Grandma Turtle To Appear In TMNT Live-Action Movie

As reported on GammaSquad today, pictures have surfaced that may or may not relate to the upcoming live-action "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie. The jury's still out on whether or not the pictures are real or an elaborate hoax, but if they are, then there's a good chance the next iteration of TMNT will look a little something like this:

It's an interesting take, but how does it stack up against the previous live-action versions?Here's how the turtles appeared twenty years ago (!) in 1990's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie":

Now admittedly, those big ol' tooth-filled, Corey-voiced heads don't really look all that much like actual turtles, but when you're dealing with a franchise built around turtles who are exposed to glowing ooze that turns them into six foot-tall sewer-dwelling ninjas who learn the ancient art of assassination from a rat-man and fight a dude who looks like RoboCop had sex with a buzzsaw factory, realism is probably a tertiary concern at best.

But it might just be because I'm so familiar with the movie and cartoon designs (I was eight years old when that movie came out, and I'm pretty sure I had a cassingle of Vanilla Ice's "Ninja Rap" after all), but something about the new version just turns me off. At first I thought that it was because it looks less friendly and more monstrous, but the more I look at it, the more I realize that it's because with the sharp beak and stretched, leathery skin, the new version--if indeed it is the new version--looks less like the Turtles, and more like the Turtles' Grandma.

Whether or not Grandma Turtle (or as I like to call her, "Botticelli") will be appearing in the new movie is still up in the air, as is the truly horrifying idea of the filmmakers trying to make a realistic version of Krang.

UPDATE: As has been pointed out in the comics, the turtle head seen above is actually a student project from Philadelphia. And considering it was good enough to fool us, we hope it got an A+!