Paramount Pictures Australia uploaded to their Twitter account a poster promoting the Australian release of their upcoming film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but quickly pulled if after it received a wave of backlash from people thinking it inappropriate.

And what was so inappropriate about it? The poster shows the Turtles jumping off an exploding building, free-falling towards the viewer — beneath the movie title is the release date: September 11.

You can check out the poster here below.

Many offended people took to Twitter with responses like “WHO thought that poster would be a good idea considering date?? Or did they just think no one would notice or indeed care? #TMNT”

The @ParamountAU Twitter accountsoon after took it down and has made no mention of the poster since.

Poster

At first, I saw the negative reactions and didn’t even realize what the problem was. If someone hadn’t pointed out the 9/11 date on the poster, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Actually, even now, I don’t think anything of it and I have no problem saying that, considering I’m a New Yorker and I was there on 9/11, I saw the buildings on fire as my train went over the Manhattan Bridge, and then later watched from the window of my nearby office building as the second tower fell. And then had to walk 80 blocks to what I hoped was safety after locating my presumed-dead best friend who worked at WTC and was a little late to work that day, exiting his train station to be covered in debris. I then had to go into Manhattan two days later to return to work, because as New Yorkers, that’s what we do. We go on. At the airport on Sunday while waiting for my flight out of San Diego after Comic-Con, I met a family from the West Coast, who, after hearing where I was from, immediately asked where I was on 9/11. I’ve been getting that question whenever I travel ever since that tragedy occurred.

Every day for years now, my bus to work passes the World Trade Center and I “never forget” as they say, so I don’t need to READ INTO THINGS. I live them every day. In order to move on with our lives, we New Yorkers (and those of the surrounding states that commute into Manhattan) have to be somewhat desensitized to things that would otherwise “remind us” (as if we’d ever forgot) of what happened that day and that we are essentially heading back into the “danger zone” every day in spite of what happened.

So look, the Australia branch of Paramount obviously didn’t mean anything by the poster, and truthfully, I’d be happier if no one took “offense” to an innocuous poster. I could see people maybe getting upset if this was the poster/release date combo for the U.S. or if it was displayed in theaters in New York with a 9/11 release date, but I doubt the people of Australia would be struck by what they see in this poster. In the past, most of us outside of Australia would never even have ever laid eyes on this poster, but with the internet, map lines become blurred. Let’s not fret over things like movie posters for fictional characters.

And with that, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Thanks for letting me rant.

[Source: Buzzfeed | Daily Dot]

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