Michael Bay's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movies Made One Major Change After Backlash

The '90s "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movies turned out to be totally tubular, encapsulating the zest and wackiness of the wildly popular animated series. Despite Turtlemania plateauing at the end of the decade, the Heroes in a Half-Shell were never too far from a pop culture comeback. In the 2010s, news broke that Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes production company would be handling a new Turtles movie, with Bay producing the film, but fans weren't too pleased to hear about one of the proposed changes to the heroes' backstory: making them aliens.

At the 2012 Nickelodeon Upfront (via CNN), Bay took to the stage to reveal more about the project, especially the changes made to the characters. "These turtles are from an alien race," he said, "And they're going to be tough, edgy, funny, and completely loveable." Expectedly, the news went down as well as the Shredder in a magnet store, and fans raged about the change to the lore. Yes, in some versions of the story, the mutagen that transforms the Turtles comes from another dimension, but this alteration to the origin proved to be one step too far for Turtlemaniacs.

Bay responded on his website, urging fans to take a beat and let the film take shape before criticizing it. Ultimately, though, the alien origin was scrapped for 2014's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," but there are leaks of an early version of the script that reveals the Turtles are from Dimension X, and Shredder used the alias of Colonel Schrader.

Despite Michael Bay and Co. rightfully abandoning a creative choice that only angered the fanbase, the Jonathan Liebesman-directed "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" didn't exactly feel like an unexpected pizza delivery on a rainy day. No, the 2014 film secured itself a dreadful 20% critical approval rating and 50% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, with most people criticizing the design of the characters, especially their weird lips and noses that made them look more like Shrek's uglier cousins than humanoid turtles. The film made decent cash, though, securing over $485 million from a $125 million budget.

Among the critics, the 2016 sequel, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows," turned out to be a marginal improvement, though the fans weren't too thrilled with it. In the end, its lackluster haul of $245.6 million from a $135 million budget all but killed the Teenage Mutant "Bayhem" Turtles franchise.

Not too many people look back fondly on these movies, including one of the stars. "Reacher's" Alan Ritchson, who played Raphael, had a nightmare experience working on the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" franchise, claiming that the cast were barred from speaking to the press and didn't receive invites to the premiere. Whichever way you look at it, this is likely one version of the Turtles everyone wants to forget ever exists. Maybe what these movies needed more of was Vanilla Ice's "Ninja Rap," because who doesn't like that song?!