It has recently been revealed that in an upcoming TMNT feature film, producer Michael Bay is exchanging mutant turtles for alien turtles. Following this announcement, fandom has lost its mind over the change, taking to Twitter and Facebook and loud rants in the dark corners of comic book stores.

I need to make two things clear before I continue. The first is that I have been an almost-lifetime fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I say almost because I was released before they were). I watched the original cartoon show, have collections of the first comics, littered my room with toys and little brown swords, etc. From the time I first discovered them until way past the point I should have let them go, they were a major part of my life.

The second point I’d like to make is that I’m neither defending nor condemning Michael Bay. In fact, I’m not even taking a stand on the movie itself. Unlike some people on the internet, I don’t have the magic power to know how a movie that is still in pre-production will eventually turn out and am likewise unqualified to review a film that is literally just words and sketches on paper at this time.

Let’s get into the big concerns, shall we?

THE INTEGRITY OF THE FRANCHISE

A concern I’ve heard expressed is that the changing of the origin will somehow impact the integrity of the franchise because aliens are less plausible than pet turtles who can barely move around turning into ninjitsu-wielding man-turtles after a dousing with intergalactic ooze. For the sake of this piece, we’ll pretend that point of view makes enough sense to even justify discussing it.

TMNT started out as a joke when Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird combined Marvel’s New Mutants with the ninjas of Frank Miller’s Daredevil and Ronin works. This is evident in the original comics. It was a gag. But, like Dave Sim’s Cerebus started out as a parody of sword-and-sorcery comics like Conan, TMNT became something much greater. The comics took the Turtles from ancient times teaming up with other small-press characters to far-off intergalactic arenas fighting the Triceratons.

The first television cartoon series started in 1987. More than likely, this is the version of the Turtles with which you are most familiar. While the original comic book adventures were darker, more violent and all of our heroes had red headbands, this new spin simplified things for children. The vengeful, dangerous Shredder of the comics gave way to the James Avery-voiced minion of Krang. Their initials were added to their belts and each turtle was color-coded to make things easier for smaller attention spans. In short, nearly everything from the original comic series changed to make the cartoon possible and attractive to a wider audience. “The origin was never changed!” you scream. I shush you.

I’m going to assume this is about where you left things. Your last memories and, possibly, only memories of the franchise itself came from that original cartoon series (possibly also the original movies) and you’ll be darned if anything comes along to change that!

Here are some things you might have missed:

• A live-action TV series that introduced female turtle Venus De Milo
• A 2007 CGI film that struck a nice balance between the comics and original cartoon
• A movie in which they traveled in time back to Feudal Japan
• Another animated series in which the participated in a Mortal Kombat-style tournament and also traveled 100 years into the future
• An Image Comics series that saw half of Raphael’s face disfigured, Leonardo losing a hand and Donatello grafting with a robotic body after becoming paralyzed due to a shattered shell
• Action figures that cast them as everything from Transformers to superheroes (designed by Jim Lee, even!)
• A concert tour sponsored by Pizza Hut in which they performed songs like “Coming Out of Our Shells” and “Pizza Power”

Obviously the fandom that’s currently concerned about the future of the franchise was okay with all of these follow-up projects, right? Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but I don’t recall seeing the petitions.

TRANSFORMERS

Interestingly enough, the loudest and whiniest opinions about Michael Bay don’t seem to match the success of his career. That seems a bit odd, doesn’t it?

Let’s assume that when Michael Bay started working on Transformers, you were hesitant but maybe a little excited. Then you started seeing the character designs and saying things like “Why does Optimus Prime have a mouth?” or “Why is Megatron so spiky?” I know I did. But I looked forward to it. And when I saw it, I had a great time. As an avid watcher of the original Transformers cartoon and collector of its toys, I didn’t find my love of the fandom affected at all. In fact, it brought back a long-dormant interest in action figures that transform (I bought over $150 worth of toys after seeing the movie) and I had a good time with it. Did I wince when Optimus Prime said “My bad” or when Bumblebee urinated oil on John Turturro? Sure. But a lot of people hated the whole movie and the entire experience. In fact, it only pulled in $710 million dollars.

