New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie Has Been Delayed To Fix "Script Issues"

Over the weekend it was announced that the New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie's release will be delayed due to script issues that need to be rewritten. The movie simply called Ninja Turtles was slated to be released December 2013, and now the tentative release date is May 2014. 

When news broke that Michael Bay was making a remake of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and that this reboot was going to have one "small" difference: the turtles were going to be aliens now instead of mutants, TMNT fans were in an uproar over the change. Fans weren't the only wons upset over the drastic changes, Peter Laird who is co-creator of the Turtles also voiced his disdain for the reboot. Hardly distraught over the backlash from fans, Bay basically told everyone that he could do whatever he wanted and that we needed to calm down over the changes. The director of the film, Jonathan Liebesman, reminded fans that the alien premise isn't such a far stretch from the original story since the ooze that mutated the turtles originally came from space. While it's nice that Liebesman has tried to quell our fears of the new movie totally sucking, the director needs to realize that having the ooze come from space is one thing, but having the turtles come from space is something entirely different. If the turtles are from outer space, it's implied that there is an entire planet of turtles, Not to mention that we can't even call them turtles anymore... because now they are aliens. That doesn't sound like just a small change to their backgrounds. It kind of sounds like this movie is going to be Transformers 4. Making the Turtles come from outer space seems so foreign, and it doesn't blend well with their already established characters and personalities. It also raises a lot of questions that as a fan I can't help but wonder: Will Splinter also be from this planet? How do they learn martial arts? Why do they come to Earth? Now instead of having four unique, lovable characters, we have an entire planet full of large, walking, talking turtle-like creatures and that doesn't sound like a movie that I want to see. So when they announced this past weekend that the release date of the movie has been pushed back a year it seemed like one of the best things they could've done for this movie (just short of somehow getting rid of Michael Bay). Don't rush the script, fix it up and make it work properly. Although the announcement that they will be rewriting the script doesn't really mention if they will be fixing the Turtle's origins, as a fan, I can only hope that they do the right thing.