The Michael Bay-produced big-screen revival for the (formerly Teenage and Mutant) Ninja Turtles has had what could charitably be described as some teething troubles in its road to being made, not least of which has been the postponement of the movie until 2014 so that details could be worked out ahead of production. Now, a draft of the movie's original script has apparently been leaked, revealing that the delays are definitely a blessing.The TMNT, not TANT blog - So named in protest at the rumored plan to reboot the Mutant Turtles as aliens who only looked like giant, man-sized turtles - is claiming to have read the script for the troubled movie and has posted a review that reports, in no uncertain terms, "it's worse than anyone could have ever imagined":

The script sucked. Plain and simple. It's not just the "turtle being aliens" thing that made it terrible: the dialog sucked, the staging sucked, changing Casey and April into 18 year old teenaged idiots sucked. All in all, it would make for a very terrible movie, whether or not you liked the turtles in the first place.

One of the review's sticking points was the script's lack of focus on the Turtles themselves, with screen time and attention being given instead to their human sidekick, Casey Jones. "[The script] completely misses the mark in regards to Casey's... everything; instead of being a masked adult scrapper vigilante, he's just some shit-head kid," the review explains, adding that the movie may as well have been called "Teenage Human Unarmed Asshole."

"I cannot appropriate express how terrible this script was, and how it in no way carries on the spirit of the Ninja Turtles," the blog's writer - who goes by the name of "The Writer" - rants. "It's like Michael Bay told the writers, 'Okay, remember Transformers? Do that, but worse.'"

Peter Laird, who co-created the TMNT with Kevin Eastman but, unlike Eastman, isn't connected with the movie in any way, commented on the review by saying,

If it is, in fact, the actual draft that was rejected and caused the production of the next TMNT movie to be pushed back to 2014 because the script was unsatisfactory, then I think all true TMNT fans should be grateful to the new "powers that be" that they did not allow this wretched thing to go any further. It could definitely be taken as a good sign if that is the case. It reminds me of one of the reasons I am glad to not own the property anymore... because I don't have to tear what little hair I have left out while trying to fix junk like this.

It's worth pointing out that the Turtles movie is still, officially, in pre-production and is on schedule to be released in 2014 to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the comic's first appearance. Whether or not the script for the finished movie will be significantly different from the one reviewed by the TANT blog remains to be seen.

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