The Movies That Moved Me: Steve Barron’s TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles remains one of the biggest influences for many of our childhoods. From the costumes and spirited likeness and aesthetics akin to the comic and the animated series it spawned, if you were a 90s kid, there’s almost no way you didn’t love this franchise. Collecting the toys was, and remains, a dream for me, personally.
Par for the course was Steve Barron’s 1990 smash hit out of New Line Cinema, featuring a mix of voice and in-suit talents headlining our titular ninja tortoises joined by actors Judith Hoag, Elias Koteas and James Saito in the respective roles of April O’Neal, Casey Jones, and Oroku Saki/The Shredder. I vaguely remember seeing it in the theater, while eventually getting my parents to record it on VHS from cable so I could watch it at my own will, and I must’ve watched that thing to death like the rest of the tapes we had.
No, there was no Technodrome, or a big talking brain in the gut of a muscle suit, but it matters just how much of Barron’s film was able to unpack as much of the mythos for a live-action take that involves man-sized talking turtles. It matters that as far removed from reality as the concept of an army of ninja-clad goons led by a sinister warlord with a grudge against a Miyagi-sized rat that knows martial arts, that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles still emotes as well as it did back then for many of us who saw it thirty five years ago.
To this, that the movie that carried the legacy of the original IP in fine fashion is getting the red carpet treatment via Fathom Events one week from today says and confirms what a lot of us know about the film and what works so well, including the memorable moments in the sequels that followed. Even the film’s original score by John Du Prez still gets its flowers long after the film’s original release.
Have a listen:
