How seriously should the 1987 tmnt cartoon be taken, if at all?
 

Discuss.

I believe the 1987 turtles cartoon deserves to be taken seriously as an action cartoon because while those turtles are often in a campy and comedic universe, they are often worried about not making it out alive and take many threats pretty seriously (many of said threats are legitimately dangerous to either them or the world as a whole).

Plus, the self awareness of the turtles never goes to a point where they know they are going to win in the end regardless of whatever happens.

The closest example of the show exhibiting extreme self awareness in regards to the turtles always winning in the end that I can think of is the use of "Woo Wee" in the season 6 opener, "Rock around the Block", in which the turtles simply defeat Shredder and Krang by doing nothing and letting Bebop and Rocksteady foil them through their own stupidity.

Even in that example though, I think it could be argued that the turtles simply decided not to waste any more energy because there was nothing else they could do , and as far as they were concerned, the turtles still didn't know whether they were actually going to win that time.

The show is basically like Futurama or Star Trek for kids, it's both a serious series and not serious at the same time.

Pretty much agree with what you said.

Is the show goofy, sure, but it's done in the way that's genuine... like they're typically taking it seriously the larger majority of the time, even if some aspects of a situation are comedic while not usually doing it to be comedic. If that makes any sense. Hard to explain. Like a more natural type of comedy vs the rather forced comedy of a lot of cartoons today.

edit: Like these Turtles could throw a pie that was on hand at someone as a defense, not to be funny themselves, but the cartoon still expects that to be a funny thing.

So... Turtles serious, but cartoon not?


Pretty good comparison, I agree.

I think it should be taken as serious as shredder the musical with Vernon Fenwick as oroku saki singing springtime for shredder and the foot clan with robot foot soldiers as the back up dancers with a giant cardboard cutout of the technodrome as the backdrop.

what I mean is this could have been an episode and that's what made it enjoyable to me and it knows it didn't have to be taken to seriously other than every once in a while having a moral about honor or fighting for whats right in a world where their rejected for being different.

Just ordinary action–comedy genre that was popular at the time

The original cartoon is definitely not meant to be taken too seriously. I mean, maybe the red sky seasons are. But the bulk of the series (seasons 1-7) is best to just watch and enjoy. If you take the show for what it was, and don't over analyze it, it can still be a very entertaining cartoon, even all these years later. In my opinion, more entertaining than anything Nickelodeon has done with the franchise.

What she said!

As serious as the 1966 Batman TV series.

You can enjoy the first 7 seven seasons while taking them seriously at the same time.

Agree with your other points though.

It depends on the episode, I guess. There are some where people suffer really gruesome fates, like Mutagen Man or Baxter Stockman. Those are kind of nightmare fuel.

I totally agree with OP and Indigoerth. The storylines are serious and the characters took them seriously.

There’s humor thrown in because well some stuff is funny and it’s a cartoon, but it was in no way the dumbed down nonsense that some make it out to be.

Now people pick out certain things for jokes but that’s not at all what the cartoon was like.

The years when the Original Cartoon peaked in popularity (1989–1991), the number of parents complaining over too much violence also peaked. So that's why Seasons 3–5 (totally spanning over 108 episodes) mostly gave us comedy scenes instead, and the violence was toned down.

However, writers, producers and voice actors took some advantage of it, and instead built up a great dynamic in the characters interacting with each others. (Turtle Lair, Channel 6 and Technodrome)

This sentence pretty much defines it.

I think it makes so much sense to those of us who where there - "the 80's vibe". It was a lifestyle that permeated everything back then. There's a.... thing... about the 80's, the generation, the pop culture, the vibe that might never happen again. Yet I also think it's also hard for those of us that were there to understand that those who were not there need to sort of discuss it and chew it up a bit to understand it.

I think it's like that for all things, though.

It’s actually pretty funny how many episodes deal with explosions, bombs, death traps, various elements of world destruction, etc. but since the show was written as a comedy for kids it kind of doesn’t feel as violent as the situations would really be.

The themes you mention reminded me of GI Joe ARAH - some of the themes in that show were nutso for kids. Yet every single time a plane blew up people were parachuting to safety even amidst full scale air and ground wars around them! :lol: Until that one time that Serpentor threw a snake through Duke's heart. There was that.

