I am currently training to join the US Army and am going to enlist soon, so before I do, I felt compelled to write a blog in salute for our troops.
While I am not a fan of war unless it is in self defense, I still have nothing but respect for our soldiers. Even in self defense though, war sucks. It is just a fact of life. No matter what people die, people get hurt, and families get ruined. The fact that our men and women are willing to risk their lives to protect us have my upmost respect.
Politically, I do have a lot of issues with our foreign policy. Currently, we are fighting three wars: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Korea. Let me explain Korea first since that one may not seem obvious. Contrary to popular belief the Korean War never really ended. What happened was that a ceasefire was made so that the North and South Koreans cannot cross the 38th parallel. We still have a reasonable presence in South Korea.
The invasion of Afghanistan was a result of the Taliban offering amnesty to Osama bin Laden. Allowing the leader of the terrorist group responsible for the greatest terrorist attack on our country was not the smartest move of the Taliban. The problem with Afghanistan is that we started another conflict before we could finish the fight and we diverted resources from Afghanistan to Iraq.
The Iraq conflict is definitely the most controversial decision of the Bush administration. At first it did seem like a lost cause, but fortunately with the brilliant decisions by General Petraeus and the 'surge' strategy, the end to the Iraq War does seem imminent. General Petraeus has certainly earned himself a spot in my list of people who I aspire to be like (probably the main reason why I want to be in the Army). But anyway, my understanding for the rationale for the invasion of Iraq was that the Bush administration bought into the neoconservative philosophy of preemptive war and that Iraq was believed to be an imminent threat. This foreign policy became very attractive after 9/11. The justification for believing Iraq was an imminent threat was that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. While it turned out that there weren't any, to the administration's defense other intelligence agencies besides the CIA claimed they did. Even still people forget about this, but that is not the point. If you are going to exercise preemptive war, you can't have any errors. The lack of weapons of mass destruction is kind of a big one.
Well I hope these active conflicts end soon, and again, thanks to all of the men and women out there who are serving or have served in our armed forces. I salute you.
So Michael Bay's next project could be a reboot of the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie. [1] Honestly, I don't really have any presumptions about this news. I know that Transformers 2 was a terrible movie, but I think that is more the fault of the story than the director although I could be wrong about that. The only thing I know for certain about this movie is that there are going to be a lot of explosions. This announcement does make me reminisce about one of my favorite television shows.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is definitely one of my favorite television shows of all time. It was undoubtedly a show for children, but it was mature enough that I can still appreciate it. I started watching a few episodes when I was in high school, but it wasn't till this past year when I was able to watch them in order and their entirety. Probably at this point I should emphasize that I am referring to the 2003 series as opposed to the 1987 series.
The 1987 series was indeed for children. Until the show became way too silly, the show was fairly entertaining. This series was actually a poor adaptation of the comics, but one of the big things that this show did was make the Shredder a major enemy of the Turtles. In the comics, the Shredder only appears in the first comic. Imagine nowadays a Ninja Turtles adaptation without the Shredder. While I cannot deny the significance of the 1987 series, I honestly cannot watch this series anymore after watching the 2003 series (except to listen to that unforgettable theme song).
The 2003 series up to season five was just great. Probably my favorite aspect of the show was that the villains seemed credible. Not only was the Shredder a scary guy, so was every other villain. There are more villains, but these are the main ones.
The Shredder. He was easily the most memorable thing about the show. The Shredder's story was one of the most original and interesting stories that I have ever seen on television. What makes it especially cool is that the Shredder's main enemy and concern isn't even the turtles - they are just an annoyance. The Shredder's real foe is a group called the Guardians who guard the Shredder's most hated enemies, the Utroms. There is also a secret about the Shredder which is easily in my top favorite plot twists of all time (hmm that sounds like a good idea for another blog).
Baxter Stockman. More true to his comic counterpart in this series, this guy was an evil genius who 'worked' for the Shredder. Actually except for the first time, he only 'works' for the Shredder out of fear or in order to plot against him. This made Stockman a very dynamic and unpredictable character.
Hun. Created for the show, he is Shredder's most powerful and loyal henchman. Hun is actually the leader of the Purple Dragons street gang, but for some reason he is incredibly loyal to the Shredder doing whatever is necessary to earn his favor. His loyalty makes him a very cool character.
