I was at this DVD store where I spotted it. And being a big fan of the 2012 series which referenced it so much and because I saw in the cinema when it came out, I wanted to re-familiarize myself with it.
So I bought it and just finished watching it. Here's my findings.
The Negatives:
- This was one of those video to DVD transfers, as such you couldn't select chapter and there was no making of feature, which I thought was a shame, I love learning how they went to it.
- The image quality was bad as was the sound quality, this movie would benefit from a complete remaster, perhaps there already is one but I haven't found it yet.
- The plot of the Foot Clan getting their soldiers through the dragon gang (The Purple Dragons for all of us familiar with the Mirage comics and the 2003 series) wasn't really worked out all that well, WHY did Danny rebel against his father, what was going on behind closed doors that he felt he had to join that gang? It was never answered.
- The Special effects, oh boy, even with the lousy image quality, green screen was so obvious with some scenes and some of the puppets were moving so unconvincingly, I am familiar with the Fact that Jim Henson's Creature studios did all the puppets but in some scenes, for example Splinter when he's learning his master's moves, the puppets had very little in actual articulation and most of the time it looked like somebody was just moving it back and forth.
- The Fight scenes were of early Power Rangers quality, they posed too much and moved too slow to really make it look convincing and the way that Casey Jones knocked Tatsu twenty feet back by hitting him with a golf club was just ridiculous.
The Positives
- They depicted the Northampton story line accurately from the Mirage comics and little details that were referenced in the 2012 Northampton episodes made me go "Ah so that's where that came from." Yes, I saw the movie but I saw it 29 years ago, so I forgot about those details.
* Michelangelo humming "Old McDonald"
* The way April does drawings of the Turtles during their stay and down to the way she goes "And then there's Casey Jones." Mae Whitman doing the dialog in "it came from the woods" and going "And then there's me April O'Neil." Whitman NAILED the way that Judith Hoag spoke the original line, the articulation is just DEAD ON.
* The Lame insult throwing scene when Donnie and Casey (Raph and Casey in the Mirage comic) are fixing up that old truck in the barn.
* The Blue fire and spiritual connecting with Splinter, that is such a glorious scene.
- I'm a guitarist, when they showed Danny going back to the Dragons' hide out, he walks past a Box which says "Crate" which is a nineties Amplifier brand, I owned one.
https://img.audiofanzine.com/images/...c-xl-47330.jpg
- But also the fight of Splinter and Shredder, I was sitting on the edge of my seat, just as I was when at 14 I saw the movie in the cinema.
- Casey going "Oops" when starting up that garbage truck when Shredder fell in. When I saw the 2012 episode "requiem" and they did that scene I was yelling like a school girl, because I knew that scene so well.
But in general I watched it with a big smile on my face, sure the special effects were bad and the fighting was terrible, who cares, that's part of its charm. I love those Asian movies where the production is really ragged: "Azumi" for example is one of my absolute favorites, even though you can so obviously see when cables were used to hoist actors into the air during a fight scene. Heck "Big trouble in little China" is on my list for that very reason.
It was a trip down memory lane and a pleasant one.
