deeply and fiercely for each other. Whenever they've been separated, their first thought is to find each other. If they think a Turtle is injured/under the weather/suffering somehow, they show great concern and distress. And as much as Raph bullies Mikey, there are a couple of scenes where they work together and fistbump afterwards; as angry as Raph gets generally, he is usually the first to leap to his brothers' aid. Leo's greatest fear is failure--not because he's a perfectionist, but because he shoulders the full responsibility for keeping his brothers safe, and it kills him if he thinks he put his family's lives in jeopardy. The list goes on and on, really. The show might be about mutant turtle heroes who defeat bad guys, but it's also about family and friendship, and the lengths to which the Turtles will go to save one of their own.
The 2012 TMNT, by contrast, doesn't feel the same. The Turtles snark, bully, and make fun of each other a lot more, which is funny, but it comes at the expense of establishing substantial brotherly relationships. There are a few scenes that show the brothers' concern for each other (ep. 14 when Raph panics when Snakeweed knocks Mikey out; ep. 15 when Raph gives Leo a pep talk about Karai while sparring), but those are relatively infrequent, and oftentimes the "humor" crosses into "dude not really funny"/"do they actually care for each other?" territory.
So...yeah.