Just wanted to add that as goofy as it is and as harmless as it is as a cartoon, there's plenty of moments that can be taken seriously in the eps alongside the comedic stuff.

One of the greatest, and maybe "darkest" (or just "dim"?), in my mind is when Leo lopped off the heads of Herman the Horrible.

Just finished up a slow re-watch of the series recently, and that moment still stood out and always kind of surprises me. At that point in the ep it may already be known that Herman is just a robot and is already laying broken apart on the ground, but that actually comes across as a pretty brutal move for this cartoon since the two heads of Herman are still speaking to people like a living thing. And here comes Leo just "Nope!" and cuts them clean off.

Killing robots may be common for the Turtles as a way of getting to "kill" things that aren't people and get past the censors, but this is probably one of the only cases where the robot does not actually seem robotic and is portrayed like a living thing. Pushed the envelope a little bit for its time.


I've always loved how easily things can blow up, including things that should not even happen to.

One of my fave weird explosion gifs I have of this series is exploding... toast. Two piece impact and erupt into a ball of fire midair.

I mean technically that makes it a violent attack against Raph, the target of the now "alive" toaster, but it's still funny because toast.

edit: Ohh, yay, found it.

https://i.imgur.com/UHcmoSN.gif

A similair cartoon was Bucky O'Hare (I've seen all 13 episodes, and really enjoyed watching it). However, each time a spacecraft was hit, those inside left in their escape pods.

Should the show be taken seriously in any capacity? No, not really. The tone is very silly with lots of fourth wall breaks and insane premises. I can see why a small child might end up taking the show somewhat seriously, given the limited experience they have with fiction. An adult however really shouldn't, even if they can stomach the poor quality.

That was one of the standout violent moments in the show, and you've got to love how casual Leonardo is about it.

"And its about to get worse!"

It's moments like these which prove that the 1987 turtles would not hesitate to use their weapons on living creatures during the less censored seasons of the show.

Another similar moment that stands out to me, is in the very first episode when the turtles fight the Foot Soldiers for the very first time on the rooftop.

One of the Foot Soldiers charges for Raphael, who ends up stabbing it in the chest.

Keep in mind, the 1987 turtles didn't know that the Foot Soldiers were robots, just like with Leonardo not knowing about Herman the Horrible being a robot.

Even in the most slapstick episodes, the stakes themselves were always taken seriously by the turtles.

So it doesn't matter if they were Stabbing or pushing carboard boxes, the threats were always real in the eyes of the turtles.

Also, killing an extraterrestrial is considered more OK than killing an Earth Human. In Splinter No More they tricked the extraterrestrial monster into killing itself. And in Divide and Conquer, the turtles probably indirectly killed Dregg by throwing him from Earth through the portal.

True, those are all good examples.

Also, Leonardo stabbing the plant monster in "It Came from Beneath the Sewers".

Its these kind of examples which make me kind of dissapointed that we didn't get more of the 1987 turtles being violent in the Wanted Bebop and Rocksteady special from the Nickelodeon crossover.

I mean yes, that crossover got their personalities down perfectly, and the portrayal of the turtles not using their weapons was accurate to certain parts of the show (the most slapstickiest of seasons 3 and 4), but it was a missed pportunity to push some boundaries.

I mean, we get this buildup that the 1987 turtles are being trained to use their weapons again, and all that buildup just leads to them slicing up Foot Soldiers which was already a common staple from the show.

How awesome would it be if say, the 1987 turtles got a few cuts and stabs on the Nickelodeon Bebop and Rocksteady as a payoff for the training?

Fred Wolf Raphael could at least have kicked Nickelodeon Rocksteady in his head, knocking him unconsciousn. Remember Nickelodeon Rocksteady is a fearsome war volunteer, who fought in the civil war in Yugoslavia during the 1990's, and the wars in Iraq and Democratic Republic of Congo before he joined the Foot Clan in 2013.

That would also pay tribute to Future Raphael punching Adolf Hitler in the Archie Comics.

That's the main thing the crossovers get wrong. Despite the silly was of the show, the turtles and the characters in it take things seriously and there are usually stakes involved. The crossovers usually make it sound like the 80s crew never take anything seriously despite them basically stopping shredder from taking over the world every other day.

COMPARED to rise it is 1000 times better. I was the main villian and was a big threat to the world and turtles!

I take the first 5 episodes (season 1) fairly seriously.

