Anyone who grew up in the 80's and 90's know about The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Whether we were watching the animated series on Saturday morning, reading the TMNT comics, fighting through hoards of ninjas and robots to save t.v. reporter and major hottie April on the arcade game, stomping a miniature version of the Foot Clan with our Turtle action figures, or even catching them on the big screen with three live action movies. Heck, even my 9 year-old cousin watches a new animated Japanese looking version of TMNT on cartoon network. In all of these renditions of TMNT one thing has remained the same... they were once ordinary turtles that, by mere chance, came in contact with radioactive ooze and mutated into human-like beings. They were then raised and trained in ninjitsu by a wise old rat named Splinter. One thing Michelangelo, Donatello, Rafael, and Leonardo were NOT.. aliens.

Enter Michael Bay.  The acclaimed producer and director of such blockbusters as Bad Boys and Transformers has announced that a reboot of the live action TMNT film is his next project. Despite my initial excitement about a Michael Bay produced Turtles flick I, like many other fans of the pop cultue icons, were outraged when Bay announced he was going to drastically change the fearsome foursome's back story. Bay said last week at the annual Nickelodeon upfront meeting  that when he got finished with the movie that kids would actually think the Turtles were real. The producer also said that his version of the heroes in a half shell would be more edgy and would be derived from an alien race.

The backlash Bay has gotten from the web has been intense as seen in this article from The Guardian , which includes an interview with Robbie Rist, the actor who portrayed Michelangelo in the 1990 film. Rist said that Bay was 'Sodomizing' the crime fighting team. I am not sure sodomizing is ever the right word when referring to anything about a childhood cartoon but I agree with his sentiment.

Michael Bay has responded to his critics by telling the to chill out and relax on a web forum.

Yeah Mike... I will relax... as soon as you stop trying to mess with the things I hold dear from my childhood. I suppose next you will want to make a film about the original power rangers... only instead of teenagers they will be made up of indestructible cyborgs from another dimension bent on restoring the soviet union to power... but hey its no big deal. Who they are is just a minor detail.

More From 106.3 The Buzz