Superhero Media: Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles (1990)

This film is fucking awesome. Seriously, have you watched it recently? Even the puppetry hasn't dated that badly, thanks to the miraculous work of the Jim Henson Creature Shoppe, and Elias Koteas is still the definitive Casey Jones by a country mile. Judith Hoag shines as April O'Neil, Mako is brilliant as Splinter, hell, everyone is good, even a young Sam Rockwell who has all of two lines as "Young Thug #2". The martial arts looks good, the comedy works and the turtles aren't taller than everyone else. When I picture Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello in my mind, it is the versions from this film that I see. I feel not so much as a shred of shame when I shout "I just love being a turtle!" along with Mikey. Ok, so the lip-sync on the costumes is far from perfect, Shredder gets defeated far too easily and the plot is pretty basic, but there's still so damn much to love about this film. 

April O'Neil is rescued from the Foot Clan by the quartet of reptilian heroes during the height of a "ninja" crime-wave and our adventure begins. The Foot Clan are recruiting disaffected youth in New York, with the temptations of cigarettes, video games and martial arts training, turning them into a shockingly effective army of criminals. Man, when was the last time you saw a kids' film where twelve-year-olds smoke on screen? A point that will become relevant when I get to the sequels, the turtles are revealed to be fourteen years of age in this film, whilst Splinter seems to be in excess of a century old. Yeah, Splinter is ancient, given that Hamato Yoshi could not possibly have been doing his thing much after 1868 CE with that being the agreed academic consensus for the end of Daimyo period and that the third film actually sets up a cyclical legacy around the character. Neat, huh?

The entrance of Casey Jones, a former hockey player whose career ended with injury before it even got started and decided he wasn't going to take the moral decay of his city lying down anymore, still stands, in my mind, as one of the best in the Superhero Film library; right up there with Spider-man swinging in to save the day in 2002, Superman catching Lois Lane in 1978 or the Mark I armour stomping out of a cave in 2008. It is that element, that four teenagers or a fit guy with a golf bag full of sports equipment can take on and defeat an ancient Ninja clan, that keeps this series so enduring more than two decades after it started as an indy comic. If this film seems more than a little silly, just remember that the original comics were themselves a pastiche of the grim and gritty Frank Miller Daredevil run, complete with ancient Ninja clans, costumed vigilantes and a decaying New York City. Well worth another look.