What did you think of the fight choreography during the later seasons.
 

While most of us can agree the animation improved I want to hear what does the technodrome think of the fight choreography during seasons 2-5. Did you think they were better, worse or do you think they were the same quality as season 1.

As someone who has literally just rewatched the entire series in the span of 1 month, it did seem to get better as the animation improved. There were good action sequences in every season though, so I never any season was lacking.

Sometimes it's hard to tell because the Turtles were fighting mutants or the Kraang 80% of the time in this series, but even then they were always doing great action sequences so the fights never felt repetitive and dull. Even when they were re-fighting the same enemies over and over (how many times did they fight Bradford and Xever thoughout the series?) they did different things each other.

I think they really kicked up things a notch in the second half of Season 4 and 5 though. It has some of the best fight sequences of the series.

Fight sequences on their own got better.

Fight sequences that had true emotional power and intensity based on previous scenes/episodes behind them took a nosedive after The Invasion. Fights in this show became sorta bland when the show stopped building up good conflict. There are exceptions, of course, like the Shredder fight in Owari and the climactic fight on the roller-coaster in The Pig and The Rhino, and probably more that I'm forgetting. I couldn't get invested in the climax in Turtles in Time despite the flashy visuals because I wasn't given a real reason to care. There weren't any true stakes, and if there were, they were largely downplayed. The Evil of Dregg had the same problem, and again, there are probably more instances that I just don't remember atm.

There were plenty of high stakes, like when Alopex chopped off Tiger Claw's arm, and all the fights in the Kavaxas arc was pretty good in addition to the tail-end of Season 4.

Also even though I prefer the Foot as human, as robots it allowed Leonardo and Raphael to actually use their blades on them and chop them up, something they couldn't do with humans. So we saw what would have been violent killing like Leo chopping off heads, Raph stabbing faces or chests with his sai, limb removal...but of course as robots it could fly past the censors.

There was some Mortal Kombat or anime-esque fatalities and action scenes done in the Nick show only with the robot Foot or Kraang droids instead of humans.

Theres an interesting point actually - because while the choreography of the fights was consistently very good throughout the violence depicted definitely increased steadily as the show went on.

Some of the later season fights are quite brutal - even if they are robotic enemies in some instances. Examples include;

Rahzar being run over by a train
April decapitating Elite footbots amidst a shower of robot oil
Tigerclaws 'disarming'
Don seemingly breaking thug's necks in Heart of Evil

Personally i think the choreography did improve steadily - especially with Mikey. But that's not to say the earlier seasons were poorly done in any way.

I dont know about the emotional impact lacking in the later seasons, as this is something that has to be built up to anyway. There weren't that many instances where the fights needed to have emotional stakes attached

Yeah, and the fate of Shredder's mutant henchmen is to always get beaten up tons of times. While the Turtles did start beating Rahzar/Fishface, Tiger Claw and Bebop/Rocksteady easier and easier each time...it's something I expected so it didn't bother me.

In my headcanon the Turtles got better at fighting them because they learned all their moves and attacks and adapted to them, hence why the new mutants seemed unstoppable when they first appeared but then the Turtles got better and better at fighting them each time.

Every series does this, in the 2k3 series Hun was almost unstoppable in Season 1, then as the show goes on he's taken down easier and easier. Same for the Elite 4 Guards.

They would have improved, they were training the whole time, starting out only ever having fought each other and Splinter. I remember in season 4 Splinter saying there was nothing more he could teach them except Wisdom (though they were not as good as him)
I remember being very impressed with the forgotten swordsman scenes, I'm not sure Tatsu should have been that much better than all of them together though.

Just rewatched the Usagi episodes, the fight choreography was amazing. Especially that final fight with the Turtles Vs. Jei and then Usagi Vs. Jei in the finale. Likewise the fights with Usagi/Turtles against the Snow cat ninja's on the mountain was also great. Also liked the opening scenes of TMNT Vs. Usagi and Jei killing the Turtles in the dream.

I have to say it's not just the fights, it's also the action sequences. The eps with Don Vizioso and the mob also had some great action sequences, despite the villains all using guns the way the Turtles were constantly dodging and knocking them out and the Hammer fighting them was great.

As I said, even eps with mutants/creatures had some great scripted action sequences. Insecta Trifecta with the Turtles fighting on the skyscraper with Scumbug/Antrax and Stockman had some great scenes with them jumping through the scaffoling and flying in the air. The same happened in the Wingnut/Screwloose ep right after when they were using their grappling hooks and zooming around the skyscrapers like Batman.

i need to re-watch some of the later episodes.

the long breaks really killed my focus of this series.

The fights also got a lot faster paced as the show went on, probably because the animation improves.