If you grew up in the eighties, the term “Ninja Turtles” was about as ubiquitous as “please” or “thank you”. Children the world over would get up early every Saturday morning to get a glimpse at what those zany, pizza-eating mutants were up to this time. For my little brother, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was so all encompassing that he’d refer to the entire batch of Saturday morning cartoons simply as “Ninja Turtles”. If we were watching He-Man is was “Ninja Turtles”. If he wanted mom to tape G.I. Joe it was “Ninja Turtles”. So from 6 A.M. until noon, everything on television was effectively “Ninja Turtles”. And looking back, it’s tough to blame him for the misconception.
Turtles were everywhere. Comics, cartoons, video games, Halloween outfits, audio tapes, action figures, music videos and Vanilla Ice. The guys basically steamrolled the wants and desires of all young boys. Like why do I still remember the phrase “Check Splinter – he’s a radical rat!” but I can’t even remember my first communion or my fifth birthday? Even things that didn’t have the turtles name on it still undeniably had the turtles stamp. One video game I remember playing as a kid was Blaster Master, where a kid’s little frog escapes the aquarium, lands on some weird ooze and ends up mutating into a monster. It was practically awesome before it even started because of the similarities to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon prologue. There is no denying it – until the turtles went to feudal Japan, they were on top of the world.
It’s now, unbelievably, the 25th anniversary since their comic book inception and now the guys in green are finally going Blu. Warner Brothers has put together once of the coolest collectable (nay, gnarly) packages the Blu-ray medium has yet seen, and has bundled together all three original live-action films as well as the recent animated reimaging. There’s even a comic, character cards, a signed sketch and a beanie (that the collector in me refuses to remove from the package) to make this the ultimate Ninja Turtle nostalgia experience. One thing, though…how do these movies hold up after all the years? Is it really something worth revisiting? I certainly don’t have any desire to track down an old Stretch Armstrong or Nerf gun, but hey, maybe these reptiles named after Italian artists are worthy of similar canonization. As my little brother would say ever Saturday morning…"It’s Turtle Time."
By the time the first film came out, it already had a multitude of parallel franchises to appease. There were already comics, cartoons, video games and action figures . The comics were darker, in debt to the Frank Miller neo-noir style, while the cartoons and video games appealed to a much younger demographic. The movie thus had two vastly different audiences it had to straddle, or to speak in pizza terms, it needed something with the works. Like they did with Critters four years prior (it gets a fun, self-deprecating nod as Raphael scoffs when he sees it on a movie marquee), New Line manages to make a film for everyone. Kiddy and goofy enough to never leave the kids without some catch phrase to blurt or ninja move to mimic, while dark enough to appeal to those raised on other comic book adaptations like Robocop or martial arts imports. What other kids movie features a James Cagney impression and a nod to The Grapes of Wrath?
The movie gives us an in to the turtle legacy via Channel 3 news reporter April O’Neil (Judith Hoag) when they rescue her from a mugging. Not really dissimilar from the same year’s Robocop 2, Manhattan is overrun with crime, and even the kids are in on it. Through April we learn through some really blurry stop motion flashbacks that the turtles bathed in some radioactive ooze (didn’t all misunderstood heroes in the eighties?) and that splinter got his ear cut off by Shredder. There’s also Canada’s finest export, frequent Cronenberg and Egoyan collaborator Elias Koteas, leading the way as the brawn over brains Casey Jones. Fitting that the Canadian is identified by his hockey mask and stick. Anyway, the rest is more or less fighting, Asian mysticism and pizza.
While all the clunky jokes and forced catch phrases certainly put the picture in a time and place, the film still separates itself from the pack of kiddy fighting franchises by its insistence on preaching mind over matter. While the Splinter here is clearly a Yoda clone, it’s still impressive that much of the first half of the movie is spent stressing how violence should be a last ditch effort rather than a go to solution. The bought between Raphael and Casey Jones, where he essentially calls out Jones for his brute sadistic tactics is actually progressive. How did we go so wrong with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers? It ain’t high art, hell, it’s even a bit racist (“Amy I behind again on my Sony payment, or what?” April says to one of Shredder’s ninjas) but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has that hip, irreverent charm that made New Line Cinema the king of independent eighties entertainment.
