Stephen Amell Says Casey Jones Origin Will Be Altered

Don’t panic, but our newest Casey Jones recently made a statement which explains some of the origin changes we can expect from the character in TMNT 2. Although some die hard fans may take issue with these changes, I have to believe that most of you shellheads are going to be perfectly fine with this. When it comes right down to it, these character alterations are no worse than anything we saw from Elias Koteas in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.

In an interview with IGN, Amell had the following to say about his latest role:

“He is not the Casey Jones that a lot of comic fans have come to know and love. He is a guy with a job that lives in New York and loves hockey. When things go awry, [and] when he goes through the normal methods of what someone would do when they’re [a] law-abiding citizen and he’s met with laughter and scorn… he decides to take things into his own hands.”

Fans of the original comics may take issue with this, because Casey Jones was originally designed as a character who began his vigilante crime fighting career early on when he was a kid. Unfortunately, although comics and film both have a lot to owe one another, there are some areas where comic books have the advantage.

When you have the option to tell the backstory of a character like this across a series of monthly comics, it’s easy to find room for such a narrative. However, when you’re working with a multi-million dollar film franchise and trying to craft a movie that does the same job in roughly two hours, some cuts are going to need to be made.

This is something that the filmmakers of the original 1990 film understood, which is why their interpretation of Casey Jones only depicted him as an adult. If anything, it would appear that there may actually be more to this version of the character than we have ever seen in any other TMNT film. Love it or hate it, this could actually be a good sign for the upcoming sequel, as we might get to see the character develop his classic bad boy attitude over the course of the film.

What do you think? Is this an acceptable origin change? Is it just a part of the filmmaking process? Or is it an unforgivable alteration that will entirely ruin the movie for you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!