Karai. The adopted daughter of the Shredder. Aside from the fact that this makes the Shredder an even more awesome character, Karai struggles between keeping her honor and obeying her father. In season three, this character dynamic is very interesting as she is an ally of the turtles, but in the end she is still a villain. Season 4 is even more fascinating when she takes up the mantle of the Shredder. Her devotion toward her father despite also keeping her honor makes Karai one of my favorite characters. She is very similar to Talia Al Guhl from the Batman cartoon.
Agent Bishop. A government agent who is pretty much the leader of an MIB-organization. His main motivation is the protection of Earth and humanity from all threats. What makes him a villain is that he is very machiavellian in that he doesn't care how he protects mankind. He is even okay with the idea of a couple billion people dying since he thinks that a lower population would be better for humanity. The other cool thing is that he is actually two hundred years old and can hold his own against the turtles, Hun, and even Karai all at the same time (too bad we never see him and Shredder go at it).
While the villains were amazing, the heroes were just as great. The turtles just seemed more human in this series compared to the original. They aren't just cracking jokes the entire time, and you can actually feel a sense of love and family among them and Splinter. Leonardo was very cool and serious. Raphael was very headstrong and tough. Michelangelo is the comic relief of the show and made a lot of references to pop culture like Star Trek and Aliens. Like his original series counterpart, Donatello is good with machines. I also really liked April O'Neil and Casey Jones who are truer to their comic incarnations.
This is kind of a side note, but one thing I really hate about genius characters is that they are too smart. I can accept the idea that April O'Neil can hack and do other computer tasks because she was a programmer for Dr. Stockman. Donatello like many other genius characters just serve as a means to introduce deus ex machina devices or create new gadgets. There is no way that Donatello could be smart enough to create or reverse engineer technology that is much more advance than what society knows. A great example of this is when Leonardo asks Donatello if a trans-dimensional portal is possible (from Turtles Forever). There is no way a person could know how to build a trans-dimensional portal on the fly. I think that the only reason that this bothers me is because I am an engineer and know how difficult some of this technology is to produce (not talking about the trans-dimensional portal, more like microchips and advance mods to vehicles).
As mentioned before, I only like this show up until the end of season five. Season five ended with a really beautiful ending. The last two seasons felt forced (especially the last one). Season six involves the turtles going into the future (lame), and season seven has them return but face the most ridiculous villain, the Cyber Shredder. The Cyber Shredder is defeated by a Decompiler Ray (what more is there to say?). Season five just did a really great job at wrapping up the series. It gave the series an epic feel, and showed how everything in the series was connected.
Within the five seasons, I hated just about every episode that dealt with the superheroes of the universe. I won't deny the plausibility of superheroes in a universe of teenage mutant ninja turtles, but I felt that they took away focus from the turtles. I mean how can I believe that the turtles are necessary when they have the Justice League (they have some other name) who can come in and save the day. I feel that this was a really bad decision by the creators. The only other vigilante should have been Casey Jones who the series did do a great job with.
The only other thing that disappointed me with the series was that while the Utroms had a great three-part episode, they were kind of forgotten until the end of season 3. Considering the Shredder's origins as well as the turtles, I really wish that the Guardians could have had more screen time.
The fifth season was a complete change of pace for the series. Until this season minus a few episodes, everything was science fiction. Now we are in total fantasy although they also do a magic-tech thing which is pretty cool. I've said it once and I'll say it again, the ending to this season was so satisfying and happy. This season was a complete tangent from the previous four seasons, but they were able to connect everything that brought not only closure for everything but gave the turtles a greater sense of purpose.
Overall, this series was just really fun to watch. I could really get into the story, and the characters were interesting. Some episodes were terrible, but most of them were great. Oh I forgot to mention my favorite episode of the series. Note that there are huge spoilers of the early series in this episode, but you'll be okay to at least see the special opening. With that said, this episode is so awesome that someone named Yoraee made a special introduction to this episode.
Well I hope you enjoyed my favorite episode. Unfortunately, you cannot download these episodes from iTunes (as far as I can tell). If you see the DVD's, I give you my highest recommendation to buy them.
While I am not a fan of war unless it is in self defense, I still have nothing but respect for our soldiers. Even in self defense though, war sucks. It is just a fact of life. No matter what people die, people get hurt, and families get ruined. The fact that our men and women are willing to risk their lives to protect us have my upmost respect.