Before the first was even finished oozing out profits, New Line already had the second storming theaters in the spring of 1991. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. To make sure you know you aren’t in an arthouse film, the film begins with a lengthy montage of people all over Manhattan eating pizza. Cops, yuppies, Italians, blacks…everyone loves pizza, and everyone loves the Turtles! Cowabunga! Sorry about that. Anyway, Shredder’s back from the dump and he’s got his hand on the ooze that mutated the turtles, and now he’s planning on mutating some monsters of his own. The turtles must address their origins and Shredder must address his greed, but know that the pizza conquers all.
So what’s new for round two? Well, April got a whole lot hotter, this time played by Paige Turco (now that’s the babe I remember from the cartoons!). Corey Feldman passes this time on the Donatello voiceover duties, while Casey Jones is all but forgotten. The bigger budget means the turtles team up most infamously with Vanilla Ice for the legendary “Ninja Rap” finale (“Have you ever seen a turtle get down?!”). The bigger budget requires a broader appeal, so the film has a noticeably lighter tone, although it doesn’t really get any goofier than the first. It’s more accessible but it doesn’t entirely abandon its darker roots; in fact, all the story involving the ooze and its history is certainly meatier than the tiny plot anchovies of the first. By almost all accounts this is a first-rate follow-up to the first, except for one thing…
I’ll never forget how disappointed I was when I first saw the live action Bebop and Rocksteady. That memory alone pretty much supersedes any other memory I have of the second film. I mean, just look at the screenshot above. These guys are supposed to be a fucking rhino and a pig. What the hell is that? A werewolf and a dinosaur? Okay, so they weren’t actually “Bebop” or “Rocksteady” (actually Tokka and Rahzar) but every Turtle fan knows they were supposed to be. They were such a seminal part of the television show, the fact that they weren’t included in the original was already a massive oversight, so with Ooze we all thought they’d get it right. No. Instead, two of the biggest loser henchmen to ever grace the movies. Even back then my brother and I knew it was sacrilege to even touch their action figures when Bebop and Rocksteady were in their presence. B&R were the hip antithesis to the turtles (like Shredder was to Splinter) and without them the balance of the world is just totally off. New Line sure faltered there, but at least the series would never get as bad as Critters 4, right?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in Time is a piece of shit. We know now that a series always jumps the shark when the central characters get displaced to a gimmicky alternate world (just ask Critters 4, Leprechaun 4, Jason X, et al.) but I guess in 1993 nobody knew. Somehow, someone at the house of Shaye thought “Hey, let’s send the turtles back to feudal Japan!” They had Casey Jones back, they had Feldman returning as Donatello and they hung on to the better April from Ooze. The stars had aligned for the ultimate Turtle fable, but instead they sent them the Kurosawa route for a third grade knockoff. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Hell, even the Ghoulies got to go to college.
Instead, some guy who’s not Shredder (at least make him an ancestor, or something!) working with some corrupt British imperialist. Proving his worth as an actor, Koteas also plays a dual role , one a bearded British prisoner and the other briefly as Mr. Hockey Mask back in Manhattan. Speaking of Manhattan, the priests that were displaced through time in exchange for the turtles are starting to get restless in various fish out of water, you-mean-I-can’t-go-inside-the-television kind of things. Keeping the Oriental racism from the first film, the monks memorably dance at a night club to Baltimora’s “Tarzan Boy” to reaffirm that non-whites are feral, unlearned creatures. The Turtles get Vanilla Ice though, so I guess being white ain’t all that much better. The green guys get their own turtle out of water stuff as well, learning tender lessons like how to fly a kite and how to eat seaweed.
As bad as it sounds, it’s not really the story that makes Turtles in Time by far the weakest of the live action trilogy. It’s the fact that the story is so generic – you could place any hero in the turtles’ place and the story really wouldn’t change much. Put in Tom Cruise and you get The Last Samurai. They find out zero history about themselves, their arch nemesis or anything that isn’t some lame buzz word. The other part that really grates is that the turtles have turned into walking pop culture regurgitation. Every sentence they say pays lip service to some terrible catch phrase we would have like to have left back with the Teletubbies. “Help, I’m a turtle and I can’t get up?” Really, Donatello? They even say “Shwing!” when April converts her costume to a dress. Any personality they used to have has been replaced with a shallow sense of hegemony, with them mere mouthpieces for control, capitalism and all other things that help them sell merchandise. When they all reconvene at the end for a dance to some techno tune from the soundtrack the turtles effectively dance themselves to the grave.
