While the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie will be out August 8 in North America, it won’t be out until September 11 in Australia. Paramount Pictures’ Australia branch showed off the movie’s poster, which is truly unfortunate.
As you can see, the poster features the half-shelled heroes jumping out of a burning skyscraper. At the bottom of the poster, it reads, “September 11”. Oh dear.
The image appeared on the official Twitter account of Paramount Pictures Australia. It has since been deleted.
Other Twitter users chimed in regarding the poster. “What a thoughtful poster for 9/11,” wrote Martin Wefail, while Suzanne Carbone, who writes for Australian news source The Age, wrote, “Really? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles jump out of fiery NY tower in poster for film released Sep 11.”
Twitter user Chris Applegate wrote, “‘When’s the movie out?’ ‘September 11’ ‘OK. Poster’s fine, can’t think of anything it reminds me of.’”
Others, including Rupert Myers, who writes for The Guardian and GQ, have dubbed this an obvious “PR fail.” That it is.
HOLY SHIT. #TMNT Australian poster, tweeted by official @ParamountAU – look at the artwork, THEN check release date [@the_moviebob via @feitclub]
Comments
106 responses to “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Poster In Australia Has Unfortunate 9/11 Reference”
Why are we getting this more then a month after the US release?
School holidays / general disdain for the AU market?
This. I remember when Wreck-it Ralph was coming out, heaps of people were complaining to Village Roadshow about Australia having to wait about 2 months for it. Their reply was “Summer blockbusters are always released on Boxing Day in Australia, why release this one any earlier?”
“…people were complaining to Village Roadshow about Australia having to wait about 2 months…”
In other news, Australia is dubbed one of the greatest pirating nations in the world.
http://www.abc.net.au/arts/Golden-Age-of-Piracy/
Some school holidays aren’t till the end of September. So it’s not really in time for school holidays.
The question is more, should we care?
The haven’t discovered air travel yet an will be putting it on a steam boat to sail across the uncharted treacherous ocean to bring it here.
Thing is the boat only takes an extra day to get here but the film has to spend the remaining time in arbitrary detention and will only be released if it survives the inhumane conditions…
They actually want us to pirate the movie. Thats what I think anyway.
They know Aussies aren’t going to pay to see a film they downloaded for free last month.
So we can download it and watch it at home for free.
Since we are accused of the biggest pirates, might as well live up to it.
Because Australia.
The release date is just another reason to avoid this movie
At some point we have to move on. Nobody bats an eyelid when a movie is released on December 7th (Pearl Harbour) and a few have in the past. Fact is it was 13 years ago now. The world is moving on and its fading into history. Theres been innumerable lives lost on both sides since and now a generation of people around the age of 20 who were only 5-7 years old when it happened are coming into their 20s. We have to accept that. We dont have to forget it ever, but we do have to stop living in the past.
This.
Its been more than 10 years.
Should we ban all shows that depict buildings exploding when September 11 rolls around each year?
Ugh. Goddamn people are the worst.
More people died on American roads that year than in the 9/11 disaster.
It is like the current airline disaster, more Aussies died on the roads in that month than died on that plane. Events like this are horrible, but the grief is the same for families that lose someone no matter how it happens.
It is past time for people to be overly sensitive about the 9/11 date already.
In fairness, the reason the MH-17 thing is still such an issue is because we still have no one to blame/hold responsible (and possibly never will). As you said, more people die on the roads but people are charged for that, ‘justice’ is done and people feel somewhat better about it.
MH-17 is just a mess, everyone is blaming each other, personal belongings have been stolen, IIRC they still haven’t found half the people who died and now the fighting’s starting again so it’s likely a useful investigation will never happen.
I agree about 9/11 though, it was 13 years ago (I couldn’t believe it was that long ago). It shouldn’t be forgotten but it also shouldn’t be a sacred date.
Yes we do. The whole world knows it’s Russia, even if Russia won’t admit it.
