So now we start in on the villains of the show. We begin with Chris Bradford. Why? Because I FEEL LIKE IT. I started on Shredder, but then I decided "Naaaah, let's mix it up a bit."
As far as I know, Chris is a complete newcomer to the TMNT universe. I even checked the TMNTpedia. All the info on him was from this series, so I'm just gonna roll with the assumption that he's an original and has no predecessor.
Before I begin, I just want to say that I'm sick of putting up the spoiler warnings. I'm just gonna throw it out now that if you come here, you're gonna get spoilers. Maybe not all of them, but a good amount. So prepare to get all the dirt on dear ol' Chrisy here.
We first meet Brad in episode four of the new series, and he's a world-famous martial artist and body builder. He is introduced to Mikey under the premise of friendship. Well, actually Mikey sort of ambushes him after Chris accepts his friend request on some Facebook-esque website without knowing who Mikey really is (obviously). At first he's all friendly and nice, but the reason for this is, surprise surprise, because he's Shredder's top pupil and right-hand man, so obviously he's trying to pump our favorite nunchucker for info. Long story short (since I don't want to ruin the whole episode) he betrays Mikey and is revealed to be a bad guy. Now, his history with the Shredder hasn't been delved into at all, but I'm guessing that Shredder picked him up out of the gutter when he was nothing, or took notice of his natural talent as a martial artist. I liked this guy. A lot. He was awesome. He got his butt kicked by the turtles every time he went up against them of course, but that's not really a shock since, y'know, everyone gets their butt kicked by the turtles unless they're Shredder himself.
So, yeah, he's pretty cool... Until episode nine, where he suddenly becomes a total DUMBASS and turns himself into THIS:
Creepy, much? Oh, yes. Very much so. Wanna know HOW he does this? He PURPOSELY (and this is where you just have to face-palm and groan at stupidity) breaks the glass to a defunct bomb that holds like a lake's worth of mutagen. If you don't know what mutagen is, it's the stuff that turned the turtles and Splinter into their current forms. It seemingly mutates whoever touches it into whatever organic object they last touched. So Bradford, having last touched a dog, got turned into, you guessed it, a gigantic dog monster now called Dogpound. Now, WHY does he willingly get himself doused in this stuff? Well, at the time he's cornered by the turtles, and while they wouldn't kill him, the Shredder has made it clear that by that point, it's success or death.
So I've come up with two theories as to his thought process: The first one is that he didn't know that the glowing green stuff would do something bad to him, which, to me, says volumes about his intellectual level since pretty much anyone would stay away from glowing liquid on principle that things that glow are rarely safe, with the exception of glow in the dark food products. But mutagen is most definitely NOT a food product, so he really doesn't have an excuse there.
The second theory is that he figured that, hell, he's lost to the turtles enough times that one more failure means automatic death via Shredder-rage. Since he's probably seen what the Shredder-rage does to people, he might have figured that it's better to kill himself than have his boss to it for him. So being pushed off a building by a wave of what might very well be radioactive poison might be a quicker and more painless death. I have to admit that this logic, wanting to escape a horrible death, is one I can get behind. I do not now, nor have I ever condoned suicide, but his reason for considering it is sound if you're looking at it from his perspective. I think he's stupid for wanting to, but I can see why he would.
Bradford's transformation is ultimately a good thing though, since his new form is much stronger than his last one. Unfortunately this also means that he can kiss that multi-million dollar fighting franchise goodbye. He might be able to keep the money, but the way to get it is long gone. And since he now looks like he weighs roughly about half a ton, he's probably spending a good amount of that on raw meat for dinner. And if he's not spending it on meat, he probably will on grooming fees. I mean, seriously. A coat THAT SIZE?! With all the fighting he does?! When does he have time to get himself a flea bath?
Probably in the future he'll either be turned back into a human, or be destroyed one way or another. I hope he's around for a while though. Other than the idiot way in which he was transformed, I really like what they've done with him. We'll see where he goes from here.
No comments:
Post a Comment