As cool as the original April O’Neil was in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, she tended to get kidnapped and rescued… kind of a lot. But people involved in the Michael Bay movie keep saying that their version of the plucky journalist is way cooler and more badass—just not as much of an action star as she could have been in the first cut, apparently.
In an interview with Hitfix, Fox talked about how April’s a “little less angsty, not darker, but a little less happy-go-lucky, super-sweet damsel in distress” in this new interpretation of the franchise, but points out that some of her action scenes aren’t going to make it to the final version of the film:
A lot of girl power ended up on the cutting room floor, unfortunately. I had a really awesome scene where I was fighting The Foot Clan, but I think they were like, ‘Why would a tiny journalist be able to kick so much ass?’ So that got cut.
Because why wouldn’t she be able to kick ass? After all, it’s not like Hollywood allows for much deviation in body type when casting female roles—and without knocking the women who fit that slender movie star aesthetic, oftentimes your average actress in an action movie is doing things that are difficult or impractical for someone of her size to be doing. And yet, thanks to the magic of the cinema, they’re kicking ass anyway. So why shouldn’t April O’Neil, in a movie that’s about giant talking turtle people, be able to suspend an audience’s disbelief for long enough to punch a Foot clan member in the face or something?
Not that any of this is Megan Fox’s fault, of course. And despite the cuts, she reassures TMNT fans that she still gets a “badass” action moment with Shredder, and that overall O’Neil is still an interesting and engaging character who only works on fluff pieces because people underestimate her skills as an “ambitious journalist.”
“I couldn’t possibly relate to that,” she told Hitfix. Oof. So say we all, Fox.
(via Entertainment Weekly)
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