How far down the rabbit hole do you want go @berym? If Russia gave them the weapons, the only reason they gave them the weapons is because the American Neo-Cons are playing Ukraine to further isolate Russia, so you could say it is Americas fault and so on and so on. At this moment, in all speculation, it is some people from Ukraine, not Russia, who shot down a plane. Like @sabrescene said, we possibly will never know who or why, we can speculate, Ukrainian military plane shadowing MH-17, provoking the separatists into shooting at what they thought was military plane, or maybe Putin himself got tired from taking his shirt off and riding bears and decided to skeet shoot a plane, point is we don’t know.
I actually came to agree based on seeing the poster in the thumbnail, thinking it was purely the content.
But with the placement of the date it’s kind of verging back into iffy territory. So while you’re right in theory, I think this is kind of a perfect storm of small things that comes across much worse than it should.
I understand peoples complaining etc, but I do think its the vocal minority again complaining. After all it’s one poster, of a low set building, Channel 6 news, not a skyscraper. Besides, if this was a Denzel movie WITH a poster of the tower exploding etc for real? People would be saying ‘How brave! How daring! How triumphant!’ etc etc with all the wankery that goes with it and talking oscar nominations. A whole big ball of hypocrisy.
I do pretty much agree.
It’s just that I can see how that connotation could easily come up in this instance, though it should try to be avoided by the marketers there’s also no reason it should be this big a deal either.
Ironically if they’d thought of it, writing “11th of September” would have broken the connotation.
I dunno, I think someones always prepared to jump on the overreaction bandwagon but I will concede that point.
You’re right and it is a huge over reaction.
To clarify, I’d see this case as a bit of a bad gaffe. It’s something silly and unexpected, you’d shake your head at it and then just move on though.
So the headline “unfortunate” makes sense to me, though I have seen some awful condemning headlines elsewhere on the internet which made me want to steal your original post and share it around =P
The use of the word ‘unfortunate’ is appropriate and very inline with the fact its a bad coincidence and that’s all it is. The people I’m only aimed at are those like you say, who are being awful and condemning it like it’s a purposeful thing. So go ahead if you want lol.
I agree, additionally it’s such an American thing, this is the Australian poster, most Aussies couldn’t care less about 9/11 anymore.
What’s so important about the 9th of November? 😉
It’s the start of 3 days of national celebration leading up to my birthday.
That’s my birthday and i will be old 🙁
Mother-in-law’s birthday, talk about a disaster of epic proportions…
I totally agree – I wish people would stop going on about Jesus. I mean, ffs, he died SO long ago and yet we’re STILL hearing about it the time! I WISH EVERYONE WOULD JUST GET OVER IT ALREADY!
Yeah but to be fair he did some cool party tricks, turning all the water into wine… either that or he had goonbags hidden up his sleeves…
totally the goonbags – i mean, why else would you wear such baggy robes all the time? Homey was stashing the goon in his jacket, that scammy little bastard
If you do a trick, you gotta do it right. Not just some goonbags.
Turn a whole lake into wine and call it spring break!
Now THAT is a neat party trick.
Next, watch as he uses the wine to make BIKINIS DISAPPEAR!!!!!
That’s not a trick, that is a normal part of wine. Was at least at every pool party with wine I went to :-p
But Jesus came back to life… So he’s the world’s first recorded zombie…
You know that people will be going on about the holocaust well into the 2200s, don’t you?
No doubt at all but it will be with a much different tone. We dont talk about the Oklahoma bombing with the same horror, or even the Bali bombing any more with the same horror. Time has a habit not so much of healing wounds but moreso changing them from gaping ones to manageable ones.
I saw 9/11 live on tv. I was on an internet message board when it happened, and someone said there were explosions in NY. I said something smart-ass like “what… again?”, because movies and shows etc at the time frequently had explosions. Watching that on tv really made me wonder if it was the start of World War 3. I didn’t know anyone in NY, I was still upset by it, and in terms of direct impact in my day-to-day life… the most really was a boost in airport security and the cancellation of that WTC scene from the first Spider-Man movie. I’m probably like most Australians with that regard.
