Meet Casey Jones

Producer Michael Bay today gave us our first official look at Arrow's Stephen Amell as Casey Jones in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 when he posted the above picture on Twitter.

Honestly, I'm a little torn.  I love Amell in Arrow and I know he's gonna be a kick ass Casey Jones but I just can't help but feel something's missing.  Call me a traditionalist but I think Casey needs his long hair.  It offsets the size of the mask a bit and it just looks cool.  But I guess I've got time to get used to the new look and I'd much rather have an actor I like in the role than the hair so I can definitely live with it.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 opens 3rd June 2016 and I'm hoping for a big improvement on last year's reboot.  Amell's casting was a big step in the right direction so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this.

A New Shredder for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2

Variety reported the other day that Brian Tee has joined the cast of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2as the Shredder, replacing Tohoru Masamune who played the role in the 2014 reboot.

As a huge Ninja Turtles fan I have to say that personally, the actor playing Shredder wasn't one of the many problems I had with the first movie.  I thought Tohoru Masamune did a great job with what little he was given (which wasn't much since Shredder was originally planned to be William Fichtner's Eric Sacks until the fan backlash caused Paramount/Platinum Dunes to make the change).  Hopefully the casting of Brian Tee means that Shredder will play a larger role in the upcoming sequel.  At least this time it won't be one role split between two characters.

As much as the first film left a bad taste in my mouth I still have some hopes for the sequel.  The fact that Paramount did any course correction during the making of the last film shows at least some level of willingness to respond to fans criticisms.  Hopefully they've taken on board a lot of the feedback from the last film and made some improvements.  And if not, there's still Stephem Amell's Casey Jones to look forward to!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 began filming this week and is due for release 3rd June 2016.