[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by AquaParade

Andrew, I typically agree with all your statements regarding tmnt movies.

The one exception being the first movie not being in the spirit of Mirage.
To me, it captures the tone of the first volume pretty damn well. It's not a perfect Mirage adaption but it's pretty damn close.

Not really at all. It's "Danny: The Movie, Starring Darth Shredder and his Halfway House for Troubled Youths." Complete with Dude Mikey. None of that crap is in the comics. And the Turtles don't do much of anything aside from cracking jokes, eating pizza and getting their asses kicked a couple times, and then losing to Shredder in the climax.

Now, every movie since has been progressively way worse, but I don't think it's fair to elevate TMNT 1990 to some kind of level of comic book perfection simply by virtue of comparing it to them. TMNT 1990 was a great film and a good TMNT film... but you're fooling yourself if you don't see that they still sold themselves way short.

Even Kevin seems to think so.

Kevin thinks a lot of things. No matter what the TMNT project is, that is "the best TMNT thing ever!!!"

I'm sure there's folks around here that remember before it came out how much he was raving about how NT:TNM was going to feature Turtles that are so much "older and grittier," and it'll be awesome. And how TMNT 2014 was going to blow our socks off with its The Raid-style fighting and how faithful it would be.

http://www.thenational.ae/blogs/scen...-kevin-eastman

Yeah, according to Kevin, the Platinum Dunes movies possess "the darker edge of the comic books."

He's a great guy but his opinion on TMNT projects is kind of meaningless.

Baron's film captures the most important elements to me though, aside from taking a vicious look at the cycle of revenge (and the violence that would accompany this). Is that the key ingredient for you, or is there something else?

The self-defeating cycle of vengeance, absolutely. That's intrinsic to where the Turtles are "coming from," spiritually. And going. And then need to reevaluate. Not just barely mentioned in passing before Dude Mikey burps or makes a fart joke or something to re-lighten things.

Violence itself? That's an element, sure. There are moments of earnest fighting in TMNT 1990, but mostly it's injected with so much slapstick and sight gags that's it hard to take any of it seriously. Even when it semi tries to be serious, it's just "block block kick," every time. Seriously. Watch it again. Again, of course it's a lot worse in every movie since then, but that virtue alone doesn't mean that TMNT 1990 was like this epitome of "gritty violence."