This would have been unfathomable in my days.

Obviously, as any zoologist can tell you, Turtles that are ninjas know ninjutsu. Certainly, they might know some other arts, especially given today's strand of mixed martial arts. But one would be safe, and perfectly justified, in assuming they would predominately know ninjutsu. Otherwise, they would be called Teenage Mutant Karate Turtles, or Teenage Mutant Mixed Martial Arts Turtles.

This may seem at first to be a trivial quibble from someone who is too much of a conservative purist, and you may picture a bitter old man overcome by nostalgia cavilling at minor artistic changes. This is not the case however, and there is more to uncover beneath the seemingly superficial surface.

First, there is a clear contemptuous attitude to past classics in today's art (in the widest sense possible) world, and many artists (in an even wider sense) think they can upstage their artistic forefathers, and bring something new to a perfectly set-up table. Unfortunately, the wise saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", has become lost in the annals of history.

Secondly, the internet means that nowadays a film director can't choose to ignore facts or canon; in other words, he cannot decide not to do his homework, must pay attention to what has been already said or discovered, and cannot simply work in total disregard of collective wisdom without the least effort on his part to explain why, and in some cases how, certain things work differently than expected, even if this explanatory exercise is done in a mediocre way. Otherwise, no licence would save such a director from the infinite army of internet critters pointing out the blunder, and fora all over the internet brimming with enthusiastic nerds who finally found meaning in their lives would explode in condemnation and become filled with raging comments and vitriol.

Hell hath no fury like an internet nerd scorned.

The latest film by Christopher Nolan, Interstellar, is an excellent example of the interwebs serving as a repository for audience wisdom and response criticism: the internet has become inundated with discussions on the science behind the film, and debates on the plot's paradoxes.

The two have far-reaching consequences, which is what lies beneath the surface and what we are about to explore in our yellow-green submarine.

In the first instance, we must face dumbnation for our sins. Works are usually changed for the worse, dumbing down plots and concepts too complex for today's mass audiences. The new film of the famous Turtles is a prime example. Rumours had it the story would be changed to accommodate Mr Bay's "vision": the Turtles would now come from space. This means that the original ethos of the story would be lost.

Originally, the turtles were mutants: normal turtles mutating into monsters due to contact with a mutagen following an accident involving a truck carrying radioactive waste. It had serious environmental undertones, and underlined the dangers of toxic waste. This message has been completely discarded and the film is now about "badass" turtles being badass, saving the world from a guy in a mask. But while the turtles might be hard at work saving the world, the film isn't. The original comics had a message to convey; the film doesn't.

Ironically, the original comic was meant to be a parody of four comics popular at the time.

The second scenario, introducing us to the underworld of internet nerds, means that a check has been introduced, which, if used wisely, can ensure better products and services, and remove the rubbish that is almost force-sold to us daily. And this not only in film. Hopefully, reviews of products are only the first step: a recent article on democracy in The Economist suggested that better governance can be achieved through more direct democracy thanks to the internet.

The internet, thanks to its various fora and social network sites, can bring people together in denouncing governments, ensuring the respect of democratic rule and bringing justice by shedding light on the murkier areas of governance, which would remain inaccessible and unreachable through the old limited and slow means of communication. Alternatively, it can serve as a medium through which people can denounce Bay's corrupt vision of our beloved Turtles, reminding him that these are proficient in ninjutsu and that they are, in fact, mutants, hence the name. If Bay was right, they would be called Teenage Alien Karate Turtles.

At my nephew's birthday party, my niece and her friends staged two impromptu plays which I must say were quite entertaining. One was titled 'Cinderella, with a twist'. It was the story we all know, with a twist at the end. We all enjoyed the offering, but my mother opined that classics should be left untouched and any new interpretations should be embodied in new artistic offerings. To which the children's parents objected, informing us that tweaking fictional classics was a common assignment given to students in order to test their abilities and engage their creative thinking.

I could not take sides in the debate, and I mostly kept my mouth shut. I could see valid points to both arguments. I understand the effectiveness and usefulness of learning how to adapt other works to one's own artistic vision, and the benefits this offers to the cultivation of one's own creativity, but I can also see its negative effects: the disrespect to works of art, and the mentality it instils, bearing overconfidence in people, who start thinking they can "adjust" a masterpiece to create a work of art. Most of the time, the masterpiece is mauled.

This is not an innovation either: I remember back in the day, my friend, an artist, had been given an assignment where he was asked to choose a famous painting and alter it slightly- enough to leave his mark, and possibly change the interpretation. My friend did a great job (he inserted a bloody hand in one of my favourite paintings, Vermeer's The Milkmaid); and yet I cringed at the creatively abominable result, and felt cheated, almost insulted by this act of artistic vandalization. Perhaps this was the artistic intent. Perhaps that was exactly the point behind the assignment. One may think me unnecessarily conservative, not avant-garde enough, not endowed with the artistic bravery so common in the art world, but I couldn't shake this feeling that a great disrespect for the sanctity of the artwork had been shown.

The answer to my prayers may well be the internet. Thanks to negative fan e-mail, the Turtles remained true to their nature. The online backlash to Bay's "artistic expression" ensured this. Bay himself denied that the Turtles would ever swim away from their origins, and cited the Utroms: the alien race that was working on the mutagen in the original comics. While this is true, we can never know what Bay intended to do with that premise - stretching it to the ends of the universe could well have been it. What is certain, however, is that the internet stepped in to make sure this black hole would be closed prior production.

In the end, the web may well save the day thanks to its armies of geeks and nerds populating its fora: a true, multicultural, citizen's gathering of art critics. It may prove to provide the necessary compromise: allowing alteration of artworks but stepping in to denounce idiotic ones. Naturally, this does introduce questions on the competence of the judges themselves, in a perverse twist to the famous phrase: quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Wait! What have I done?