Random Obsessions: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

When I was a kid, I was a casual Ninja Turtles fan. I saw the live-action movies from the early 90’s, I had some of the toys, watched some of the cartoons and played some of the old Nintendo games. I liked the Turtles but over the years it was a fandom that I didn’t actively keep up with. I never stopped liking the Turtles, but aside from seeing the Michael Bay-produced live-action movies from 2014 and 2016 (which aren’t particularly well-regarded), there wasn’t much Turtle Power in my life for quite a few years.

That all changed last year, when I read The Last Ronin. The Last Ronin is a fantastic book, action-packed and heartbreaking. I teared up at the end, and I’m a casual TMNT fan. I can only imagine how gut-wrenching reading this book must have been for longtime Turtle fans. The story of The Last Ronin is dark and intense, taking place in a dystopian future in which the duty of defeating the evil Oroku Hiroto (grandson of the original villain Shredder) and ending his totalitarian reign of New York rests in the three-fingered hands of the lone surviving Turtle.

IDW Publishing

Which Turtle this is and what happened to the rest of his family are questions the story explores and the answers to these questions are heartbreaking. This is a bit of a spoiler, but I can’t talk about the book without mentioning it: the last Turtle is Michelangelo, the fun-loving goofball of the team. The Last Ronin’s version of Michelangelo is a tragic figure, haunted by his memories of his lost family and determined to carry out their legacy.  Mikey has always been my favorite Turtle, and to see him being made the main character was initially surprising but made more and more sense the more I thought about it.

Raphael was the Turtle who was the most badass and the best fighter. Leonardo was the leader and the best strategist. Donatello was the smartest and had the most technical knowledge. My beloved Mikey was none of these things, but at the same time he was the beating heart of the group. No one loved life more than Mikey. That’s why it’s so surprising to see him as the titular Last Ronin, and why it makes so much sense for him to be the main character. I’m not trying to badmouth Mikey or anything (he is my favorite after all) but the fact that he doesn’t necessarily have the same skills as his brothers makes him the perfect main character, because he has the most to overcome.

As the series progresses we find out what happened to the rest of Michelangelo’s family, and the flashbacks are devastating. Raphael, Leonardo, Donatello, Master Splinter and Casey Jones are all killed in various battles, leaving Mikey alone. He spends years wandering before coming back to New York, where he discovers that his family’s dear friend and ally April O’Neil has survived, and she and her daughter are leading a resistance cell against the oppressive regime. Mikey and April team up to defeat the villains, and the outcome is satisfying and tragic, with (spoiler alert) Mikey sacrificing himself to defeat the evil Hiroto. Mikey’s final stand is a truly gut-wrenching sequence, and April’s heartfelt goodbye to her dear friend makes me emotional every time I think about it.

It’s a bittersweet ending though, because even though the original Turtles are gone the series ends with April and her daughter promising to raise a new generation of Turtles. The Last Ronin was followed by a prequel/sequel called The Last Ronin: Lost Years, which goes back and forth between flashbacks to Mikey’s wanderings following the deaths of his family, and April and her daughter raising and training the new Turtles. There’s also a full sequel planned for 2024, and I cannot wait.

The Last Ronin was so good that it sent me down a rabbit hole of Turtle Power. Here are all the Turtle-related things I delved into after I read it:

• The three live-action TMNT movies from the early 90’s
• The animated TMNT theatrical movie from 2007
• The animated Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie that came out in 2019
• The two live-action TMNT films from 2014 and 2016
• The first two volumes of creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s original TMNT comics
• All three volumes of the Batman/TMNT comics by James Tynion IV and Freddie Williams II
• The video games Shredder’s Revenge and The Cowabunga Collection

I followed that up this year with the Lost Years series (which was released this year) and the new animated movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which also came out this year. The new movie is a ton of fun, it is an absolute blast and I loved it. Let’s talk about each of these in turn, starting at the beginning with Eastman and Laird’s original comics.

IDW Publishing

The original comics are a bit rough around the edges, but they’re still very readable and entertaining. I can also cut Eastman and Laird a lot of slack because it was the first comic they’d ever made and they were literally two guys working out of their living room. Eastman and Laird even named their publishing company Mirage Studios because it wasn’t a real studio, it was just the two of them in their living room. The fact that these two guys created a media franchise that is now worth billions of dollars and has lasted for nearly four decades and is still going strong is genuinely inspiring to me.

