Episode Summary:
In this bodacious episode of The Fandom Portals Podcast, hosts Aaron and Brash shell out their thoughts on the classic 1990 film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
They reminisce about their first encounters with the turtles, from the animated series to the iconic movie. The hosts also dive into some totally tubular trivia, behind-the-scenes secrets about the Jim Henson Creature Shop suits, and compare the 90s film to Michael Bay's 2010s take. It's a nostalgic trip filled with pizza, puns, and plenty of turtle power.
Topics:
- Gratitudes and Growths: Personal Reflections Before Diving into TMNT
- First Takes: Our First Impressions of the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie & Fan Reactions
- Fandom Fact Face-Off: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie Trivia Challenge!
- Set Secrets: Unmasking the Magic - The 1990 TMNT Animatronic Suits
- Devil's Avocado: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Face-Off - 1990s vs. Michael Bay's TMNT Designs
- Sign-Off: Calling All Turtle Fans!
Key Takeaways:
- The 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie holds a special place in the hearts of many fans, evoking nostalgia for the late 80s and early 90s "Turtle Mania".
- The film's success was surprising, as many Hollywood studios were initially hesitant to back it, fearing it would flop like other comic book adaptations of the time.
- Jim Henson's Creature Shop created the groundbreaking animatronic suits for the turtles, which, while impressive for their time, had their share of challenges for the stunt performers.
- There's debate about the best portrayal of the turtles, with the 1990s film's practical effects being compared to the CGI-heavy designs of Michael Bay's movies.
Quotes:
- "As a wise man said, forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
- "This is legit peak turtles until the mutant mayhem movie came out."
Call to Action:
Cowabunga! If you enjoyed this trip down memory lane, please subscribe to The Fandom Portals Podcast for more deep dives into the fandoms you love! Leave us a review, and share this episode with your friends on social media using the hashtag #FandomPortalsTurtles .
Apple Podcast Tags:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, TMNT, 1990s movies, comic book movies, nostalgia, pop culture, movie review, film analysis, behind the scenes, Jim Henson, practical effects, CGI, fandom, geek
Contact Us:
Website: https://www.fandomportalspodcast.com/
Instagram: instagram.com/fandomportals/?locale=en
Threads: threads.net/@fandomportals
Email: fandomportals@gmail.com
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/fandomportals
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hello everybody.
It's Aaron here from the FandomPortals Podcast.
I'm joined here, as always, bymy amazing turtle brother, brash
.
How you going, brash?
How about yourself?
Oh, mate, I'm having a greatday.
It's Boston over time.
The reason we're talking likethis, guys, is because this is
our Portal is Pick episode, andwe are happy to announce that
this episode is all about theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
(00:36):
the 1990 original motion picturemovie.
We want to thank Biorial Sethon our threads community for
suggesting this one.
You we want to thank BiorealSeth on our threads community
for suggesting this one.
You guys voted for it amongstsome of our other titles that
are on our Letterboxd watch list.
So thank you very much, biorealSeth.
This one goes out to you.
So, yes, today we're going tobe talking about Teenage Mutant
(00:59):
Ninja Turtles, the 1990 version.
There's been lots and lots ofremakes and different kind of
medias since then.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
But before we get into all that, we always start
with our gratitudes and growths.
Uh, brash, we're gonna startwith you today.
Oh shit, yeah, all right.
Uh, I am grateful for having aperson above me that can take my
on-call phone calls when I'masleep and I don't answer my
phone because it doesn't wake meup.
Twice now in my week of beingon call, I have slept through my
phone ringing and they've hadto escalate it to the next
person up who has issued outthose jobs.
So thank you, graham.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Thank you, graham.
Save my ass, all right.
My gratitude for the week,brash, is you.
I'm grateful for you because wehave kind of chalked out a
little space in our week to dothis and I look forward to it
all the time.
And I look forward to it notonly because I'm doing something
that I love, but I also lookforward to it because I'm doing
it with you.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Oh, thanks man, Me too, me too.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, no, I'm really grateful for you man, really,
Really grateful for being such agood friend and sharing
interests and, you know, divinginto this with me headfirst and
being there along the way.
So we get into some, you know,some big topics in our MVT
section sometimes, yeah, andit's good to be able to talk to
somebody and, you know, reflectwhen you need to and do that
kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, well, there's one of my highlights of my week.
Hmm, yeah, I really think thehighlight I have is when I take
Ace to the Dog.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Well, now there's two and I'm happy to be a part of
it.
But, yeah, thank you, brash,I'm grateful for you.
Man, oh, thank you All good.
All right, let's do our firsttakes segment.
The first takes segment iswhere we discuss how we first
encountered the movie, what ourinitial impressions of the movie
(02:43):
were and our feelings on themedia after having watched it.
We also share our community'sthoughts on the media.
For those that have contributedto our social pages, if you
would like to, those links arein the show notes below.
The best place to do it is onThreads and on Instagram, and
you can also now do it on ourwebsite, which is
wwwvendumpoddlespodcastcom.
