Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

7/10

Directed by Steve Barron

This movie is just awesome and far better than the second part and totally floors the third. The producers and the director decided to make the movie an all-out adult fun movie, unlike the secondwhere the weapons are hardly used, here in this wonderful movie, the weapons are used as often as possible.

The movie dialogue is impressive and the martial art is one that you will enjoy seeing, and Casey Jones (Elias Koteas) was the icing on the cake for me in this movie.

Done in 1990 the turtles are based on a comic script (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird) published by Mirage Studios between 1984 and 2009 and by IDW Publishing from 2012. The movie is directed by Steve Barron (who made the two part production of Treasure Island in 2012) who did a nice work blending the characters and the live actors.

The movie takes place in New York City, where the crime rate is on a high and the NYPD has no way of stopping this. A mysterious clan is behind the crime rate, and they are called the Foot Clan. The leader of the Foot Clan is Master Shredder.

Things take a turn for Shredder and his Foot Clan when four vigilantes Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Donatello and Raphael come out of the sewers to save the city.

The odd thing about this vigilantes is that they are turtles, and not just any turtle, Ninja Turtles trained in the art of ninjitsu by the master and leader Splinter (a rat), together with their new friends April O'Niel (Judith Hoag) and Casey Jones, they bounded together to take the fight to The Shredder.

This movie was a huge commercial success as it cleared a whopping $201 million in the box office from a 13.5 million budget and of all the sequels it received the highest approval rating.

The movie script is very close to the dark tone of the original comic, but it does borrow some inputs from the animated series that was running at that time, such as using different colors for the mask each turtle so as to differentiate them, unlike the comic where they all had red mask on; although now the colored mask thing has come to say and it is now seen in the comics. Also the idea of April O’Niel being a reporter is also taken from the animated series.

For me I may have loved the second part of the franchise as a kid, mostly because I loved the comic idea but nothing stands against this movie as it is the best in all the Turtle Movies made so far.

Here is a fun fact from Wikipedia: All four actors who played the Turtles also appeared in cameos as minor characters, with David Forman (Leonardo) as a gang member, Michelan Sisti (Michaelangelo) as a pizza delivery man, Leif Tilden (Donatello) as a messenger of The Foot and Josh Pais (Raphael) as a passenger in a taxi.

As we wait for a new reboot to the franchise by Michael Bay (as I heard, things may change) I just hope that they stay close to the original story and make the movie dark as well as add a few comic to it, cause the turtles all joking around and fighting crime, may not be what many will like to see.