The original comics are darker than what the Turtles’ current family-friendly image might have made you think, but they are certainly not without humor and a strong sense of family and camaraderie, which is one of the most appealing things to me about the franchise. The darker tone of the earlier comics makes more sense when you consider that the first issue was released in 1984, and comics that were popular at the time were darker stories like Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s Daredevil and The Dark Knight Returns. Eastman and Laird have said that Frank Miller was one of their biggest influences and it’s not hard to see if you’re familiar with Miller’s work.

Elements of those original comics were adapted for the three live-action TMNT movies from 1990, 1991, and 1992. The first movie was a massive hit and the sequels were released quickly, although to diminishing financial returns. The 90’s movies are good, cheesy fun, and Jim Henson’s Creature Shop worked on the animatronics and costumes. I know I saw the original movies when I was a kid but rewatching them there were only bits and pieces I remembered, which isn’t too surprising since it had probably been close to 30 years (WOW that makes me feel old) since I last saw them. The most famous bit from any of those movies has to be the Ninja Rap scene with Vanilla Ice from the second movie, which is an iconic slice of 90’s cheese. Every kid of a certain age remembers that scene.

Warner Bros.

My favorite of the three movies upon rewatching them was probably the third one, which seems to be held in the lowest regard of the original movies these days. In the third film the Turtles get time-warped back to feudal Japan where they have various wacky misadventures. It’s a cliched plot but it’s still good fun, and I was happy to discover that one of the villains was played by Stuart Wilson, who was in two of my all-time favorite movies. He played the evil Don Rafael Montero in 1998’s The Mask of Zorro, and he played one of the secretly-murderous townspeople in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s 2007 masterpiece Hot Fuzz. So seeing him in a Ninja Turtles movie was an unexpected delight.

The 1992 film was the last theatrical Ninja Turtles movie until 2007, when the CGI-animated movie simply titled TMNT was released. Despite voice talent including Chris Evans, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Patrick Stewart, and Laurence Fishburne, the 2007 movie is mostly just okay. It’s not terrible but it’s also not particularly memorable and seems to have been mostly forgotten these days. The action scenes and characters are fun but the story is mediocre and the animation hasn’t held up as well as some other animated movies from the same era. Still worth checking out for the curious though.

The 2014 and 2016 movies are not great but I don’t hate them, like many people seem to. They are the kind of popcorn movies that are decently entertaining but not in any way memorable, they’re fun enough while you’re watching them but the second they’re over you don’t remember much of them. Both movies got panned by critics, but the first one did well enough to get a sequel, which then bombed so the series was abandoned until Mutant Mayhem came out this year.

The Michael Bay movies, despite not being directed by Michael Bay (he produced both of them), feel like Michael Bay movies. They’re full of action and special effects and they’re big and loud and full of bluster, but despite all the flash and noise they’re mostly forgettable. Fan reaction to the two movies was also very mixed, with fans criticizing the designs of the Turtles themselves and planned changes to their origin story (the movie was originally going to make them aliens) were met with such overwhelming fan negativity that they were scrapped. April O’Neil is played by Megan Fox, who looks great but isn’t the most charismatic performer and is mostly there as eye candy and to move the plot forward.

Paramount Pictures

The Bay-produced films do have some pretty fun action scenes, the first one has a chaotic chase down a mountain that I enjoyed and I also liked the climactic battle with Shredder (I quite like the movie’s version of Shredder, the dude looks like he’s made of knives). The second one has a fun scene involving the Turtles fighting on multiple airplanes that inevitably crash into a river and that was good fun, and the movies feel like they had some real money put into them, but ultimately they’re the cinematic equivalent of a cake that looks better than it tastes.

Next let’s talk about the utterly delightful Batman/Ninja Turtles crossovers. There are three volumes of Batman/TMNT comics, all of which were written by James Tynion IV with art by Freddie E. Williams II (I love that both those guys have Roman numerals in their names). Tynion is a prolific comic book writer, having written Batman, Joker, Justice League, and many other titles for DC Comics, as well as original series like The Nice House on the Lake, The Department of Truth, and Something is Killing the Children.