But the thing is that it’s not the same as Pearl Harbor. For one, people continue to refer to the date of the terrorists attack as “9/11”, while nobody refers to the date of PH. Two, there are still terrorists out there so the world hasn’t completely moved on and it’s not done and dusted like WW2. Three, most people around today were alive at the time and are aware of it… including 5-7year old kids that lost their parents in the attack. Now I agree that people shouldn’t dwell on the past, but in terms of that tragedy… the way people refer to it are “WTC or the twin towers”, “9/11” and maybe “ground zero”. You can hear Tony Stark in Iron Man talk about the attacks on New York and not think about 9/11 at all, because the context is clearly understood. If the TMNT were doing some ninja pose with Shredder or something and the date was 9/11 it would have been fine. If you had the same poster without that date it would have been fine. But the context is that you have guys jumping out of an exploding building in New York with a 9/11 date… and that’s your PR fail right there by digging up the past which was already buried.
This is kind of the exact thing I’m talking about.
Growing up, my birthday is on December 7, 7th of December 1977, I got reminded by older generations ALL the time ‘You know what else happened on December 7?’ we aren’t part of *that* generation so it has less meaning to us, less intrinsic emotional value. 911 is just a catchphrase. Pearl Harbour is a catchphrase too. It literally was not Pearl Harbour that was bombed, it was a fleet. Pearl Harbour was not the only place bombed as well, there were others but this was the most significant one. So it’s labelled and remembered as ‘Pearl Harbour’. We as humans label things to give them reference points. Why is 9/11 not remembered as ‘The Day the Towers Fell’ instead of the catchy 9/11 instead? Because it’s a label, nothing more.
I get your point but here’s a point: Why are we not applying this same logic to every foreign tragedy? Why do we not rage when a nightclub scene is shown in an asian movie such as THE HANGOVER 3 when the street is trashed by what is looked to be some sort of explosion? Is that not heartless towards the Bali bombing and its victims? The movie even had a moment in a trailer advertising this. Heartless I say.
Why are the Americans allowed to make rather shit movies about the Tsunami that killed over 250,000 people, dwarfing 9/11 150 times over. But it’s ok that Ewan MacGregor and Naomi Watts can make a piece of shit oscar bait film about a movie that killed over a quarter of a MILLION people because fuck it, it’s not America right?
Why the hell is THIS ok:
http://www.moviebuzzers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/the-impossible-poster.jpg
When it clearly depicts the actual tragedy of the situation just for entertainment purposes, not showing the actual tragedy but what happens when a caucasian family holidays there…
But the turtles poster isn’t?
After all, it’s the bloody Channel 6 building April O’Neil works at, it’s NOT the twin towers and people are hyper sensitive over a date they have to start moving on from.
I’ll tell you why, because one involves an American tragedy and one involves a tragedy happening to a borderline third world country. Hypocrisy, Ain’t it grand.
I find it mildly amusing that older people would try to rain on your birthday parade by reminding you of that. =) 9/11 is a catchphrase, but that’s EXACTLY why the association is so powerful… it is THE catchphrase. Heroes in a halfshell… turtle power! Robots in disguise. Gotta catch ’em all. If you say Pearl Harbor, or Port Arthur or the Bali bombings… the general public often know of them but not the date. 9/11 is also easily memorable because it’s the same as the USA’s emergency number. The Hangover 3 doing a bombing is the same as Magneto growing up in Auschwitz. It’s a parallel fictitious story incorporating real life events. That’s no more disrespectful than a Die Hard movie is to 9/11.
Look at a lot of the movies made nowadays… Get Smart, Total Recall, Robocop, Transformers… feel free to insert however many dozen that do exist. Why are they made? It’s recycling ideas using the memorable nostalgia card. Like TMNT, a lot of these things were around prior to 9/11. If you’re old enough to know that TMNT isn’t a new idea from the geniuses at Hollywood, you’re old enough to know about 9/11.
Or a Turtles movie poster to September 11’s memory…
Agree to disagree
The issue is that no one calls Pearl Harbour “December 7th”. 9/11 is known by its date alone.
You’re forgetting that we have to wait 22.3 years before it’s funny.
Hah I know there’s a joke here for this math…
Every time someone brings up 9/11 as this devastating, world changing tragedy I cannot help but think of the Rwandan Genocide that happened just 7 years earlier where around a million people were slaughtered in cold blood.
But hey, they were not white so who cares.
