Not the blast from the cinematic past I would want...

Last week, a bunch of mutant reptiles knocked off half-naked Greeks from the box office perch. Only in America...
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or TMNT as they are now known, was the top movie last weekend, taking in $24.5 million. The turtles' reign won't last long because the new Will Ferrell movie comes in, which I'm seeing tonight and I'm pretty jazzed to check out.
While it was a decent success in the general audience, Warner Bros. was banking on twenty-somethings to take a stroll down memory lane in seeing the movie. It has been about 16 years since the last TMNT movie came out, and that was when the comic book and TV show was in its heyday. Later on this summer, Optimus Prime and the rest of the Transformers will make its way to the big screen. Michael Bay is bringing his Armageddon barrage of pyrotechnic greatness, so you know some robot is going to blow up the world.
I remember seeing the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle films. I even think I have a VHS copy somewhere in the garage. I wasn't much into Transformers: I was actually a big ThunderCats fan, so I'm hoping any studio that does that won't royally screw it up.
In this post-9/11 era, people are clamoring for heroes. That's why 300 is so big. Harry Potter is a hero to both adults and kids. In real life, we try to find heroes whenever we can. Anyone remember Jessica Lynch? I last saw her on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition build a house for her friend who died in Iraq. But for that brief second, she was a hero, partially for propaganda purposes, but because citizens genuinely needed a good story.
I find it intriguing that we are reach back into the not-so-distant pasts of our childhood to find more heroes. What heroes do we M.A.Y.A.s have? G.I. Joe, Masters of the Universe, TMNT, ThunderCats, Transformers, even Batman and the Justice League. Now with Captain America dead, it is the job of animated turtles to help reclaim that sense of serenity found on reading comic books with friends or watching Saturday morning television.
Plus, the studio system doesn't come up with anything new anymore ... in a way, movie studios are the best example on how to properly recycle. It's quite tragic, I must say.