‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ Toys Reveal Donatello Dreams To Be A “K-Pop Star By Night”
New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem collectibles reveal that Donatello dreams of being a “K-pop star by night.”
Japanese e-commerce website Rakuten has a number of new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem figures and collectibles for sale including all four of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Turtle Van, Rafael and a Battle Cycle, which looks more like a Vespa, and Leonardo and a Ninja Kick Cycle.
The packaging for a number of the figures also reveals there will be other figures including Splinter, Rocksteady, Bebop, Superfly, and Leatherhead.
Not only does the package reveal other figures for the upcoming animated film, but it also provides some brief descriptions of the individual Turtles.
Taiwanese Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fan and Twitter user Zimmerltw shared the descriptions for each of the Turtles and most of them are what you expect until you get to Donatello.
Leonardo’s short biography reads, “Leo’s the leader! Well, he wants to be. he dreams of leading his brothers to become an unstoppable crime-fighting team. So what if no one takes him seriously?”
It then reveals his weapons are twin katanas and he dreams of being a fearless leader.
Raphael’s biography states, “Raph likes to break things. In fact, his biggest goal is to punch someone so hard they throw up. But beneath his hard head and tough exterior is a sensitive turtle just looking for someone to talk to.”
It then reveals he wields twin sais and he dreams of becoming a mixed martial arts fighter.
“Mikey’s the comedian,” reads Michelangelo’s biography. “Too bad his brothers don’t think he’s that funny. He might not be the best at ninjutsu or waking up on time, or even hygiene, but you can always count on Mikey’s positive attitude.”
His weapon is the nunchaku and he dreams of being a stand-up comedian. That reads pretty accurate albeit Michelangelo would probably eschew dreams as a stand-up comedian to own a pizza shop.
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Donatello’s biography is pretty straight-forward albeit they paint him as more arrogant than more humble iterations of the character. But for the most there aren’t any surprises until you get to his dreams.
The biography reads, “Donnie is devastatingly smart… And not afraid to let you know it. His intellectual self-assuredness may come across as arrogance, but it’s just that his brain is thinking so many steps ahead that he’s paralyzed with indecision.”
He wields the Bo Staff. However, his dreams are “to be a game developer by, K-pop star by night.” There’s no version of Donatello that I’ve ever seen where has ambitions to become a K-pop star. He’s usually pursuing different scientific experiments, and inventing new contraptions, or modifying the Turtle Van.
This description if indeed it is accurate to the film is just another red flag of many that have cropped up surrounding it.
First, the film race-swapped April O’Neil. Then it was revealed they gender-swapped the villains Leatherhead and Wingnut.
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On top of these huge changes to the characters, the film is being helmed by anti-white activist Seth Rogen. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly back in 2020, Rogen was asked about the topic of diversity in the entertainment industry “What do you feel like your role in that can be?”
He responded, “I mean personally, I think I am just actively trying to make less things starring white people.”
Rogen added, “And if I’m succeeding or I’m not, I’m very much looking to have a far more diverse group of writers and directors and actors that we generally work with, because that group is not incredibly diverse, you know?”
Rogen ultimately concluded, “So that’s how I’ve been trying to deal with it, is just to actively take as they would say, anti-racist measures to assure that some work is doing done to acknowledge that Black people are very marginalized in American society.”
Speaking about the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem film, Rogen detailed to ScreenRant his approach to the film, “I think it’s putting a lot of thought into making a better version of it, even than people are projecting it’s going to be and at the same time giving them everything that they hope it’s going to have.”
“And I think that’s something that, honestly, we’ve gotten better at over the years,” Rogen said. “And I’ve seen a lot of friends do it, and I’ve been a part of it a few times. I think maybe early on our instincts maybe were like, ‘Let’s subvert it; let’s make it really different.’ And I think you do have to create something that’s original, exciting, and creatively unique, but at the same time, it has to give people what they’re really hoping they get from this stuff.”
“With Ninja Turtles, it was really trying to honor everything I always loved about it, but trying to infuse something new and exciting into it,” he concluded. “And luckily for us, no one had ever used actual teenagers before, and something very intuitive became something that really like opened up our version; it feels like it makes it feel very unique. Things like that, I think, are exciting ways to get into this stuff.”
What do you make of Donatello’s dreams and how the character will be depicted in Rogen’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem?
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