Maybe we shouldn’t move on though….
For all we know this is the reason why kids in the future will say that it was the Turtles who Micheal Bayed the twin towers O_O
This is the problem with naming a tragedy after a date. No other tragedy is called “August 9” or “June 20th”.
Weren’t the world trade centres, square? Not rounded? Personally I didn’t get the reference until I saw an article about sensitive people being offended.
So it was the Foot Clan that was behind 9/11! I knew it!
Oshredder bin Laden?
It’s not that bad.
Blown out of proportion
Exploding building…. blown… heh… you win the unintentional pun of the day award! *hugs*
Perfect name for the winner too might I say lmao
He really is a shithead. 😛
Australian turtles don’t give a shit.
Yobbo Ocker Pub-bound Turtles say “Fuck that 9-11 shit, it’s 11-9 here. Where’s me beer.”
Oi! you mean 12-9 😛
and now Im singing ‘Yobbo Ocker Pub-bound turtles, Yobbo Ocker Pub-bound turtles, Yobbo Ocker Pub-bound turtles, heroes with a schooner, AKKA DAKKA POWER!’
Actually I thought it was late on the 11th for us? I recall having just gotten home, and it was a week night.
I looked it up and apparently the first plane was 8:46am, and NY is 14hrs behind Brisbane(idk about daylight saving at the time), but that would have been about 10:46pm on 9/11 so you’re right. My brother and his g/f wanted to sleep and complained that I was watching the potential start of World War 3.
It was 11/9 here, I’d just got home from joining the army reserves as a wee 17 year old, and we declared war on an unknown enemy :p
Luckily nothing came of that, or it could of been a Futurama moment!
For you it was an insult to the memory of one of the most tragic days in history. For me it was the local release date of the TMNT movie.
This is a bit of a reach.
Are you copying thee m bison, good job tho
Maybe I am 😉
http://38.media.tumblr.com/7973250ec9954d24276189c235f8cf4b/tumblr_mqj3lg57061rawb5do1_500.png
Nicely
I think the bigger controversy here is that we’re getting shafted with the release date *AGAIN*.
These fsckwits setting the release dates for these films bitch and moan about piracy ruining their business, yet at the same time they willfully hold back products from purchase. This industry really need an enema.
I’ve pretty much gotten to the point with these shitty releases, that not only do I not go pay to see it at the movies, but I don’t even pirate it and tell my friends how good it was.
I’ll wait until I can see it for free with zero effort, like on Netflix in 2-3 years.
To all film foriegn film companies, to stop piracy, you need to simultaneously launch all showings of a film on thè SAME day, thus reducing piracy
Oh good grief.
The film United 93 – a movie about those terrorist attacks – was released in the US on 28th April 2006. Which was also the day of the tenth anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre, which remains Australia’s worst “lone gunman” shooting incident. Of course, to a country where such incidents are literally a weekly ocurrence, that may not seem significant, but it was a big deal here, where such incidents are relatively rare.
If you’re going to angst over misplaced cultural sensitivity because a movie release in one country coincides with the anniversary of a tragedy in another country, consider this payback.
If the movie was Falling Down with Michael Douglas, I might tend to agree with you, but you’re kinda comparing apples and oranges – Port Arthur wasn’t a highly organised terrorist operation, MB was just a fucking nutjob who snapped.
You’re quite right, though my thinking is that there were no evil ninja clans nor mutated turtles involved on 11th September 2001, and that date holds no special significance for Australians per se.
Still, as I said, you raise a fair point. Another example might be the flaming skull and crossbones on the poster for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (http://pirates.wikia.com/wiki/Pirates_of_the_Caribbean:_Dead_Man%27s_Chest), which even more prominently showed the date of “July 7” in 2006 – which was the first anniversary of the London Bus Bombings.
THAT’S JUST WHAT THE GOVERNMENT WANTS YOU TO BELIEVE
Suddenly 9/11 conspiracy theories GOT FUCKING AWESOME!
Yeah a lot of people died that day unnecessarily, but come on, I’m so sick of hearing about it. We get it, it happened, move on. There’s so many other tragedies that have happened/are happening in the world, why do they have to keep banging on about this, oh that’s right I forgot because the US is the centre of the Goddamn universe (well they think it is anyway).
