A few months ago, it was announced that Will Arnett would be taking on the role of Vernon Fenwick, a character many fans will recognize from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. This sparked the discussion concerning what the character choices said about the production. Many took this as one of the first signs that the film would be pulling more content from the 80’s cartoon than from other sources, which gave hope to many and left others bewildered. Well, it turns out that this interpretation of Fenwick might actually be a bit different than what some of us were expecting. Allow Arnett himself to explain how his role in the film differs in this interview from CraveOnline.com:
“He’s a character who’s in the comic and in the Turtles mythology,” Arnett said. “He’s sort of a lesser character. He’s a cameraman who in the comics has a more adversarial relationship with April O’Neil, Megan Fox’s character, but for our purposes, Vernon is still a cameraman who’s helping April, works with her. He’s her cameraman and he’s kind of a solo artist. He does his own thing and as April starts to try to figure out who these vigilantes are, who these turtles are and gets involved in the story, she recruits Vernon. He’s reluctant at first,” Arnett continued. “He just wants to get his paycheck and do the easy job and eventually he comes through and starts helping her and goes along for the ride in helping the turtles vanquish the Shredder.”
So there you have it. Instead of being the creep we all remember, it turns out that the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie might feature a more friendly, helpful version of Vernon Fenwick. Honestly, I can’t really see this as being that much of a bad thing. As long as he is a dynamic camera man who at least tries to look out for himself first, it will probably still feel like Fenwick to most of the fans. If anything, it’s surprising that they haven’t changed much else about his character. After all, Burne Thompson is now Burnadette, so it’s clear that they’re taking a few liberties with this production. As for the movie itself and the kind of action you can expect, Arnett went on to describe it as such:
“The action is very real and feels [like the kind of thing] we’re used to seeing through the Bourne movies, action that feels really real and hard hitting, like ooh, that looks like it hurt type stuff, and we do that.”
There’s a shocker: A movie being produced by Michael Bay is going to feature a lot of action? What a surprise! It’s interesting that he would describe the action as being realistic, as we’re basically talking about CGI animated turtles as opposed to men in suits who actually know how to fight. We’ll see how much of that is actually true when the film comes out, but until then there is still plenty being left up to speculation. What do you think? Is this new role for Vernon Fenwick a good thing or a bad thing? Let us know in the comments below.
