Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I'll admit that I was at first only a reluctant fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons back in the late 80's and early 90's, if for no other reason than I was pretty much forced to watch it by the simple fact that my brother and sister both watched it while they babysat me. But as time got on I did grow to genuinely enjoy the series. I mean, who can watch the show and not laugh at the bumbling antics of Shredder and his goons as they try to gain the advantage against the turtles? So when I heard that a TMNT movie was in the works (it came out as I recall in the summer of my tenth year back in 1990), I was at least willing to give it a whirl.
It should be noted that in quite a few important ways the movie is as unlike to the cartoon as night from day. The actors aren't even the same, for one thing. Not that this detracted from my enjoyment of the film or its two sequels, it didn't. But certain elements of the characters' past, Splinter and Shredder's in particular, were altered, more I think to be more true to the comics than anything. Splinter goes from being the mutated form of a Ninja warrior named Hamato Yoshi to being the pet of said Ninja. Raphael, who in the cartoon was always the wsecracker of the group, becomes a much more solitary, angry character often given to acts of rashness that nearly cost him his life. This behavior almost creates a rift in the turtles at one point, but they reunite in an effort to save their beloved master from Shredder. There's another character much changed from his cartoon persona. Gone is the often petulant, whiny villain, to be replaced by a sinister and ruthless criminal mastermind with an ominous voice. In short he changes from someone to be laughed at to a man to avoid at any cost.
All in all I was very impressed with the movies. I only wish I still had my VHS copies, but then again I so rarely watch those anymore that it seemed more advisable to get them on DVD, which I intend to do next month if finances permit. So if you haven't already seen them, pop on over to your local video rental and pick up the three TMNT films. I personally liked the first one best, but Secret of the Ooz was close behind. The third one took a bit of getting used to but I eventually did conclude that I liked it just as much as the others.

This movie, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, should go down in history as one of the truly grandest achievements in this epoch of human civilization. This is about as close to perfection as can be reached when telling a story about turtles.

Wanna know how to make a movie? THIS is how you make a movie. Specifically a movie of the comic book/superhero genre. Let me explain exactly why this works, and exactly why the following movies in this genre fails.

--Failures:

Transformers // Spider-Man 3 // Superman Returns//Elektra // The Punisher // The Crow // Star Wars Episodes 1-3

All horrible movies. There's more to this list but I'm gonna limit it to these since I've written reviews on most of them, and my opinions are already explained.

Wanna know what all those other movies have in common? They share one or both of the following traits: they either 1) cater too much to kids, or 2) lack characters with realistic emotions.

Trying to make a comic book/superhero movie that's catered to kids is synonymous with making it for MORONS. You go out of your way to cater it to simple minds, and you have a simple, moronic movie lacking all the fundamentals on what constitutes a STORY with characters. It means that all bets are off, and you're no longer carefully crafting art. Any semblance of our reality is out the door, and all you're left with on screen are empty entities moving around, making sounds, and doing actions arbitrarily (e.g. every movie I named above, and unfortunately the two sequels to this movie).

NINJA TURTLES part 1 is a movie that can be enjoyed by kids, but they didn't completely dumb it down and insult their intelligence, that's why even watching it now I can enjoy it. If someone described a movie to you as being dark, and featuring complex characters, a movie with talking turtles may not be the first guess. The turtles may as well not even been turtles, this could've been a movie about four human brothers, and it would've worked the same way because of the great characterization. That's how you know a movie is good, when it doesn't rely on its "gimmick" to get by.

3 points that jump out at me:

--Splinter. I'm in complete absolute amazement at how UNCHEESY he was. The most amazing thing about his character were his LINES. I mean, this dude says some of the most profound things I've ever heard in my life, let alone in a movie, LET ALONE from a disheveled, talking rat puppet. Everything he said had such weight and substance. He was not stereotyped as some elderly martial arts master with trite, cliché "wise man" phrases. This was truly an endearing character.

