Why Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990 is the Best TMNT Movie

It’s wild to think that a gag illustration drawn on a bar napkin by two impossibly high dudes went on to become one of the most popular franchises of the 1980s, but there’s literally no other way Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could have ever existed. Those are words that never belong together under any circumstance, and now we don’t even notice how crazy it is every time that phrase leaves our mouths. After the blazing success of the cartoon show and its treasure trove of tie-in merchandise, a live-action film was inevitable. And it we got it in March of 1990, 30 years ago this month. Since that glorious springtime release, there have been two sequels, an animated film, a reboot and another sequel. But that very first film, starring four martial arts experts sweating to death inside oversized Muppet suits, remains the definitive Ninja Turtles movie.

First of all, it tells the best story of any of the films. It turns Shredder into kind of a silly Fagan-type character grooming an army of disenfranchised teens and orphans into thieves and assassins, but it’s in service of an overall theme that is shockingly emotionally resonant. The movie is about family, but it approaches the topic like a David Simon show by addressing it from several different vantage points. The Turtles are a family unit, but Raphael is estranged from the others. He resents his father, Splinter aka Papa Rat, for choosing Leonardo to be the team leader instead of him, and he spends the movie struggling to find his own identity and earn the respect and recognition he feels Papa Rat has been denying him. That storyline is echoed more literally in the relationship between April’s boss Charles and his son Danny. Danny is also rebelling against Charles, whom he views as a tyrant who thinks Danny is nothing but a failure and a disappointment. Danny dabbles in petty theft, which leads him to adopting the Foot Clan as a surrogate family, and the Shredder as a surrogate father. I’ll admit, childhood would’ve been at least 20 times more awesome if my dad walked around in a bladed suit of armor all of the time, but I would’ve been concerned the moment he called an all-hands staff meeting to tell me and my brothers about the threat of giant turtles. And finally, the Foot Clan themselves, led by none other than Sam Rockwell in his feature film debut, are all looking for a replacement for the family and/or parents that was either estranged, lost, or never existed to begin with. This shit is deep, you guys. It never feels overstated or ham-fisted, and the characters never do anything so gaudy as staring into the camera and explaining their motivations, which unfortunately happens in some other kids’ movies that think kids are too dumb to understand emotional nuance. The completion of Raphael’s arc literally ends with him in tears – a mutant ninja turtle weeping over the frayed but preserved bond between him and his Papa Rat. Rockwell and the Foot Clan realize that Shredder aka Metal Daddy was a pretty shitty dad and let Casey Jones walk right out of their warehouse fortress with Splinter before ultimately diming the whole operation out to the cops. And Danny, after having several conversations with the captured Papa Rat, recognizes that he’s been too hard on his father and rejects the self-destructive teachings of Metal Daddy. Each moment lands with genuine emotion that I vividly remember experiencing watching this movie for the first time as a hyped-up 7-year-old, and that’s a lesson few studios outside of Pixar seem to realize. Kids’ movies can still be about real shit, even if the core premise is gigantic reptilian action figures cartwheeling their way through hordes of ninjas while eating pizza and cracking jokes. It’s worth noting that rather than being an adaptation of the extremely popular cartoon series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990 draws a surprising amount of material from the original comics, which were notoriously dark and violent, without forgetting the fact that movie absolutely needed to be for kids.

Speaking of the cartoon series, largely ignoring that very popular property helped the movie be more self-contained and straightforward. It might have seemed like a weird decision not to have Bebop and Rocksteady or the Technodrome in the definitive TMNT movie, especially considering the fact that the TV show is what made the Turtles popular in the first place. But choosing to whittle the science fiction elements down into a smaller, competitively grounded story resulted in a movie that still resonated with kids and gave them the wisecracking Turtles and a bunch of martial arts action. Plus, it was definitely way cheaper, can you imagine trying to build a Technodrome on a budget of $13 million? It would’ve looked like a bowling ball covered in oatmeal.

And let’s talk about those costumes. Designed by Jim Henson Studios, the costumes were full-body suits with fully articulated faces that were operated remotely by puppeteers. And if we’re being totally honest with each other here (and I believe that we are), they look pretty dang good. The costumes degraded in quality over the next two sequels, as the budgets for both films were considerably lower, but in TMNT 1990 the Turtles look lifelike and believable, thanks to the superb physical acting of the costumed performers being totally in synch with the facial puppeteers.

Finally, TMNT 1990 stands out as being the only Ninja Turtles film that’s actually a martial arts movie. You might have noticed that it was produced by Golden Harvest, the famous Hong Kong production company largely responsible for popularizing martial arts movies in the west, most notably the filmographies of Bruce Lee, JackieChan, and SammoHung. Asses actually get kicked in TMNT 1990, and there are some truly great fight sequences, in particular the one at April’s pawn shop that begins on the roof with Raphael tossing his feet through several Foot Clan ninjas. Unfortunately, the film’s two sequels got hit with the weird stipulation that the Turtles can’t actually use their weapons on anyone. Nervous about being accused of encouraging violence in children, the sequels restricted the Turtles to beating up Foot Soldiers and other thugs with wacky props and slapstick moves rather than martial arts. Specifically, they were forbidden from using their weapons on human beings, which is why Michelangelo wallops several goons with a yo-yo rather than his nunchucks. Not sure why that’s a better message for children, because yo-yos are way more accessible than nunchucks, but maybe that’s why I’m not a big time Hollywood producer. That might also explain why Ernie Reyes Jr. was cast as Keno in TMNT II, so they could still have some martial arts action (Reyes was the martial arts double for Donatello in the first film). Kids like the goofy stuff, but kids also like martial arts. And when you put the actual stunt work in, it makes for a better movie with better longevity. The goofball stuff is safer and perfectly fine, but ultimately doesn’t stick around because there’s plenty of those kinds of movies for kids. Kids like ninjas, man. That’s why TMNT took off in the first place.

Finally, TMNT 1990 contributed one of the single most significant aspects to the TMNT canon with the characterization of Raphael. It created Raphael’s pathos as being the angry, angsty character at odds with his older brother and his dad, which has been a staple of the character ever since. In the cartoon, he was “cool but crude”, which effectively translated to him breaking the fourth wall and making sarcastic jokes. Speaking as a Turtles fan in the single digits when TMNT 1990 came out, his characterization in the film was a welcome shock. It’s an obvious decision to make – why not have one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles be an actual rebellious teen – but it added a level of depth to the property that hadn’t existed before, at least not to us young fans of the cartoon. And that characterization has stuck with Raphael’s character ever since, through every film and cartoon and comic reboot. Probably means it was a good idea, right?

The sequels were goofy and forgettable, and the recent reboot series (produced by Michael Bay) were dull and lifeless, and inexplicably loaded with dick jokes. (Michelangelo literally says “She’s so hot I can feel my shell tightening” when they first meet April, and nobody on this planet needed that.) TMNT 1990 struck the perfect balance between being a silly kids movie and a fun martial arts film with a real, emotional story that every kid can relate to. Plus, the theme song absolutely crushes, and the Pizza Hut commercial included at the beginning of the VHS is an all-time jam.

ncG1vNJzZmibn6G5qrDEq2Wcp51kxKnFjK2cnqaRnLJuudStmKesXaO2r7bAZquuqqShsrR5kHJwaWWZqHq1tMRmmZ6rpGLBrrrTZqSorpmafA%3D%3D