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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the 1990 live-action movie based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. It had two sequels, The Secret of the Ooze and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III. This movie kept very close to the dark feel of the original comics with only few elements making it in from the cartoon.

Synopsis

When the NYPD is unable to stop a severe crime wave caused by the Foot Clan, four new vigilantes, Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Donatello and Raphael, will come forth to save the city. Under the leadership of Splinter and together with their new-found allies April O'Neil and Casey Jones, they will fight back and take the battle to The Shredder.

This movie presents the origin story of Splinter and the Turtles, the initial meeting between them, April and Casey, and their first confrontation with Shredder and his Foot Clan.

Plot

As the movie begins, April O'Neil, an investigative reporter at Channel 3's Eyewitness News, is working on a story about the recent crime wave hitting New York City, which the NYPD seems unable or unwilling to stop. She is attacked by some thugs in the news station's parking lot after work one night. The attack is thwarted by the Turtles, who knock out a light and easily defeat and tie up the thugs. While they are not seen in the process, Raphael loses a sai, which O'Neil takes.

As the Turtles return to their lair to celebrate their victory, Raphael, angered by his loss, leaves to sulk. He comes across a pedestrian being mugged, and once again steps in to stop the crime. In the melee, he encounters another vigilante, Casey Jones. Raphael is eventually defeated, and when Casey leaves, Raphael chases after him, but loses him. When Raphael returns home that night, Splinter consoles him, and tells him not to forget his brothers or him while he deals with his rage.

Undaunted, O'Neil pushes forward with her investigation, pressuring the Chief of Police to look into a group of ninjas known as the Foot Clan. This draws the attention of their leader, Shredder, who orders her silenced. She is attacked by Foot ninja in the subway and knocked unconsious, however Raphael (who has been following her to recover his lost sai) stops the attack, and returns to the Turtles' lair, carrying the unconscious O'Neil. Splinter revives her, telling her origins of the Turtles.

Later that night, the four Turtles escort April back to her apartment. When they return to the lair, they found that it has been ransacked and that Splinter has been kidnapped. Not knowing what to do, they retreat to April’s apartment. They spend the night there, and in the morning Charles, April's boss, stops by with his son Danny, a juvenile delinquent who is a member of the Foot Clan. He's made a deal with the police chief to get theft charges on Danny dropped if April backs off on her investigation. April refuses, and while discussing it with Charles, Danny accidentally spots one of the Turtles hiding in the apartment.

Meanwhile, Shredder announces to his assembled followers that they have a new enemy: freakish giant turtles. Danny informs him what he saw at April's apartment. Meanwhile, April presses her investigation into the Foot as a favor to the Turtles, and Leonardo and Raphael have a fight over their inaction. Raphael leaves in a fit of anger and heads to the rooftops, but is ambushed by Foot ninja, beaten close to death, and thrown through April's skylight. The remainder of the Turtles try to repel the attack, but are overwhelmed by the Foot's sheer numbers. They are saved by Casey Jones, who saw Raphael being ambushed from the rooftops, and the Turtles retreat as the building catches fire and is ser ablaze.

The group arrives at an old farm owned by April and recover from their defeat. Raphael recovers and the Turtles resume training. April has taken up drawing, and Casey helps Donatello fix up an old truck and does his best to get on April's good side (and usually fails). Leonardo contacts Splinter through meditation, and by bringing all four of them together, they summon Splinter to their campfire in spirit, who tells them they have learned their final lesson: that true mastery comes of the mind, and their minds together are unstoppable. They decide to go back to New York City.

They return to their lair to rest before beginning their search and find Danny hiding there as well. Since the night April's apartment burned down, he had been hiding from the Foot and sneaking back into the Foot hideout to speak with Splinter, who has helped him sort out some of his confusion over his life and his father. He convinces April to give him one of her drawings of the Turtles. That night, he sneaks out to talk to Splinter and is followed by Casey (who is claustrophobic and slept in the truck). He learns from Splinter that the Shredder is Oroko Saki, the man who murdered Splinter's master. He renounces the clan and turns to leave when Shredder himself confronts him. Finding the drawing in his pocket, he learns the Turtles are back and orders an immediate attack, saying he will lead it himself and that Splinter is to be killed.

The Turtles, now expecting an attack, fend off the attacking Foot easily. Meanwhile, Splinter is rescued by Casey and Danny, who defeat Shredder's second-in-command and convince the rest of the teenagers that Shredder is just using them. They leave for the battle to arrive as the TMNT are facing off with Shredder himself.

The battle is a stalemate, until Shredder provokes Leonardo into charging by saying Splinter was dead. Before Shredder was victorious, however, Splinter arrived and revealed himself as the rat who clawed Shredder's face when his master was murdered. Shredder charges, only to be vaulted off the side of the building by Splinter and meet his apparent death in a garbage truck that was "accidentally" turned on by Casey.

