The Panzer Crush: 20 Years of being a Turtle!
by Chris Eaton-
Wise man say. Forgiveness is divine… but never pay full price for late pizza
-Michelangelo
20 years ago (March 30th, 1990), a small independent film opened up nation wide to an eager public. This little film cost only $13 million dollars, but would go on to gross over $200 by the end of its run. It was the swell of a wave that wouldn’t crest for another 4 years, and to some, hasn’t broken yet. That film, was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. At that time, it was also the best comic book film to date. Yes. Better than even Batman!
So why am here talking about this film? Well, a couple of reasons, It’s part of a pop culture phenomenon. It’s one of the best selling toy lines ever. The most important one though, is simply that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would become a defining movie of a generation. The wonderment of the 80’s were over, the brave new world of the 90’s laid ahead. Abyss the year before gave us a glimpse into what the future would hold, yet Jurassic Park was still 3 years away from changing the world of cinema as we knew it. Then, here comes this movie, based on a comic property that originated as a hand drawn, self published book on the east coast in 1984. A comic that was doing nothing more than parodying the works of Frank Miller, Dave Sim’s Cerberus and Marvel Comics. This book would gain a small cult following, then become a cartoon series that was a stark contraction to it’s source material. It became a fever that caught the imaginations of children world wide. Toys would fly off store shelves, and the series was doing numbers that would make Cosby jealous. Money was rolling in, so it was inevitable that a movie would come sooner or later. In the hands of any studio at the time,Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could of been a disaster. Watered down, marketed to the lowest common denominator, and treated like crap to be served to a willing public. Luckily, the stars aligned, and the film version would follow it’s comics roots and do things their way. By God, it would be one of the best decisions ever made in the history of film.
Though, all of this was lost on a 6 year old me. At the time, there was no internet. No geek community. I had a few issues of Starlog and that was it. I was smack in the middle of Kindergarten, and it was a much simpler age. My life was nothing but TMNT, Voltron, Godzilla, Ghostbusters, Alf and Nintendo. Before the movie opened, all I had seen were clips on TV of the Turtles on shows like Entertainment Tonight and A Current Affair. The first gazing images of the Turtles in the real world spun my little head. Come March 31st, 1990, I was a bomb ready to explode. 20 years later, I still remember, vividly, most of that day.
I woke up early and ate my cereal in front of the cheap black and white TV in the kitchen. My mom would not be taking me to school this day. Instead, she packed me and my brother up in our grey Ford station wagon, and drove from Norwalk to Cypress, Ca. There, we visited our grandparents for about an hour. We then walked down the block and around the corner to the local 2 plex independent theater. (The same one I would find my first job at 10 years later) The noon show had a massive line already qued up against the wall of the theater. My mom bought us our tickets, we got in line, and waited to be let in. Around 11:30 am, we were lead through the small lobby, through the double doors and found our seats in the 200 max theater. We would sit and watch as the place filled to the brim of kids my age. My brother, 4 at the time was a little more out there, but jazzed for Turtles non the less. Finally, the doors closed, the theater went dark, and New York City sprang to life. We saw April O’Neal report on a crime wave, and the Foot doing dastardly deeds! Then, April was attacked. A Sai knocks out the light, theres the sound of ass kicking .Light pop back on, and the attackers are down for the count, but the sai remains. We then see some eyes peaking out of a manhole, and hear the soft spoken swear “Damn”. Then, Turtle Rhapsody hits, the title card of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES appeares, followed by the full reveal of the Turtles themselves, and the world went away for 90 minutes as we witnessed the impossible. The Turtles were REAL.. At least to us kids at the time.
The movie finished, and every kid was a bit stunned by what we saw. Yes it was awesome, but were was Rock-steady? Where was Bebob? The Teknodrome? Krang? and why were the foot soldiers human? If you couldn’t tell, I was unfamiliar with the comic at the time. We all were. That would change later, but not this day. No, this day, I saw the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the big screen, and IT WAS AWESOME! I would go home with my brother, meet up with my two cousins, and play Ninja Turtles with our toy ninja weapons for hours on in.
When the film hit home video, it was one of the rare movies to be available for direct sale. Normally at that time, VHS tapes ran around $90 bucks for non commercial releases (Hence why tape rentals were so popular during this decade) My mom bought it at Target, and that tape got some good play out of our VCR. Then, Jurassic Park came out, and well, CG dinosaurs captured my imagination more. It would be a long while before I would view this film again.
So here I am, 26 years old. On the anniversary, I popped the DVD in, and sat down for the first time in YEARS (at least 8 ) and watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all the way through. Verdict: this film holds up insanely well. First off, the mixture of dramatic/dark nature of the comic books, splashed with some of the comedy of the cartoon works so well in this film. Sure some of the jokes are dated, but the heart is still there. Then, I took notice to how the movie plays to both the comics and cartoon. When we first meet April, she’s walking out of channel 6 wearing a yellow rain coat, an homage to her yellow jump suit in the show. The Turtles all have different color masks, but uniform color pads and belts. The in the show, we never saw Casey Jone’s face, the book, Casey was more the vigilante type as he is in the film. The comic version of the Shredder and Splinter were used, and April owned a antiques store in the film (in the books, she was never a reporter, but a lab assistant to Baxter Stockman and later ran an antique shop). Those nods aside, the film is still a wonderful piece of work. The directing, acting, and storytelling are top notch for what’s suppose to be a kids film.
I would be insane to not mention the greatest accomplishment of the film. The creature FX magic created by Jim Henson Studios, and to an extent the great Jim Henson himself. I’ve always loved The Henson Creature shops work. There’s a life and vigor to their creations that CG never gets. Hell, ILM would be hard pressed to created such wonderful creatures, and their Turtles are no exception. Henson’s shop worked on Splinter and the Turtles in 1989, one year before Henson himself would die from a sudden bacterial infection. His son Brian, would serve as head of the creature effects, and go on to direct the second unit of the film. If there ever was an argument as to why practical is better than CG, watch this film. You have actors in this heavy suite, that have brilliant facial expressions, doing martial arts moves that look extremely fluid. Much like the live action dinosaurs in Jurassic Park still look real today, so do the Turtles.
It’s always some kind of wonderful to go back and visit something from your childhood and have it still hold up as well as it did today as it did the first time you laid eyes on it. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of those films. With a sequel that was nearly as good, but not as dark, I can say today, that I fully appreciate what this film has done. Much like Kick Ass has done today, stepped out of the studio system to make something that goes against the norm, and to completely wow us, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was truly ahead of its time. If you have a few hours, why not turn off your phone, order a pizza, help your self to a ninja slice, and sit back and relive some grand memories.
Cowabunga!