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With just over a week left until the official release of the first trailer for Jonathan Liebesman’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (to be played before the new Captain America film), the teaser was unveiled by Paramount at CinemaCon 2014. There are no hints of the actual trailer on the net just yet, but the reaction from those who saw the trailer is fairly unnerving. Although most reports seem to be pretty positive, there are some saying that the trailer reveals a significant alteration to the origin of the TMNT. Could it be that after all we’ve been through, there may still have been significant changes made to the story of the Ninja Turtles and how they came to be? Well, if the responses we’ve seen over the past 24 hours are any indication, it would appear that they have indeed played around with the timeline.

Viewers of the trailer report that there is a voice over from Shredder, who is apparently speaking to April O’Neil. In this voice over, Fichtner’s character tells April that “heroes are not born, they are created; that’s what your father and I were trying to do – create heroes.” The implication given in the trailer is apparently that April’s father worked with Eric Sachs in order to create the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Needless to say, this is shocking and somewhat confusing information. This isn’t the story that TMNT fans are familiar with. To be fair, this line is apparently followed up by a shot of a clear cannister with the letters “TCRI” on the side and ooze flowing within. That’s right, they definitely have the ooze origin in this film, but have they added more to it and complicated matters by implicating both The Shredder and April’s father in their creation? Possibly.

Honestly, this sounds like a case of the viewers misinterpreting what a (possibly) poorly crafted trailer is telling them. Having not seen the trailer myself, I cannot confirm that this is the case, but it would seem that there just isn’t enough information to work with. For all we know, the trailer begins with The Shredder talking to April and his next line is pulled from an entirely different conversation. In addition to this, it is entirely possible that they didn’t necessarily set out to create Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – it could be that their aim was to create super soldiers and the ooze was still accidentally spilled on the turtles instead.

If you ask me, even if this is the case, it still comes dangerously close to rewriting the history of the TMNT and completely erasing one of the cultural backbones of the Ninja Turtles that made them a phenomenon in the 80’s. Back then, it wasn’t too uncommon for popular culture to reference the destructive and mutative powers of toxic/nuclear waste, as that was a hot button issue during the cold war era. Nowadays, people aren’t necessarily as concerned with these issues as they once were, but that doesn’t mean they are no longer culturally relevant or important to touch on. In other words, I understand the desire to alter this part of the story, but the motivation for it is pretty vapid.

Even when I’m being as fair as I can with this concept, I honestly don’t see how this alteration to the origin story could be deemed necessary or important from a cultural standpoint. Why even feature mutant characters if you think the whole concept of mutation via strange unknown chemicals is too outdated? At this point, I feel that I’m getting a bit too far ahead of myself. I haven’t seen the trailer yet, nor have I seen the movie, so I cannot confirm that such an origin change even exists. That being said, I can see why some fans were upset by the very idea that they had altered the story after all, especially when we were told that the story remains faithful to the origin of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

What do you think? Check out some of the descriptions of the trailer online and let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Alternatively, you can sound off in our forums!