--Raphael. Look at the list of movies that I wrote up top. Combine all the atoms that make up each individual character from those movies, and they still wouldn't hold a candle to the weight and complexity that just a single molecule that Raphael carries. End of story.

--The rooftop fight. Remember the part where Shredder has Leo on the ground, and tells Donny, Raph, and Mikey to throw away their weapons? If you've read any of my other rants, you'd know that a big thing for me is for characters to react realistically in situations. This scene here epitomizes what I mean. After Shredder tells them to throw their weapons away, they specifically had Raph ponder it for a quick second, then begrudgingly throw his weapon away with a grunt, followed by Mikey (who also grunts, a subtle touch) and Donny. This perfectly shows the dynamics of their relationship to each other at work here, because in this type of situation you would hesitate and wait to see what your leader does. It's just like if you and two co-workers are doing something, and then a CEO type person who you've never seen before walks in and makes a comment/questions you three, most times you would let the default leader among you (whether that assignment is subjective due to personality type, or more tangible, such as job position) do the talking for you. And that's what happened here. Mikey and Donny had no clue whether to surrender their weapons or not, their leader and brother is on the ground, about to get killed, so they had to wait to see what their other older brother would do, and then follow suit. This was a great example of great writing, and I love the subtle touch of having Mikey copy Raph's grunt, just like a younger brother would do.

Action movies of today can learn from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. If you have good characters, the story almost doesn't matter, as it pretty much writes itself. All the viewer cares about at this point is to see if the characters all make it out ok. There's no need to concoct some over the top plot line as a means of being interesting or original, if we don't care about your characters, we couldn't care less on where the story takes these 1-dimensional caricatures.

TMNT really delivers on all fronts, good story, great acting, great directing and amazing action from guys in animatronic rubber suits.

This movie is a perfect blend of the dark atmosphere of the original comics and the zany fun of the cartoon series, all the while maintaining a feeling of reality which takes it to the next level.

The voice characterizations are right on and the acting from April and Casey Jones gives the validity to the story that it was really in need of.

The first confrontation between Casey Jones and Raph in the park is one of the more memorable moments, while the Foot ninja attack on April's apartment is an amazing fight scene even by today's standards.

I almost wouldn't consider this a kids movie, even though that's how it's marketed. It's more along the lines of Spider-Man, than say, Power Rangers. It got some "Damn It's" and the violence it pretty intense at times.

Really a great movie and worth your money.

well i say this was a great movie but sometimes the turles say damn but thats ok

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of the few films in which I personally did not find any significant weakness even after many viewings. From the direction, to the acting, to the storyline, to the score, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has the word classic written all over it, and it really is not much of a surprise that it is now considered by many to be one of the top five movies of all time. Perhaps when it comes to cinematic techniques Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has not been as revolutionary as Citizen Kane, but its influence on motion pictures is comparable. Rarely a movie has defined or re-defined a genre as much as this one did for "comic book movies", but its influence goes well beyond that.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' influence has been so big through the years that elements of it can be found in virtually every "comic book movie" nowadays; almost every comedy featuring a turtle in the last few years has spoofed something in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The mutated once pet rat a-la Master Splinter has become one of the most established figures in the public's imagination.

But to say that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is simply "influential" is to diminish its true qualities, and so is to describe it simply as "a movie about mutated ninja turtles who eat a lot of pizza". The Foot Clan is certainly the main focus the story revolves around, but although the movie never tries to forcedly insert separate subjects it contains an amount of psychological and social subtexts that cannot be overlooked. Considerations on how the social environments changes us, on how moral values appear different from different point of views, on how violence can destroy a human soul, and on how power can corrupt an individual are deeply blended into a story that stays practically always true to complete realism, and the result is a picture of astonishing efficacy and believability.

