Twenty years ago this very week Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was released in theatres. I guess it’s an odd film to commemorate the release date of, I know. It’s not Star Wars or Star Trek, or to put it in more comic-book-like terms, it’s not Superman or Batman. I mean, they’re still trying to rekindle the magic that was the Man of Steel’s first film, and twenty-one years later we’re still talking about Burton’s take on the Dark Knight and the disaster the franchise became (though, Christoper Nolan is well on his way to erasing it from collective geek memory). But, I honestly think TMNT might be a more important milestone than people think.
Yeah, the Turtles weren’t exactly unknown when they hit screens in 1990; the Fred Wolf cartoon had been on the air for a few years already and the comic books had been on shelves for most of the previous decade. But, it took Spider-Man fourty years to make it to movie screens and Superman even longer than that. Batman had a previous film with Adam West, but it had been almost thirty years since that movie when Burton’s take hit the theatre. So, how is it that a relatively small comic managed to not only get an animated series launched (albiet with a watered down version of the characters) but launch a film franchise as well? And both were hugely successful. In fact, by the end of that year, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the highest grossing independant film of all time, a title it held for awhile I believe. So, yes, I think this movie is not only an important milestone in geek cinema, but in movie history as well. But, really, I just want a reason to talk about one of my favorite films of al time.
Yes, on a list that includes classics like Casablanca and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, modern films like Almost Famous and The Shawshank Redemption and epics like the Star Wars saga and the Harry Potter films, there sits the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a film I can quote almost line for line. I can even act out the scenes if need be (or, at least recap them).
I realize it’s insanely hokey, and I’m pretty sure there are only two lines in movie history worse than Splinter uttering the phrase “I made a funny!” (For the record those line are, in order, Storm saying “You know what happens to a toad when it gets struck by lightning?” and Splinter’s call back to this same phrase in Turtles II when he says “I made another funny!” Ugh.) But, I don’t care. I love every cheesy second of this film.
To this day when I see a golf bag I secretly hope that there’s not only a hockey stick in it, but a cricket bat as well. (Raph’s right, NOBODY understands cricket). Forget Batman, when the chips are down and I’m standing on the wrong end of a ninja beatdown, I want Casey Jones by my side. I can’t eat a popsicle without thinking about Donatello and Mikey waiting on the pizza delivery guy. If I pick up a Trivial Pursuit card, no matter what category, the first thought in my head is “What Russian novel, embracing more than 500 characters, is set in the Napoleonic wars.” “War and Peace.” When I hear an MC Hammer song I think about the kids in the warehouse skateboarding, and I swear, if someone happens to say the phrase “What was that?” my brain goes straight to “Looked like sort of a big turtle in a trenchcoat. You’re goin to La Guardia, right?” I still know the song in the Pizza Hut commercial that plays before the movie on the original VHS release by heart. In fact I still have my ORIGINAL copy of the movie on VHS, a present from my Dad at Christmas that year, along with The ‘Burbs (another film I know practically by heart). It sits on my shelf along with every other incarnation of the on screen Turtles, including the short lived Next Mutation series. My point is, somewhere along the way this ceased being just a movie and became part of my DNA. Yes, my DNA is geeky. Plus, it’s got Elias Koteas and Sam Rockwell in it, who could possibly hate that?
But, maybe more than any of that, it is my “down in the dumps” movie. For the better part of twenty years, whenever I need the entire world to just go away, whenever I feel like I’m carrying the world on my shoulders, this is the movie I watch. As I’ve gotten older those times have fortunately become few and far between, but whenever they do show up, I don’t worry about it, cuz I’ve got Turtle Power on my side.
Okay, that last sentence may ACTUALLY be worse than “I made a funny!”
