If you could make a TMNT 1990 Special Edition

[slingtheory]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

That's looking at being a teenager through a very human, very western lens. Don't. Growing up a teenager in a home with TV, school, school sports, popular kids, unpopular kids, "what do I wear today??", prom, etc., is quite different than growing up as a teenager in a sewer you've spent your whole life in, conditioned from almost birth by your "Dad" whose everyday main purpose is raising you to one day kill a man who is a master ninja. Most of the nonsense we equate to "average angsty teenagers" simply doesn't and cannot apply no matter how much various TMNT writers want it to ("I've always complained that the TMNT aren't like teenagers enough!!" blah blah).

but isn't this also looking at the turtles through a very mirage lens. The characters in the original movie aren't the same as the ones in the comics. Splinter didn't train them from mutation to kill a man. he just wanted them to be able to protect themselves from a world that would never understand them.
These guys have never had to kill before and only had their first real fight shortly before meeting april. Under those circumstances whether you think they have anything in common with "normal" teenagers or not you can still accept that they've suddenly been thrown into a strange new dynamic. For the first time in their lives they don't have their father to guide them and are left to make their own way in a world they've only had limited interaction with up to that point.
When finally face to face with the man responsible for taking splinter from them and he's taunting them he might be dead it's perfectly reasonable for Leo to act like an angsty teen in that moment imo. Because really what is a teenager but a young person who's trying to figure the world and themselves out while learning to function independent from a parental figure.