As good as the direction and the story are, it would be unfair not to consider the major role that the actors' performances had in the cinematic triumph that was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Praised by many as the best cast to ever appear in an American movie, all the cast in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles succeeds in portraying complex, three-dimensional characters without ever making a slip. The exceptional portrayals of Donatello and Michelangelo respectively by Leif Tilden and Michelan Sisti, the performances by Elias Koteas, Toshirô Obata and Judith Hoag as Casey Jones, Master Tatsu and April O'Neil, the ruthless Shredder played by James Saito -- as well as more than a few other roles -- are all perfect for the movie, and they all succeed in making us believe these are real people, not just actors. We are not watching a central character and a bunch of incomplete figures that revolve around him: although Raphael is the character that gets the most screen time, everybody is the center of this world in his own way. The movie makes it possible for the viewers to identify with different characters and to observe how their personality and story fits in, and it does it much more effectively than many bloated multiple-storyline movies that came out in the last few years.

The movie opens to a montage of crime scenes in New York City as April O'Neil (Judith Hoag) gives her news report concerning the recent surge of crime that continues to plague the city.The Shredder is a powerful man, and it was not without the use of crime that he achieved this position during the course of his life. The montage of crime scenes gives a perfect setting of where and how the Shredder's power extends; from skateboards, to stereo systems, to an innocent old woman's purse, The Shredder has links to people ready to steal such things in the name of the Foot Clan. Some are trustworthy, some are not, but thanks to his intelligence and intuit the Shredder can almost always distinguish the two.

However, this is 1990, times are changing, and to one of the young people working for the Foot Clan, the Shredder's ideas are becoming obsolete. The Shredder believes that the new trend in old style ninja fighting and sports equipment being used as weaponry, is too dangerous for the average Foot soldier and will eventually end up destroying his clan; while he has long trained his soldiers in the art of ninja fighting, the chief of police was ready to close one eye. Jose Canseco baseball bats are another thing.

To this day, the Shredder was able to keep things together while maintaining his criminal power, but things will brutally change when a powerful team of old style ninja fighters, each named after one of the great renaissance artists, enters the picture. The refusal of the Shredder to yield to the power of the Ninja Turtles, and his having kidnapped their father and sensei, Master Splinter, will ignite a war that will cost many lives, and that will see Raphael, Splinter's angriest, most emotionally distraught son who has a tendency to run off alone and directly into trouble, find a "friend" in a ruthless vigilante fighter named Casey Jones.

I purposely decided not to spoil much about the plot because I believe that the film is perfectly enjoyed without knowing anything in advance, and -- believe it or not -- there are still quite a lot of people who have never seen this movie. There are multiple scenes that manage to create an incredible tension, various twists, and although like any other masterpiece Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can be watched knowing the whole story beforehand and still be a phenomenal experience, I believe it is always a pleasure to see it for the first time and enjoy its multiple climaxes. Besides, to outline such complicated characters and such an emotionally intense story in a short review like this one would be inadmissible.

There has been much speculation on how the events in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic books created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the books the film is based on, could be an exposé of true facts. Many believe that the character of Casey Jones, for instance, was based on Jason Voorhees. I won't go into that: frankly, I have no idea whether these voices are reliable, although the Jason Voorhees reference seems obviously quite believable.

The cinematography of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is dark and tasteful, and colors are used perfectly to give a true feel of the 90's. There is a fair amount of violence, though rarely gratuitous.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles certainly doesn't need my recommendation. The film is universally considered one of the best of all time, and the scene in which Raphael first meets Casey Jones alone is the stuff of legends.

"You will listen now. my Master Yoshi's first rule was "Possess the right thinking." Only then can one receive the gifts of strength, knowledge, and peace. I have tried to channel your anger, Raphael, but more remains. Anger clouds the mind. Turned inward it is an unconquerable enemy. You are unique among your brothers, for you choose to face this enemy alone. But as you face it, do not forget them, and do not forget me. I am here, my son." -- Master Splinter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)