I’m a big fan of Tynion’s work and he absolutely nails the tone of the Batman/Ninja Turtles stories. He manages to weave together the two worlds in ways that make sense and he draws comparisons between various characters that would probably never have occurred to me otherwise. It’s clear that he loves all these characters and the comics are an absolute blast to read. The art is detailed and beautiful, all of the characters look fantastic and their personalities shine through. And I mean, who doesn’t want to see Batman fight Shredder? That is the stuff of dreams right there. I would kill to see that in a live action movie, although it will probably never happen.

DC Comics/IDW Publishing

Even though Batman vs. Shredder will probably never happen in a live-action movie, fortunately we do get it in animated form. The animated adaptation of Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was released in 2019, and it is every bit as fun as the comics. The movie is a blast from start to finish, 87 minutes of pure entertainment. Much like the comics, the movie feels like a love letter to the worlds of Batman and TMNT, and watching them mix and match various characters and see how they react to each other is immensely enjoyable.

Batman is voiced in the movie by Troy Baker, a prolific voice actor known for various iconic video game roles, ranging from Joel in The Last of Us to Booker Dewitt in Bioshock Infinite to Sam Drake in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End to literally dozens of others. Basically, if you’ve played video games for the last 15-20 years you’ve heard Troy Baker’s voice before. He even voiced Batman before in Telltale Games’ Batman series, AND he voiced the Joker in Batman: Arkham Origins. So the guy knows his stuff. He’s great as Batman in the movie, and I wasn’t familiar with the other voice actors but they are all great as well.

The movie is action-packed and very funny, Batman fights Shredder and we get to hear Batman say the Turtles’ catchphrase Cowabunga, which is a treat. There are also a lot of very funny touches, like a character who gets turned into a mutant fly and talks like Jeff Goldblum, which is hilarious. The ending credits feature a montage of famous Batman and TMNT comic book covers with different combinations of characters enacting various iconic poses, which is just awesome.

Warner Bros./Nickelodeon

I can’t recommend the movie enough; it is a treat for fans of Batman and Ninja Turtles and feels like it was made by people who love and revere the source material. The crossovers feel like their own stories, they can stand on their feet and don’t feel like forced mashups of disparate characters just to appeal to fans of both franchises. They’re awesome and I highly encourage folks to check them out.

2022 was a good year for TMNT video games, as it saw the release of The Cowabunga Collection and Shredder’s Revenge. As the name suggests, The Cowabunga Collection is a compilation of thirteen TMNT games that were originally released between 1989 and 1994. When you’re used to modern video games with state-of-the-art graphics and all the other bells and whistles, it’s a bit jarring at first to go back to old games but once you get used to it it’s quite a bit of fun. The collection also includes an in-game museum that features extensive galleries of art and other materials that are really fun to get lost in. Shredder’s Revenge is a recently made game that is a throwback to the older games included in The Cowabunga Collection. The two releases offer hours of nostalgic fun for TMNT fans and it’s safe to say that both are must-haves.

Tribute Games/Dotemu

Konami

This brings us to the final thing we’re going to talk about today, the animated film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, released in August of this year. It was a movie that kind of flew under the radar for me at first, I wasn’t necessarily expecting much from it. It’s not that I thought that it would be bad, but when it came out I was very pleasantly surprised by the rave reviews it got, although it wasn’t until recently that I finally saw it for myself. I am pleased to report that it lives up to the hype!

Mutant Mayhem is one of the most fun movies of 2023. It comes to us from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who are mostly known for their particular brand of very raunchy R-rated comedy. I’m not the biggest fan of their work, I don’t think that R-rated comedy is a bad thing but I find that it doesn’t appeal to me very much. Fortunately, when it comes to Ninja Turtles Rogen and Goldberg clearly understood the assignment and must be big TMNT fans themselves, because the movie (which they co-wrote and co-produced) is an absolute blast.

