Man, I loved that Turtle Power song as a 13 year old. The movie itself was a decent comedy, I was amused by it at the time.
I tried watching the Michael Bay version. There was a Humble Bundle for a bunch of Riff Trax, which I bought in at the $1 tier. I figured, hey, they’ve got a Riff Track for TMNT, and if they can make a Michael Bay movie fun (keep in mind I hadn’t seen Transformers: Age of Extinction yet, so I didn’t know that Michael Bay could do that himself) then they could make any movie fun. Sadly, they could not make TMNT fun. So I never got any more Riff Trax because of that.
I remember the sequel to the late 80s movie being pretty bad. First of all, Vanilla Ice’s Go Ninja Go was no Turtle Power.
I didn’t enjoy 80% of Bay’s version, but I did actually enjoy the Shredder fights, especially the blades and flying knives. Those sequences were actually cool for me.
Oh yeah, I vaguely remember that now. I think that came out when I was in college. And they were using Baltimora’s Tarzan Boy in the trailers? None of us were rich enough to go to the regular theater though, and it never came to the dollar theater.
I was always tempted just because I love Baltimora’s Tarzan boy. One of my favorite 80s tunes.
Oh god, I’d never seen that video before. That’s hilariously bad. It doesn’t lower the quality of the song itself though. Still such a great song.
There’s a montage in the 1990 movie when Judith Hoag literally makes sketches of the turtles to help the audience keep track of why they’re supposedly different. It doesn’t help. This is actually one of the areas where the CG in the 2014 movie had a huge advantage by giving the artists more freedom to distinguish the turtles. Henson’s suits were pretty much interchangeable, and the script certainly didn’t pick up much slack.
So wait, there’s the 80s movie, the Michael Bay movie, and then there’s another movie, TMNT, that’s an animated movie? I didn’t know there had been another attempt at bat.
Ouch, my childhood. I won’t try to reconcile a difference of opinion, suffice it to say that watching it for the first time at 8-years old gives me a different perspective.
TMNT was the reason my favorite color was green. In a divided state, that automatically had me favoring MSU over UoM. That lead to visiting MSU at an impressionable age, which lead to me seeing a 400 gallon aquarium full of Tanganyikan cichlids. Ultimately, that became the reason for my choice of internet handle of the last 20+ years, not to mention my avatar, drawn by my sister, featuring a Neolamprologus brichardi, my favorite fish. All thanks to the Ninja Turtles (whose distinguishing personalities/abilities are far from subtle, how dare you!). :P
He voluntarily reviewed it because he missed my vote for it one month. I told him he didn’t have to, though. Now, I’m not sure if I’m glad he did or not, heh. I legitimately adore the movie. Probably explains why Jackie Chan movies work for me too… FWIW, I think it’s more nuanced than it’s being given credit for here, but maybe that’s just my inner 8-year old fandom speaking.
I’m kind of surprised people are sticking up for the original. My memory is that at the time it was considered the weakest of the TMNT-related media (apart from that horrible NES game), even for 8-year olds. I wasn’t a huge TMNT fan, but I was certainly into the cartoon and especially the arcade game, and I can remember having a meh reaction to the first film (to be fair, at 11, I was probably a bit too old for it by then). And then I read the Eastman comic, which really opened my eyes.
