The Evolution of the New Turtles Story: How close was his original idea for the new movie compared to the script he ended up shooting? “That’s a good question. In some respects it’s dead-on. I remember I pitched to Peter the idea of the family, the idea of really giving them complex characters and giving them like a sort of depth to the character. That part’s always sort of remained the same. The fun thing that always ends up altering is who’s your bad guy and what’s his plan and how is he going about doing this. But to me, tonally, that movie that I pitched to Peter Laird in the room in October is the same movie. In fact, I would say it’s even better because I had no idea I would have the crew that I have that could turn around and just take it and just plus everything like times 10, just in terms of scope and in terms of the fun level. It’s really a blast.”
Making the Story Accessible to Different Demographics: One of Munroe’s challenges was to create a story that older fans of the Turtles would like, as well as craft a film kids could enjoy – and do so without playing down to the younger audience. “I think the thing that works in our favor is that I think a younger audience always sort of aspires up. I think the second you pander to that audience, it just immediately stinks to them. My daughter, she’s 8, and she’s just not interested in stuff that’s aimed for 6 to 8 year-olds. She wants to go see Spider-Man 3. And so the idea is that you create this sort of safe haven for these kids that can come in and enjoy a movie like this, but at the same time story and character-wise you’re still delivering for that older audience. Even just the intensity and stuff like that…”
The PG Rating: Munroe said he’s aiming for a ‘hard’ PG rating. What will earn it the ‘hard’ distinction? “Intensity of the scenes in terms of the action,” explained Munroe. “The sense of real peril. I think that’s something that we really have to be careful with. There’s no blood; there’s no swearing. There’s no nudity or anything. But the idea too is that if it’s a PG movie, make it a PG movie. A lot of times people are disappointed that it’s a PG or the idea that they’ll go to Monster House or something and say, ‘It’s a PG movie but my kids were scared. They couldn’t sit through it.’ It’s like, ‘Of course, it’s PG.’ As a parent you’re supposed to look and make sure your kids can handle it. Some kids can and some kids can’t. And so the idea is that to the fullest extent that we can play out a PG, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Munroe says making the film PG was part of the deal with the studio. “Because at the end of the day,” said Munore, “you can’t ignore the fact that the target audience, the people who are buying the toys, are kids and so you have to make sure you don’t turn your back on that. But at the same time, it’s Turtles. It’s got a classic fan base. And we really deliver, I think, for the older fans in terms of the story and characters.”
The Importance of Bringing TMNT to Comic Con: “It was paramount to me. We said this right from the beginning, ‘The only place to debut this was going to be Comic Con.’ We could have snuck stuff out on the web; we could have done the blog thing. But the idea is that this is a comic book and it’s Comic Con and the idea that it’s not the animated series, it’s not the toys. It came from that 1984 comic book that they printed 3,000 copies of. This is coming back and saying, ‘Yes, we’re paying attention to that, and yes, there’s no other way I’d want to see this.’”
So Who’s Kevin Munroe’s Favorite Turtle?: Munroe laughed, “It changes everyday. It just depends on who I’m working on. I think right now I’d say Donatello is because I really like the idea of this character who tries to hold the family together. This idea of the son who basically tries to see through all the personalities and tries to get everybody to get along. I love that idea because it’s such a complex character. But tomorrow it’ll be Raph. It goes all over the place.”
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Kevin Munroe Interview Video #1 - The Rebirth of the Turtles Movie Franchise and the Film's Tone
Kevin Munroe Interview Video #2 - The Audience, the Rating, and His Favorite Turtle