The movie emphasizes the “Teenage” part of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and portrays the Turtles as rowdy fifteen-year-old goofballs. I absolutely loved this portrayal, and the interactions between the characters are hilarious and heartwarming. The personalities of every Turtle are very distinct and the young actors that voice them are all terrific. Each Turtle has his own quirks that set him apart from the others, many of which were utterly charming. I noticed that Mikey has braces, which is super cute although I have to wonder how they were able to find an orthodontist to put braces on a mutant turtle.

Similar to the movie’s portrayal of the Turtles as rambunctious teenagers, the movie portrays their father Splinter as a single dad trying his best to raise four teenage boys by himself. Splinter is voiced by the legendary Jackie Chan, and this version of Splinter might just be my favorite ever. He’s equal parts badass and adorable, and he’s strict with his sons and a bit overly protective, but only because they’re his family and he loves them. Splinter somewhat understandably doesn’t trust humans and doesn’t want his boys to be part of the human world, but the boys are (again, understandably) tired of living in the sewer and want to go to high school and do other things that kids their age do.

The idea of the lovable outcasts being accepted by society is not new, but this movie flips that on its head by making it so that the outcasts also come to accept that not all humans are bad. It might sound trite to say that not all people are bad, but in today’s increasingly messed-up world I find that it’s a message that is often overlooked. I truly believe that there is never a bad time to be reminded of the fact that there is still so much good in the world, and I love that the movie embraces this.

It’s also beautiful to look at. The filmmakers talk in the special features on the Blu-ray about how they wanted the film to look as if it could have been drawn in the margins of a kid’s notebook in school, and the film has a stylized look that I loved. The filmmakers nailed the look and feel of the world and the characters, the movie is bright and vibrant and looks just a bit rough around the edges, kind of like it was drawn by a kid who is talented but maybe hasn’t totally refined his technique quite yet. It’s the perfect look for the film, and between this film and the recent excellent animated Spider-Verse movies (and I have to give a shout-out to the superb Puss in Boots: The Last Wish), it is a good time to be a fan of animated movies.

I have to talk about the film’s excellent villain Superfly and his cadre of mutants, who give the movie its subtitle. All of them look awesome and are voiced by the likes of Seth Rogen, John Cena, Paul Rudd, Rose Byrne, and many others. Superfly himself is, as his name implies, a humanoid fly creature, and is voiced excellently by Ice Cube. Superfly is a hugely fun character and I admired that the film told a Turtles origin story without using the classic villain Shredder. That being said, Shredder is teased at the end of the movie and I read that a sequel is in development, which makes me very happy because I would love to see this creative team’s take on Shredder, who is one of my favorite villains.

There are some very funny running jokes throughout the movie, such as Splinter warning the boys that the humans will try to milk them, despite the boys’ protestations that they don’t even have nipples. Splinter of course turns out to be right, in hilarious fashion. Splinter’s loneliness as a single dad is funny and endearing, and his line about how it’s so hard for him to meet mutants his own age not only had me in stitches but also had me sympathizing with him.

Overall, Mutant Mayhem is a movie that I have a very difficult time finding any fault with. The animation and character designs are top-notch, the jokes are funny and endearing, the action sequences are exciting and fun, the supporting characters and villains are excellent, the voice acting is great, the story feels like an original take on the material while still being respectful of the characters’ origins and lore, and all of it is wrapped up with a positive message that isn’t too heavy-handed. It’s just terrific.

Paramount Pictures

So there you have it! An overview of all the Ninja Turtles-related things I have enjoyed over the last year and a half or so. I understand this is by no means a comprehensive overview of every single piece of TMNT media ever, I’m not sure if such an overview would even be possible in just one blog post, unless it were hundreds of pages long. I’m sure that there are many other excellent TMNT stories out there, and if anyone has any recommendations I would love to hear them.

I have hugely enjoyed delving into the world of TMNT again and getting to know my old friends better than I ever had before. I’ve realized that I still really love the Turtles, I have a great deal of affection for my Turtle bros and their wacky and fun world. They’re very appealing characters and I love the combination of family, brotherhood, sci-fi, kung fu, and pizza that TMNT stories offer. I really do find it inspiring that Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were able 40 years ago to take a wacky idea they came up with in their living room and turn it into a successful and expansive franchise. That’s just awesome, and I know the Turtles will continue to bring their fans enjoyment for many years to come.