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Bay’s Turtles Are What We Thought They Were

In case you missed it, the trailer for the latest iteration of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film franchise has hit the web.

I mean, what were you expecting? It’s Michael Bay x the Ninja Turtles. It was never destined to end well. You remember what he did to the Transformers, right?

Here, I’ll let former Arizona Cardinals head coach Dennis Green elaborate:

I’m not gonna let them off the hook yet, though. Yes, it looks like crap, and Bay’s fingerprints are all over this thing. But I want to get something straight. It’s absurd to suggest Iron Fist could maybe be portrayed by an Asian American guy (like, say Cole Horibe), but it’s okay that the Shredder is actually being played by a white dude?

Okay. That makes a lot of sense.


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Keith Chow

Keith is the editor-in-chief of the pop culture blog The Nerds of Color, a co-editor of the comics anthologies Secret Identities and Shattered, and host of the podcasts Hard NOC Life and Southern Fried Asian. His writing has been featured in the New York Times, NBC News, and SYFY Wire. Vanity Fair calls Keith an "incisive interviewer and chummy conversationalist."

6 thoughts on “Bay’s <i>Turtles</i> Are What We Thought They Were

  • Okay, I get what you are saying about Shredder, but! if he were played by a person of Asian decent, he might be the only Asian actor in the film due to story content, and that seems like a huge representation problem. The only Asian dude is the evil ninja? See what I’m saying?

    Of course the right way to do it would be to make Shredder an evil Asian dude, and also have some other Asian people in the cast.

    Ostensible (depending on story) Splinter may be Asian, but that doesn’t seem quite the same.

    Thoughts?

    FYI, i followed the comics alliance link over to this site, and I love it.

    • Bad guy or not, I don’t think erasing Asians is the answer. And there’s nothing wrong with an Asian bad guy if he’s going to have complex motivations and personality. Though this is a Michael Bay film, so that’s probably too much of an ask too.

      PS, thanks for loving the site!

  • Pingback: Why the Bay of Turtles is Not a Failure | thenerdsofcolor

  • Pingback: NOCs of the Roundtable: Favorite Asian Bad Guys | thenerdsofcolor

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