It Never Happened Syndrome

Hello. I’m Jareth Valentine. And today, I’d like to talk to you about very serious issue that has plagued media for years. One that I, personally, find deeply offensive and can no longer stand idly by and allow.

            I am speaking, of course, about It Never Happened Syndrome.

            Look, I appreciate that we live in a world where intellectual property gets passed around from person to person like the fucking flu. And I certainly understand that we live in a world where a lot of horrible ideas somehow manage to sneak past quality control and become implemented, instead of being rightfully encased in cement cubes and fired into the sun.

            But people, when you get your Round Robin back and discover that at some point, a dyslexic three-year-old has used it to blow his nose, you can’t just pretend that it never happened. You have to run with it.

            And I’ll explain why. As anyone who’s actually READ The Neverending Story (and not just seen that piece of shit movie) knows, stories work because the reader vicariously takes part in the adventure. We all fought Voldemort alongside Harry Potter. We were all with Bilbo, escaping downriver from the Elf King’s dungeon. We all flew on dragonback fighting thread on Pern. Those are OUR experiences, and we’re better for them. Saying that they never happened is a kick in the face, and you, artists, owe us better than that. 

            Now, sometimes it’s okay to say It Never Happened. Take the Hulk movie, for example. You know the one. The one whose only saving grace was the presence of Jennifer Connelly, and even that wasn’t enough? Yeah. That one. It was okay to pretend that that never happened and try again. Not because it was bad (though it was), but because nothing else depended on it. It was no more intrinsic to anything greater than any Marvel adaptation. It stood alone, and when it failed, it failed alone. But when a long-running continuity has an awkward phase at some point down the line, that’s part of events. It can’t just be ignored.

            A good example of this is Venus de Milo, of Ninja Turtles: the Next Mutation. Was she important to the plot? Sort of. Was she a worthwhile character? Eh. Was she a good idea? Hell no. Adding a fifth turtle at that point was both superfluous and a bit of a stretch.

Okay, so the guys weren’t really sentient yet, so I can buy them not remembering that there was a fifth turtle in the bowl. And I can buy that one of the turtles, after getting drenched in radioactive macguffin goo, got swept to Chinatown by the sewer currents. I’ll even buy that Splinter knew about her the whole time and didn’t tell anybody. It’s exactly the sort of secretive, manipulative shit that wise mentor-types do all the time. I suspect they get off on it.

            It worked, barely, but it was still a terrible idea, and I’m not sure what the creators were trying to accomplish, apart from having another action figure to sell. But (and I hope you’re reading this, Peter Laird) the fact that it was a bad idea to bring her into the story does not change the fact that she IS part of the story. If you want her gone, fine. Get rid of her. But don’t just pretend she never existed.

            I mean, you could easily have just killed her off. These people are fucking ninjas. They engage in fiery climactic battles to the death before breakfast every morning. All you needed to do was have her, you know, lose.

            Don’t want to kill her? Too gory fore you? Can’t imagine how, I mean, again, NINJAS, but fine. We can work around that. This is the TMNT universe, after all. It’s a world of super-science and sorcery. Turn her to stone. Send her to another dimension. Dust off that ridiculous eggtimer-on-a-stick and go back so you can step on her while she’s still three inches long.  There are a million billion perfectly legitimate ways you could have handled this, Laird. Clever, creative ways that could have made for perfectly good story arcs. But you let us down.

            TMNT:TNM was a direct continuation of the first three live-action movies. As soon as it was produced, aired, and submitted to the public, it became cannon. Saying it never happened is, literally, saying that the entire continuity never happened, and refusing to carry on from where TNM left off is LETTING THE ENTIRE SERIES DIE. And you can make as many revamps of the series as you want, but you’ll never convince me that they follow on from the same story. Not until you address this. I don’t care that the story went in a direction you never intended, or that it diverged from your original artistic vision. You sold it, you licensed it, you gave it to a marketing team, and they did what they did with it, for better or worse. It is what it is and you don’t get to change it just because you ‘own the rights’ again. We experienced it, and it’s ours now.

            Mario suffers from a slightly different strain of INHS, in that the ‘bad’ idea that was unhappened out of existence is one that was there from the series’ inception. We all know Mario. Mario was a plumber from Brooklyn who found a secret warp zone while unclogging a bathroom drain and was sucked, along with his brother, into a parallel dimension, where he quickly rose to a position of prominence due to the fact that everyone else was a midget in a silly hat. He was a fearless hero with a New York accent, a heart of gold, and a passion for pasta. And we happily joined in his adventures for about fifteen years.

            Then suddenly…Wait. Who the hell is that guy? That’s not Mario Mario. I know Mario Mario. He and I have been through a lot together. This is not the man with whom I went shopping for Frog Suits and Tanooki Tails. This is not the man with whom I rejoiced everytime I found a hidden Warp Whistle. This is not the man with whom I fought and toiled through carnivorous mushrooms, fire-breathing plants, and pits of boiling lava through 8 different worlds only to sob and punch things in increasing frustration every time we discovered, together, that the princess was in YET another castle. Who are you, dude, and why are you wearing Mario’s clothes? What have you done with my friend? Hello? Anyone? Am I the only one who notices the pod person masquerading as our hero? Is Bowser responsible for this? Did he create an evil clone? Has Mario just finally smashed his head into one too many floating bricks? Can I get a gods-damned explanation, please?

            And yes, I get that they were trying to bring the franchise more into parity with the original Japanese version. But when you adapt something so heavily that it effectively takes on its own identity apart from the original source material, and it becomes FIFTEEN YEARS WORTH OF ESTABLISHED, you really need to have an in-story explanation of why things changed. Otherwise, you have no right to call it the same name.

            People, doing shit like this is like letting someone read through the first three Harry Potter books, and then handing him the fourth Percy Jackson book and trying to convince him it’s the same series.

            And, re-reading that, that’s a much more apt analogy than I intended. While you might find yourself suddenly reading a perfectly good story, maybe even a much BETTER story, and while the plots may be somewhat similar and while it might take next to no effort to see that these are sort of the same characters, the fact remains that this is NOT WHAT I WAS FUCKING READING. If you want to turn Harry Potter into Percy Jackson halfway through and vastly improve the quality of the story overall, fine. Wonderful, even. But you MUST TRANSITION. Do SOMETHING to make it the same story. Just because Harry Potter was comparatively shitty doesn’t mean I don’t want to know how it ends, and just because Venus de Milo was a bad idea doesn’t mean I don’t want to know what happened to her. You’re changing the channel on us and trying to convince us that we’re watching the same show, and that. Isn’t. Right.

            Well. I think I’ve made my point. But, for those of you who were as pissed off by these particularly egregious examples of INHS as I was, I’ll go ahead and explain them away, since the creators couldn’t be bothered.

            Mario, during one of his quests to save the princess, accidentally ate a mushroom that was slightly the wrong shade of red, and instead of making him double in size, it altered his DNA, bringing into prominence the speech patterns of his Italian ancestors. Unfortunately, it also significantly altered his brain chemistry, effectively erasing his memory and drastically altering his personality. After a brief, unsuccessful attempt to rehabilitate him, the Mushroom Kingdom Secret Service programmed him to serve as an operative, specializing in Turtle Assassination.

            Which also explains what happened to Venus.

            Thank you, and good night.