What a long burial it turned out to be. While it only made a quarter of what the original film made, and close to half of what the sequel did, Turtles in Time still turned a tidy profit. Still, from what Wikipedia describes as “development hell”, it took 14-years to revive the reptiles from shell shock. Gone are the live action, Jim Henson's costumes and instead the turtles make their way through CGI in TMNT. Although the title may suggest a return to the roots, these aren’t the turtles we remember. Leonardo is a gravel voiced renegade, Donatello does tech support and Michelangelo eats pizza and does children’s parties. Raphael is a biker and April now lives in Central America (where racism this time comes in the form of bad “The jungle can be a very dangerous place!” Tony Montana-isms). It’s the present day, so the turtles do recognize the fact that they are getting old. So old in fact that instead of doing battle with a contemporary like Shredder, they’re instead fighting prehistoric demons revived at an art exhibit. I guess they just couldn’t shake that time travel stuff from the third film, could they?
Seriously, what do we have to do to get a turtles movie with Shredder? It’s like making a Star Wars movie without Darth Vader or, uh, a Critters movie without Don Opper. Even if it’s back in Manhattan and filled with all the good guy regulars, this still can’t help but feel like a diversion before the real story gets back on track. The CGI is all too textured and motions too fluid, it too feels more like a videogame cut scene rather than the real thing. Even the third live action film had a tangible charm to the way these big rubbery creatures were interacting with real humans in real environments. It gave the turtles a special quality, they were something truly different in an ordinary world. There was even a degree of performance art in the way the stunt men could get those giant suits to still do back flips and roundhouse kicks. Call me old fashioned, but there’s always something special about the real thing.
In a way, TMNT is more notable as being the true document of New Line’s death. The old pulp that independent juggernaut used to churn out in the eighties and nineties was something really special. They always had a penchant for the perverse, their movies always taking familiar genres or stories and mixing them up with weirdness, whether it be turning the slasher into a deadly dream world in A Nightmare on Elm Street, Gremlins into swearing, space traveling aliens in Critters or hard nosed rap into positive party flicks via House Party. Then they made Lord of the Rings and squandered the rest of their last ten years trying to emulate that success with the flops that bankrupt them like The Golden Compass or Bob Shaye’s own The Last Mimzy.
When New Line Cinema died, so too did that punk presence they had, and now we’re left to watch all their classic properties cleaned up and sanitized under the larger Warner wing. TMNT is the first big casualty, a soulless and empty tech demo of a movie. Sad to say, but I’d much rather be back in feudal Japan than with these hollow shells of what once was. I don’t know if the world has grown too old for big animals in suits, but I hope for the sake of the series that the turtles go back to being tubular in those big rubber outfits. Maybe then will “Ninja Turtles” go back to meaning something more than just the Saturday morning cartoons we all remember as kids.
presentation...
All four films are VC1 encoded in 1080p, with the live action films 1.85:1 and the CG film 2.35:1. The first three look noticeably better than those old New Line DVDs but still have some problems. The first looks the worst, with a layer of grain throughout and an overall softness to the image. Nothing ever really pops. Also, the stop motion flashbacks look really bad, like VHS worthy, with a muddy, blurry appearance that’s almost tough to make out. Secret of the Ooze has a little less grain but still looks softer than it should. Again, it looks clean but nothing really jumps out. Being made a few years later and with a bigger budget, Turtles in Time actually looks a large leap better than the previous two films. The opening silhouettes over the rising sun and everything else, really, bursts with vivid colors and solid sharpness. You can see all the little textured dimples on the turtle faces and sometimes it really looks like they are right there rather than on a screen. Grain is almost non-existent and overall Part III looks fantastic. The CG TMNT naturally is without grain or blemish, being all computer rendered, and it looks as synthetic and smooth as it should. That I don’t like the overly textured world is more a preference rather than a fault of the visuals. The first two films could still use some serious restoration work, but they still do benefit from the Blu-ray upgrade.
