SPOILER ALERT: They were just men in obvious costumes.

Okay, so maybe we weren't fooled, yet we were willing to accept and even elevate it to one of the defining franchises of the 1980s. Do you think audiences today could adore the obvious men in mutant costumes genre like they once did for (*SPOILER*) Godzilla?

I don't know, but i hope they don't try and re-make those old turtle movies. They were awesome.

The new turtles cg stuff sucks in my opinion. So does the new transformers compared to the originals. In fact, all the 80's stuff should have stayed in the 80's, because modern re-makes lose that nostalgic feel and are out of place.

Kind of like the new indiana jones (crystal skull) compared to the original trilogy.

Suspension of disbelief probably has a lower threshold now but I still think it could work in theory. When the first movie came out the franchise was already massive, the turtles could have just been guys wearing green bodypaint and it still would have raked in the money.

Only issue would be finding an equally popular franchise, over here at least TMNT/TMHT were massive in the late 80s/early 90s, and maybe I'm out of touch but I don't know of any single product with the same level of support current day.

I, for one, find a certain charm to puppetry, stop-motion, and other "physical" forms of movie-making. Not only do things have actual texture to them (which can vastly counterbalance the realism aspect) but it's a lot easier for live actors to interact with them properly, as compared to CGI or cel animation.

The reason they worked so hard on the Gollum suit in the LOTR movies was because of how atrociously awful the acting was in the Star Wars prequels. By putting actors in front of real scenery with real props/actors instead of a greenscreen, the viewer gets a much more authentic-feeling experience.

CGI is a lot cheaper these days, though, and you don't have to worry about ruining an entire month's worth of shooting if somebody damages something like you do with stop motion, and you don't have the same technical limitations from puppetry, so I think it's going to remain the dominant form for the time being, and the others will stay a niche market. But if they ever stop making them entirely, it will be a sad day indeed.

It definitely could, although the much delayed reboot of TMNT is most likely not coming out until 2014 and most likely the turtles in that movie will be heavily CGI although maybe they will not. Maybe they are growing some mutant turtles just for the movie=P

They probably could, it's an issue of whether or not they could get a studio exec to sign off on it.

The issue is probably more closely related to movie execs than with the audience itself. I'd be surprised if a TMNT 4 wouldn't sell well, assuming the script was good and they put out a decent film.

What they probably couldn't do is another TV show like Dinosaurs with the mechanical suits. That was unbelievably pricy at the time, although, maybe not so expensive now.

There's a lot of charm in directors taking the time to compose a scene. With models they frequently did that, with CGI it seems too often they shoot an empty hallway and CGI over some model in a lightsuit to make something, the results can look good, but often don't because I think the majority of directors either no longer know how to do this or don't care. This is one of the reasons why The Thing prequel didn't hold a candle to the original.

I cribbed the general idea of the above from a MovieBob review of the 2010 The Thing, but I find it to be accurate, so I'm going with it.

I didn't bother seeing The Thing prequel, that movie was going to be a train wreck no matter what they did with it. In order for prequels to work, you really have to plan the original movie in a way that supports it. As much as I hate George Lucas, he at least planned to do the prequel trilogy when he wrote the original trilogy, which made the connection a bit more reasonable.

Now, if only he had taken the rest of it as seriously...

Dunno. I think the mass audience today looks down on things it deems naive or campy. Compare the original Star Wars trilogy to the new one. The old films had a fairy-tale feeling to them, they were silly and naive and they knew it. That made them charming and likable in a way, even if their naivety was all-encompassing, extending even to genocide and weapons of mass destruction. The new trilogy is more "mature" (they're literally films for teenagers, in that they were intended for the action figure and merchandise buying crowd, while the old films were literally for children) and has as such no time for anything knowingly naive or childish.

Of course, I could envision an "ironic" remake.

I've got bad news for you. A Michael Bay version is coming.

LIES! I still have enough faith in man kind that this tom foolery never happens. It will be delayed forever!

You know I went back to the originals after all 3 of the prequels were out to see if it was just nostalgia for why I liked the originals. And I decided, no, the originals were just better - the writing, acting, and immersion are all superior to their prequels. Yes culture has changed, but in fact Lucas wrote Star Wars to return SciFi to the more campy, action adventures because the SciFi movies of his day had gotten dark and gritty - similar to today. However, where the first 3 movies are classics, the prequels are just bad. It isn't that audiences matured or the movies try to mature, the script and direction just were empty. The prequel movies feel sterile, neither dark and gritty, nor light and fun, but just empty. That's my 2 cents on the matter.
To link the two conversation together: I find your excess of faith disturbing :)

Yeah, well, I'd say that the emptiness is the result of Lucas eliminating the fairy-tale feeling from the saga, out of fear of it being regarded as too childish, and it turned out that there wasn't much else there to begin with. Apart from the chemistry between the lead actors, I guess.

I just think Lucas just hadn't made a movie in nearly 20 years, hadn't directly written scripts or directly directed actors in even longer, and he got more obsessed with making the technology work than writing a decent script or directing. If he had gotten help with others writing and directing as before, the movies might've been a lot better. They may never have lived up to the hype or the originals, but they might've been decent movies.

I agree that Star Wars movies are fables/fairy tales, but even fairy tales can get very dark and the best ones do. The prequels could've been a dark fairy tale and been really good - the hero's journey torn asunder. They just weren't.

Today it would just be shitty CGI effects that look even worse than the costumes.

Edit: Isn't Michael Bay making that movie? That should be all people need to know about it's quality.