Also, who cares about the new Turtles movie anyway? I lost all interest in it when I saw their new look and heard that they were created by Shredder.
You realise the turtles were created by Shredder (albeit indirectly) in the original animated series, right? Which was not what happened in the comics.
Oh ok, I’ve never been massively into the Turtles, but I thought they just mutated from some toxic waste or something in the sewer.
In the original animated series, it was Shredder that dropped the mutagen into the sewers.
That’s not how it played out in the original comics, but that’s just one of a plethora of things that cartoon series changed up. Honestly, they altered so much in that first cartoon from the original comics I’m surprised the creators actually okay’d it all.
I’m a long time TMNT fan, and I’m actually looking forward to this movie. Yes, they are changing some elements of the story, but quite obviously, this isn’t the first time it’s happened. Virtually every iteration of TMNT has changed something.
There you go, you learn something new everyday. Still don’t like their new look though.
If you want some serious nerd trivia get this – the car accident that created the turtles was the exact same incident that gave Matt Murdock (Daredevil) his power.
it’s all about selling merchandise
One bloody month after the states get the movie, i mean come on man the internet will truly ruin it for me before then. Also i don’t think the poster was intentional, is September the 11th such a taboo date now, that we cant have any movie, book, song related to that day
Yes it is, Americans lose their shit over it.
Given how regularly americans tend to lose their shit, it’s amazing they have any left
i think a little sensitivity is called for sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with releasing stuff that date, but when you’re releasing a movie where 4 dudes are leaping from a NYC building that’s just exploded? You’re kinda starting to push the lines of good taste
By putting a version on a torrent site so you can see how bad it really it?
No torrents, just general internet, Comics Alliance and Reddit, I can’t go on a hiatus for a month.
It’s a bad coincidence, thats all.
But I find it hard to believe NO ONE picked it up, not the designer, art director, etc which is weird considering how much the Yanks are obsessed with the whole event.
The poster was probably designed by someone not American or the date was auto filled from a table of release dates and it was a coincidence. Given the trend towards laziness I’m betting the latter.
Personally I found the US bluray art for The Sapphires, putting the white man in front of the black women who beat adversity, far more offensive.
I still remember seeing the trailer for the first Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) movie at the cinema where he suspends some bad guys between the two World Trade Centre towers with his webs, then September the 11th happened and it vanished from existence.
Don’t think that was in the movie, just in the trailer.
Yeah, that’s what I said “in the trailer”.
Edit: Found it.
This trailer was actually pretty cool and I was annoyed that they “had” to get rid of it. A lot of the Marvel villains rob banks, and I love the helicopter twitching like a big insect, even though it seems impractical for Spidey to get the helicopter to that height unless he was running along the buildings and threw it up there.
Remember that time they tried to change the subtitle of the second LOTR movie because it was “The Two Towers” which people said would be linked to the 9/11 tragedy?
so much stuff was either shit canned or pushed back because of september 11. Spiderman was effected, so was the movie Colateral Damage. Even halo was effected by the fact that the reason the covenant were attacking humanity was because of a holy war. That never came back up until the end of halo 2
Metal Gear Solid 2 had a lot of stuff changed in it’s ending.
This September, Ninja turtles stop 9/11.
Oh look, it’s getting worldwide free marketing.
Don’t tell me this wasn’t what they intended all along.
it’s a pretty bold move, Cotton.
But given how quickly it was taken down with zero explanation, I don’t think they expected it (or they did, and the people that write the cheques don’t give a fuck and told the social media team to do as they’re told)
The biggest crime is that it say says September 11 instead of 11th September.
It strikes me as odd that America is so keen to memorialize the date they transformed from the ‘land of the brave and the home of the free’ to the land of the perpetually fucking terrified by everything, eager to sacrifice any freedom you care to name to anyone who can promise some security for it.
You would think that they would consider the date they let the terrorists win to be a point of deep national shame. But this is America… they have no shame.
im just gunna leave this here
http://imgur.com/8YYssmr
wow are we never allowed to move on?