The sound also gets a nice Blu-ray boost with new Dolby TrueHD 5.1 remixes for all four films. While there isn’t much or any separation between channels, and the dialogue stays staunchly up front, the sound space has really been beefed up. The LFE really works hard, maybe too hard, in bassing up the punches, kicks and musical cues throughout. A bit of ambience also makes its way to the backs as well, although it’s still not really discrete or directional. For a retro remix, these are some of the better mixes out there – remaining faithful to the initial stereo mixes, but amping them up with a fuller sound. TMNT was naturally released in 5.1 and it is easily the best sounding of the bunch – but who wants to watch that, anyway?
extras...
First thing’s first – the packaging on this sucker is just awesome. The pizza box actually has grease stains on the front and back and is made in full out cardboard. The discs look like pizzas and even the character cards are housed in something that looks like a food menu. There’s a huge comic book of the first film included, a sketch with a reproduction signature and even a beanie toque to show your turtle fandom loud and proud. With an initial impression like that the extras have to be awesome, right? It’s the turtles’ 25th anniversary after all! Trailers. Yep, that’s all we get for the first three films. Trailers. And an ad for the Wii game. What kind of anniversary is that? Where is my Corey Feldman commentary? Where is my Elias Koteas walkthrough of Manhattan? Where my video apology from Stuart Gillard for directing Turtles in Time (and RocketMan and Paradise while he’s at it)? Sadly, there’s nothing.
Even the Blu-ray menus are as bare as they can get, with a static image and a virtually empty pop-up menu. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the highest grossing independent film of all time, how can it not have had a single extra after all these years on home video? It was such a monumental film for New Line, you’d think they’d do it justice by celebrating it with at least a retrospective doc if not commentaries and the like. How cool would it be to see that notoriously awful “Behind the Shells” concert VHS tape? Or how about hearing creators Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman talk about what they thought of the films, the franchising or just Ninja Turtles in general. Even if they wouldn’t do it, almost everyone who had a significant part in these movies hasn’t really done a whole lot else other than television, so it shouldn’t be too tough to get them to relive the magic. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be.
TMNT does have some extras, but it’s a real blasé assortment of press stuff and work in progress renders. Writer/director Kevin Munroe does a commentary on the film and he starts it off by talking about how “cool” it is to do a commentary. Ugh. Since the movie was made by guys sitting in front of computers, there really isn’t much story to tell. Munroe finds things to talk about, though, but none are much of interest. Munroe also voices over most of the other supplements, which include three additional rendered scenes, two storyboard to CG sequences, a rough alternate ending (where Casey Jones proposes!) and a better, more comic-inspired intro to the movie. It would have been nice to watch these pieces with their original tracks, since it’s tough to figure out what’s going on with Munroe’s voice talking over the production sound.
Lastly, there are a couple of short, puffy featurettes, one of which has to be particularly embarrassing for Sarah Michelle Gellar, Laurence Fishburne and Patrick Stewart. There is no pain like seeing Gellar ramble on about the story and how progressive her April character is, or in hearing the hypocrisy of Stewart actually saying “The story line in this is very strong.” Really, Patty…really? “TMNT: Voice Talent First Look” (5:04) is really more the voice talent trying to plug the film, and it’s embarrassing on all accounts. “Donny’s Digital Data Files” (1:57) is a quick look at the rendering work the crew had to do, but is too short to hold any weight. To top off the pain, these extras are also interlaced. Not really the finest tribute to the quarter century of some of art’s most recognizable heroes.
wrapping it up...
From Baltimora to Vanilla Ice, from Manhattan to feudal Japan, from live action to CGI – the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had quite the journey over their four forays on film. The first two are both still fun today, and even the third has its moments when compared to the blasé Sonic Adventure cut scene that is TMNT. The packaging for this 25th anniversary is pretty standout, and the sound has been nicely upgraded to 5.1, but the rest of the treatment on this set leaves much to be desired. The first three films only get a trailer, and the last film is snore city when it comes to the supplemental ingredients. The video on the first two films is still soft, grainy and at times even hard to decipher proving that Warner wasn’t willing to go the extra mile with New Line’s big franchise. While watching these childhood favorites again is a nice way to remember the New Line that was, it’s literally burial in a cardboard box rather than the lavish send off New Line, and the series, deserves. Nostalgic, yes, but gnarly, it ain’t.
 | overall... Content: B Video: B- Audio: B+ Extras: D+ Final Grade: C |
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