After the climactic battle, the NYPD arrives determined to apprehend the Clan and end the crime wave.

Cast and crew

Cast

Voice cast

Crew

Trivia

  • The four actors playing the Turtles also had cameo appearances in the movie without their costumes. Tilden was the Foot messenger that says "We've been looking for you, Miss O'Neil". Pais is the passenger in the taxi cab that says "What the heck was that?" Sisti is the pizza delivery boy at the beginning. Foreman plays a gang member in the warehouse when Casey Jones defeats Tatsu.
  • The names of the newswomen in the film are April, May, and June.
  • Toshishiro Obata, the actor who played Tatsu, could not speak English when he was incorporated into the movie, which is the main reason much of his dialogue is either simple phrases or unintelligible grunting.
  • One of the street punks tells the police chief to "check out East Warehouse on Lairdman Island". This is a tribute to Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the creators of the TMNT.
  • In the Foot Warehouse, the boxes in the foreground are labeled "Mirage". Mirage Comics is the company that published the original TMNT comics.
  • April being a reporter, the Turtles saying Cowabunga, Michelangelo's surfer accent, their love of pizza, and the bandanna colors are the only things that originate from the 1987 cartoon.
  • This was the highest-grossing independent film of all time, having made over $133 million in domestic box office. It was also the 5th highest grossing movie of 1990.
  • Josh Pais is the only performer to be both actor and voice-actor for a Turtle.
  • Ernie Reyes, Jr., a stuntman in the original movie, would go on to play Keno in The Secret of the Ooze

Goofs

  • When Donatello is skateboarding in the sewers to meet with Michelangelo, you can see, for a couple of frames, a human hand move in and then out of the camera viewpoint while he is doing a spin.
  • While in the ground floor of the junk shop during the battle with the Foot Clan, Leonardo is seen helping April uncover an escape route. Then Leonardo is seen fending off the Foot in the background. The following shot shows Leonardo back in the same place at April's side.
  • While fleeing the Foot Clan in the junk shop, the same brief scene of Donatello turning and punching out one of the Foot is used twice.
  • Several times throughout the movie, the Turtles' weapon belts squeeze their plastrons in.
  • During the scene after Splinter contacts Leonardo through meditation and the Turtles are all standing together, in the bottom center of the screen, you can see a mic cord coming out of the bottom of Leonardo's shell and going down his left leg. Behind him, another more visible cord can be seen coming out of the left side of Raphael's shell.
  • In the rap song Turtle Power played during the credits, the lyrics state that Raphael is the leader of the group even though Leonardo is usually accepted as the leader of the group, even if in an unofficial capacity, in all TMNT mediums.

Deleted scenes

There have been many alleged deleted scenes in this movie. While some are simply rumours, others are seen in the Archie comic adaptation of the movie or found in early versions of the script. Also, the Summer 1990 issue of TMNT Magazine features a number of publicity shots for the movie, some of which depicting scenes that do not occur in the movie, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie Sticker Album released by Diamond the same year also includes references to some deleted scenes.

According to some rumors, Steve Barron found an early and un-edited roll of the movie. That roll didn’t have music or sound effects added yet, and the voices of the actors inside the suits can be heard over the voice actors. That roll also included several scenes that are not in the movie, including:

  • An alternate ending, where an unemployed April has decided to take the concept of the TMNT to a comic book publisher. April and Danny are shown waiting anxiously in the publisher’s office, as the publisher perused her sketches and proposal. Finally, he hands them back to her, saying "The idea is too farfetched." Hearing that, the Turtles, who had been clinging to the wall outside the office window, react with various expressions of comic dismay, and Michelangelo actually falls off the building. The comic book publisher’s office is decorated with fake comic book covers featuring characters from Mirage Studios, which Mirage has provided.
  • An introduction scene for Casey Jones. It shows Jones in his apartment, watching the news about the recent crime wave. He gets mad and grabs his hockey mask off a table. The same scene was used to introduce Jones in the 2003 cartoon episode Meet Casey Jones.
  • An extended training scene on the farm. However, according to some rumours, that scene was part of the theatrical release, and only deleted from the video release.
  • More character development scenes on the farm, showing how everyone deals with the situation in their own way.

Laird and Barron have expressed interest in releasing a "special edition" version of the first movie, with new scenes and other bonus materials. However, New Line Cinema has never commented on this possibility.

See also

External links

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films | 1990 films | Anthropomorphic films | Cult films | Independent films | New Line Cinema films

Черепашки-ниндзя (фильм, 1990) | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (film)

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (film)".

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