I won't lie to you: as a child in the early '90s, I was too young to fully appreciate the Darwinian wonders of chemically-mutated turtles who roamed the sewers of New York City under the guidance of a human-sized rat. I certainly couldn't have spelled out "bodacious," either. And yet, I never once questioned the appeal of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT).
A cartoon about four anthropomorphic reptile brothers who shared the names of Italian renaissance artists — Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and my personal favorite, Michelangelo — while on a quest to defeat an armor-bedecked villain named The Shredder and his Foot Clan henchmen, it's all my older brother and I watched. For years, these turtles who survived on a pizza-only diet, practiced the art of ninjutsu, and skateboarded became our collective identity.
Initially starting out as a joke between friends, the heroes in a half-shell went on to introduce my generation to the machinery of pop culture fandom — toys, spin-offs, and arcade games — with their unrivaled "Turtle Power." Originally appearing in 1984 as an underground comic book from co-creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, it morphed into a popular cartoon series in 1987. Then everything changed in 1990, when the turtles made their theatrical debut.
Starting Friday and until Aug. 21st, TMNT will be back in theaters for its 35th anniversary. The showing will include a pre-film featurette with deleted scenes and never-before-seen behind-the-scenes footage, much to the nerdy, nostalgia-induced joy of longtime fans like myself. I couldn't be happier as a millennial dad.
The movie follows the turtles as they befriend New York City reporter, April O'Neil, who is working to bring down the Foot Clan, despite warnings against doing so from her editor. In retrospect, it's a hilarious time capsule into all things cool from the '90s: arcades, half pipes, deeply unhip rap songs. But it's also a testament to overcoming the creative limitations of its day.
Securing funding for a movie about four anthropomorphic turtles
Directed by Irish-British filmmaker Steve Barron, most known as a music video visionary who worked with pop icons like Michael Jackson and Madonna, the independent movie operated on a shoestring budget of $13 million. Even securing that relatively small amount wasn't easy. Studios were initially skeptical of the comic book adaptation. Co-creator Eastman has spoken in the past about early pitches for the film, which included early visions of TMNT as a comedy starring Billy Crystal in green paint, and later, an R-rated movie with gun-toting, partially-naked nuns on roller skates. Barron's vision for TMNT was nearly rejected, having lost a potential deal with Fox just weeks before shooting began.
"They just took the deal off the table. I was frustrated," Barron admits. "It could've all been shot down. We didn't have the money."
Barron recounts having to canvas for funding at Cannes. New Line Cinema entered the picture at the penultimate moment with $2 million for the fledgling production's U.S. rights, a "bargain" by current standards.
Critics at the time largely ridiculed the film, claiming it wouldn't be able to generate "any breakthrough business." Instead, it became the highest-grossing indie film of its day, garnering a record $25 million on opening weekend, and over $202 million total worldwide.
This live action, low-budget effort has aged especially well in an era dependent on often-uninspired CGI for special effects. The film is gritty, imperfect, and impressively innovative for its era, particularly for its use of handmade animatronic suits. They weighed around 70 pounds and relied on off-screen puppeteers and a complex system of sensors to craft facial expressions.
Working with Jim Henson
Having previously worked with Jim Henson of The Muppets on previous projects, Barron recruited Henson's "Creature Shop" to imbue his turtles with life. Perhaps the most enduring aspect of the film, bringing Henson and his team — including his son, Brian — into the mix, majorly paid off. And it almost didn't even happen.
"I wanted to go for the reality of these creatures," says Barron. "The reputation [Henson] wanted to upkeep and protect was for great family-oriented entertainment. I just had to really persuade him that the spirit … was not going to be about the violence."
After nearly a month of discussion, Henson was finally on board. His creatures are as masterful to watch in 2025 as they were when they first emerged out of those darkly lit, slime-covered manholes.
"It's honest," Barron says in looking back at the film's surprisingly enduring success. "Where it's a little shoddy around the edges, where it was a little hard to get things to be slick or smooth, it has those nuances that are still captivating. It's got heart. Heart is very hard to do in [CGI]. That helped it be around this long and [for] new people coming to it."
Aside from Michael Bay's attempts to reboot the series as over-the-top action gimmicks in 2014 and 2016, the franchise's box office potential has been mostly dormant since the '90s. Only 2023's TMNT: Mutant Mayhem — the Seth Rogen-produced animation much in the vein of Marvel's wildly popular Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse — has succeeded in restoring the franchise's intergenerational reach, helping to put these characters back into the mainstream canon.
Despite its early skeptics, the original Turtles succeeded by most metrics. And outside of a few era-specific tropes that have long since been called out in Hollywood, in particular one character named Casey Jones, who comes across as a sexist macho jock from the 1980s, the film holds up better than I would've expected. You get what you would in any solid comic book adaptation today — corny action and one liners — but you also get something extra and nearly impossible in modern movies: filmmakers taking bold risks with zero corporate oversight.
Because of that, this old school version of TMNT is the only movie I'd consider taking my son to this summer. By the cosmic grace of the sewer turtle gods, he's about the same age I was when I became a turtle fan. And to that, I say "cowabunga."
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