Wait, that doesn’t seem right. Of course, the crowds all went in blindly and didn’t know how much they would dislike it. Clearly this would be a cautionary tale for whatever future sequels might come along. And, in fact, the second Transformers movie, Revenge of the Fallen, only brought in $836 millon. Hold on, that’s more.

It’s widely acknowledged that RotF was an inferior entry in the series. Even Michael Bay said so. With their faith shaken, savvy, angry audiences had said “Enough is enough, Michael Bay! These movies are terrible!” I think you know where I’m going with this. The third film made over a billion dollars.

You may complain about Michael Bay’s movies and methods and call him Lord Destructor of Childhoods (more on that nonsense shortly), but you watch his movies. And I know this because I see so many rabid complaints about so many specific moments in the flicks that there’s no way you haven’t. Some I have to take your word on because I didn’t see the second one. It looked silly and I’m an American human that can make his own choices about what films he sees. But you might’ve. And every ticket sold says “Please, sir, may I have some more? You’re doing it just right.”

YOUR CHILDHOOD

Michael Bay is not a time traveler. Unless you’re still a child (in which case you’ve certainly abandoned interest in this and moved on to something else), your childhood is over. It’s time-locked. It cannot change. The only impact your present life can have on your past life is if you stir up some repressed memories of wonderful or horrible things. And even then, there’s just the potential to change your perceptions of growing up. Everything that happened still happened and nothing short of an evil time-traveling director can change that.

If someone tears down your childhood home, your childhood still happened. Should your accountant parents suddenly become roving carnies wandering from town to town in search of thrills and funnel cake batter ingredients, they were still accountants the whole time you grew up. And if someone changes something about some characters you liked as a kid, YOUR CHILDHOOD IS FULLY INTACT. If a lack of change is so very important to you, know that the ways in which these fictional characters were initially presented to you still exist on DVD, in reprint comics and on eBay where all the action figures live that we don’t play with any more.

If you really, truly, incorrectly believe that the very fiber of your childhood is at risk when this movie exists, pretend it does not. Don’t see it. Don’t feed the machine. That is your right as a consumer. Skip it. I dare you to ignore it. There will be a three or four month burst where the commercials are on TV and the toys are in the Kids meals and the buzz is all a-buzzy. Ignore it and find something else to do. You’re stronger than marketing, right?

By the way…a moment about Robbie Rist, the actor who said Michael Bay was “sodomizing” the franchise by making the Turtles aliens and referred to Bay “raping our childhood memories.” (Robbie Rist, by the way, did the voice of Michelangelo in the three live-action movies and is also notable for playing Cousin Oliver, final nail in The Brady Bunch’s coffin.) As I stated, Robbie, if something in the present affects your memories from childhood, you need to reassess how seriously you take things. And if you’re willing to equate someone making a movie with a violent sexual crime, you immediately lose the right to be taken seriously yourself.

THE ORIGIN DOES NOT MATTER

There are several things about TMNT that are very important, but mostly it’s the feel. It’s the setup and the dynamic. It is not the origin. In fact, the origin itself is inconsistent depending on which media you follow. In the comics, it was a cannister of ooze created by a race of outer space brain creatures that bounced out of a truck. In the cartoon and movies, it was altered to be more terrestrial. Both of these ooze origins were incredibly important to the storylines that followed, but had no bearing on the characters (the characters themselves also vary from medium to medium, but whatever).

Look, you want green guys with shells who have ninja equipment. You want Raphael grumpy, Donatello nerdy, Michelangelo partying and Leonardo vanilla. These are things that may or may not happen in Michael Bay’s movie. In fact, the characters may wind up being regular turtles from Mars that land on Earth and get splashed with a mutagenic ooze. We don’t know any of these things. The most important part of this whole entertainment experience is the entertainment part. Will it be good and be handled respectfully?

I don’t know. And neither do you.

So shut up about it. Don’t fight it because it’s going to happen no matter how hurt your feelings are. If you’re still dissatisfied when it comes out, don’t see it. Read reviews. Ask a friend who saw it for his or her opinion. You can’t do anything about how it’s made, but you can make decisions about how you handle it once it is. If you’re not interested, don’t see it.

I dare you.