If you haven't watched the original live-action 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' film in a while, get ready for a surprise. While tame by today's "dark, gritty" Hollywood standards, it's nevertheless a much more serious, thoughtful and straightforward movie than you remember.
The original 'TMNT' graphic novels were quite dark for their time, but the subsequent animated series and the multi-media phenomenon it launched was sanitized and re-packaged for mass consumption. And mass consumed it was. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that the first live-action 'TMNT' film dares to be as relatively dark as it is. Undoubtedly the influence here was Tim Burton's 'Batman', which had come out the year before and broke box-office records. Like the Turtles, Batman had been turned into a G-rated pitchman. Burton's film changed all that, and it appears that's what the makers were going for here. It's a gamble that pays off.
There's still a lot of fun to be had, and the pizza-loving, "Cowabunga!" shenanigans of the cartoon are still in tact. It simply takes a rather ridiculous premise seriously, and as a result, so does the audience.
The original 'TMNT' graphic novels were quite dark for their time, but the subsequent animated series and the multi-media phenomenon it launched was sanitized and re-packaged for mass consumption. And mass consumed it was. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that the first live-action 'TMNT' film dares to be as relatively dark as it is. Undoubtedly the influence here was Tim Burton's 'Batman', which had come out the year before and broke box-office records. Like the Turtles, Batman had been turned into a G-rated pitchman. Burton's film changed all that, and it appears that's what the makers were going for here. It's a gamble that pays off.
There's still a lot of fun to be had, and the pizza-loving, "Cowabunga!" shenanigans of the cartoon are still in tact. It simply takes a rather ridiculous premise seriously, and as a result, so does the audience.