To me it's just like comparing Batman 66 and any other Batman incarnation. You watch one when you are feeling in that kinda mood, and one of the others any other time.

The fate of the world was at stake in almost every episode, so very seriously.

I'd compare it more to Super Friends personally. FW TMNT's influence on the brand is kinda like how people casually referred to the JLA as Super Friends or assumed Aquaman was lame for decades, simply because they were more familiar with the cartoon than the comics. And sure, Super Friends does have some influence to this day, like how its original characters keeps popping up or the LoD HQ. But the actual show is so lame and boring, it hardly ever influences the modern incarnations beyond superficial details because nobody in charge of making them can stand watching that crap.

You know,
All this talk about the Super Friends show makes me intensely curious (I've never seen it before).

I might check it out and who's knows, maybe I'll absolutely fall in love with it like I did with the 1987 turtles cartoon?

No, Superfriends is very bad. All the characters are one-dimensional, Superman and Batman have the same personality, and there's no action since a character wasn't allowed to throw a punch. The very last seasons of it which aired in the late 80's are the only decent ones.

A quick look at Wikipedia shows that Super friends was 109 episodes long, but the first 3 seasons have 44 minutes long episodes which sounds a bit much.

I might just watch the first couple of season 4 episodes (since its only 22 minutes long each).

Justice League
 

I think you already know it, but there is also a Justice League cartoon from the early 2000's (if you're interested). It originally aired over Cartoon Network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justic...ue_(TV_series)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_League_Unlimited

About as seriously as the Rise show.

It's entertaining enough - I loved it when I was really, really young. Like many cartoons that we have fond memories of, they can be hard to get through now. I'd be curious if you could embrace them now.....

Now that show was terrific. A buddy of mine lent me his series DVD sets about ten years ago and that's when I first sat through the Timmverse JLA. It was really entertaining - it drew a great balance of dramatic superhero action and entertaining "upbeat" or "comedy" moments without ever going too far.

My response is below:

What you're talking about is being self-referential without being blantly obvious about if as every TV show and movie does today. TV and movies today are mostly written in extremes. Either something is deadly overly serious or if the writers know they need a comedic moment they try too hard to make something overly comedic. There is no balance or middle ground so it (at least for me) always fails.

Isn't it ironic that back in the 80s TMNT was criticised for being too violent when today the FW series is the equivalent of the 60's Batman series. :-?

You're talking about verisimilitude: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude

It doesn't matter how far fetched or ridiculous something is as long as it makes the viewer relates to the characters and situations. The viewer can then forgive silly plots. It's like the first four Superman movies and how they end up being more watchable and likeable compared to the more recent ones. We don't laugh at the TMNT, we laugh WITH them. It's not about age but being able to understand properly formed characters you can relate to. This way of writing unfortunately is completely lacking in media today. All those people who say you can't appreciate drama in the series after growing up are up their own backside.

Depends on the episode, but most of the series in general isn’t supposed to be taken seriously imo. The show is best watched as a comedy. I take season 1, 2, 6, 7 and red sky slightly seriously, though (kinda in the same way I watch Buffy season 1).

Yikes if you think this series is just a comedy that would sum up most 80's cartoons then. :-?

Well, it is what it is.

I don't even know what to qualify this show as if it's not a comedy. The characters break the fourth wall all the time, they constantly spew snark and a lot (if not most) of the plots are intentionally farcical. It seems to me like most of the lines uttered are either jokes or exposition.

Action/Adventure/Comedy, I guess?

I mean, the protagonists literally dispatched the bad guys by whipping pizza at them on more than one occasion, and many if not most of the climactic fight scenes were accompanied by numerous piss-taking zingers that would make any Marvel movie blush. They once KO'ed Bebop and Rocksteady by making them smell their own feet, for crissakes.

There are lots of action and adventure elements for certain, but I agree that the show was predominantly comedic in nature. Whereas, say, Biker Mice From Mars, which I'd never seen at all until recently, would be more like an action/adventure show with occasional comedic elements, while TMNT would be a comedic show with action/adventure elements. If that makes any sense. Like you said, huge chunks of the dialog were either a pun, a zinger, or expository information. Not all, but very much of it.

And for those who might not "get it", none of this is an "attack", merely an observation/statement of fact. This shouldn't need to be explicitly stated, but apparently it does.