Did Peter Laird actually write this shit? I sure hope not, or he did it on purpose knowing the movie was going to be utter dreck.
So they wrote out Hamato Yoshi completely, and then made so that all Splinter's knowledge of martial arts was because of books......
Man, the original movie's origin story is a masterpiece compared to this. And god knows it doesn't hold a candle to the 2003 or nick series'.
I prefer origins where Splinter starts out as Yoshi and is mutated into a rat. That way he has a more personal relationship with Shredder as well as him being a ninja master making the most sense.
In some versions, like the 1990 movie and original comics, he starts off as a rat. He learns martial arts by studying Yoshi from his cage -- note that he does this BEFORE mutating. So he is one hell of a brilliant rat. While less believable, it has a sense of comicbookyness to it that I still dig. I think the 1990 movie executed it VERY well in that flashback sequence too.
But in this version... sounds like he not only starts as a rat but he learns martial arts from a book he finds. This feels like the LEAST desirable origin possible... not only does he have no personal vendetta against Shredder from previous human experience, but he also has no true connection to martial arts... he simply finds some old book and decides to learn it instead of having it a deeper part of his backstory.
And all this aside, he also looks, from the clips at least, like the most horrifying and ugly version of splinter to date. I wish they'd went with something more like the 1990 movie or something more like the concept art (which you can see in Ultimate Visual History that came out recently)
Course I have not seen the film yet so we'll see, I may be missing important details
Edit: Oh and they cut out that entire sequence with raph being in disguise? starting to get very strong impressions that this film went through a LOT of hacking and changes from their initial shooting script