[UPDATE] The site that originally posted the set photos has already removed them due to a request by the studio, so it’s a good thing we still have our crayon renditions.
Last week, everyone was pretty upset about the purportedly leaked image of a Michelangelo Halloween costume based on the upcoming Michael Bay Ninja Turtles. Luckily, it seems that the Halloween costume (which is not as great as the ones pictured above) was just a really poor take on a turtle design that is actually pretty OK, and shots of what they should actually look like surfaced today.
The Halloween costume got some of the details right, but it was, overall, a poor representation of what the Turtles will actually look like. Today’s set pictures (which you can currently see for yourself on ComicBookMovie.com), show small models of the Turtles that feature a predictably more “hyper-real” design than past movie Turtles. Honestly, as a long-time Turtle fan, I’m pretty happy with the design if I don’t let nostalgia get in the way.
We don’t feel comfortable posting the leaked pictures here, but we have some artists’ renderings from the Geekosystem team for you, which we chose to do in crayon, because how else would we do it?
Leonardo.
Donatello.
It’s a nice mix between actual realism (as real as anthropomorphic Turtles get, anyway) and the new Nickelodeon show designs that are slightly more realistic, yet cartoony, than the old TV show. They remind me of a better version of the Turtles from Out of the Shadows, which may have been an extremely glitchy game (no, really, I had to climb on top of an invisible subway car to clear a level once), but its Turtle design was pretty decent.
They’ve also clearly been designed with their personalities in mind, as Leonardo features a few pieces of Samurai-inspired armor, Donatello looks like he has some kind of gadget mounted to his back, Raphael is minimalistic and sports no armor aside from having a giant shell, and Michelangelo wears the board shorts and sweatshirt around his waist from the Halloween costume.
Yes, it looks like the costume got that detail right, but with more subdued colors in the real designs, it fits Michelangelo’s personality just fine. Purists may disagree with me, but I don’t mind seeing the personalities of the Turtles show through more in what they wear. Hey, at least it doesn’t look like he’s got a pair of impractically small sunglasses hanging from his neck. Also, they’re not wearing shoes, so anyone who was worried that the Halloween costume’s shoes weren’t just for practicality reasons can rest easy.
It’s incredibly rare that a cheap Halloween costume does justice to the thing it’s supposed to be, so the fact that the real designs are better should be more reassuring than surprising.
Really, though, did anyone think that the Halloween costume was going to be an accurate reflection of what they’d look like? Were there people yelling at their computer monitors, “That looks horrible! You can totally tell it’s just a kid in a suit!” Man, those people are going to be mad when they see that the turtles in the movie are only going to be 8 inches tall. How are they even going to fight a regular size human? Is that why we need four of them to defeat Shredder?
(via ComicBookMovie.com, images via Robert Williams and our own drawings)
- Here’s the Halloween costume that started it all
- A California rec center offers Ninja Turtles themed classes
- Watch Teenage Mutant Koopa Troopas for your mashup needs
