The co-creator of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Peter Laird has offered some tepid support to Michael Bay, who recently blasphemed by suggesting that in his new version of the franchise, the heroes in a half-shell will be aliens. (Instead of strictly mutants. You know.) “I would actually encourage TMNT fans to swallow the ‘chill pill’ Mr. Bay recently suggested they take, and wait and see what might come out of this seemingly ill-conceived plan,” Laird writes on his blog. “The reason I say it could be a ‘genius’ idea is that — for the first time — someone has come up with a way to have as many freakin’ Turtles as they want. I mean, if the TMNT are actually members of an alien race, there could be a whole PLANET of them!”
Laird, who is no longer in control of TMNT properties, admits that adding a fifth turtle was something he’d considered and played around with a number of times but never quite went for because it would involve noodling with the apparently sacred origin story. “I … remember being adamant that if we were going to agree to the idea of a ‘fifth Turtle’, it would have to be something other than the harebrained ‘there was an extra Turtle in the bowl, etc.’ idea.” Got it? Nothing too harebrained, please, Michael Bay.