Obviously, today we're talkingabout the Teenage Mutant Ninja
(03:03):
Turtles suggested for us for ourPullers Pick episode by Boreal
Seth from our Threads community,and this is a movie about four
teenage mutant ninja turtlesemerging from the shadows to
protect New York City from agang of criminal ninjas who have
also kidnapped their rat father.
Now, if you say that in anormal conversation without
context, it sounds ludicrous.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
No, it sounds like you need a room in a padded cell
exactly right.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
It is definitely a like a far-fetched kind of ip,
originating in the 1990s,obviously 1980s actually.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
But we're going to actually talk now, brash, about
how you first encountered theseturtles, what was your first
memories of them and whetheryou'd watch this particular
movie, the one from 1990, beforeor not yeah, so my first
encounter with this was probablyback when I was uh, I'd have to
say about five, five or four,probably earlier, but I'll be
(03:57):
doing too young to remember thatkind of stuff.
But, um, uh, because it wasalways ninja Turtles, power
Rangers, batman animated seriesand Biker, meister of Mars and
Street Sharks, that is thestaples of a very good childhood
.
Saturday morning so those weremy favorite shows growing up.
(04:18):
I used to have a dress up ofDonatello, yeah, yeah, because
he had his quarter staff andeverything.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Very cool.
So what about the Ninja Turtles?
Is this the first thing thatyou saw of the Ninja Turtles?
Do you think, Do you remember?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
No, so the animated show would have been the first
thing I watched, and I probablydidn't watch the actual movie
until probably later in the 90s,I reckon, because I think, well
, we'll probably get into it abit later.
The movie's actually quite dark.
Yes, yeah, so I don't think Iwas.
I mean, even though, to be fair, my sister and my brother have
(04:56):
made me watch some pretty heavystuff when I was younger,
because it's Ninja Turtles.
They probably weren't thatinterested in it as I was, so
it's probably not one of theones they made me watch, so as I
was, so it's probably not oneof the ones that made me watch.
So I had to watch it on my ownwhen I was able to, but later on
in life, so for me, the NinjaTurtles I can't remember my life
without them in it.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Honestly, they're like that long lost brother that
you haven't seen for a verylong time.
But from from my memoryflashbacks, I remember having a
bedspread of the Teenage MutantNinja Turtles in the early 90s
and from there I also rememberwatching the cartoon at one of
my cousin's house, the themesong.
I remember my mom singing thatwith me when I was a kid and
(05:31):
this was just like fragments ofmemories that I've seen as well
and I've also felt alwaysconnected to the Ninja Turtles,
just because of the themes andthe colors and the awesomeness
of the turtles, how they are Forthis movie.
I was saying off mic beforethat I thought I had seen this
movie but in fact I had not.
The first time I watched thismovie was for this podcast, and
the one that I thought that Iwatched that was this one was
(05:52):
actually the third one Turtlesin Time.
Turtles in Time, yeah, becauseI was like when are they going
to get into samurai suits?
And it never happened.
Yeah, or the fifth turtle, venus, venus Venus, her name was oh
sorry, yeah sorry, there arefour turtles.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yes, yeah, venus.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah.
So that was a shock to mebecause I was waiting for them
to go to feudal Japan and I waslike how is this going to happen
?
But it never did.
It never came.
So this was a delightfulsurprise to me.
I also own a lot of the comicbooks when they updated them to
the IDW distributing studio andthey're probably one of my
favourite kind of comic booksthat I've read in trade
paperback.
They're really good.
(06:32):
The 2003 cartoon I believe itwas 2003 TMNT, what it was
called that used to be on CheeseTV in Australia.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, that like blew me away.
Oh, that was probably myfavourite animated adaption of
Champions of the New Geeks.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yeah, I think so too, and I actually found a lot of
similarities between this movieand that cartoon, at least in
the first season, at leastbefore they started going.
You know, intergalactic andU-Tron.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It was such a great animation though.
Yeah, the fight scenes wereactually really good, and it
just got me excited every time Iwatched it?
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah, absolutely I loved it.
So yeah, let's flick to oursocial medias now, because we
had quite a number of responsesto this one On our Reddit page.
We had 152 upvotes and over 62original comments.
It says Trapper Keeper says Iwant an R-rated movie.
I believe the Last Ronin iscoming out.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, and that should be pretty hectic, because
that's when Mickey goes all.
Yes, he's the last one, yeah,he goes all, but it becomes like
it goes like Super Saiyan in it, yeah, yeah, where he's like
super powerful and has likeextra powers and everything.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, and I think the best thing about that version
of the Ninja Turtles is that,for the first couple of issues
at least, they kept it a verybig secret about who that Ronin
Turtle was.
Everybody was trying to guesswho it was, and it was a very
big shock when it turned out tobe Michelangelo.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yeah, the one who you'd think would be the most
passive, fun-loving one justends up being this fucking
badass brutal.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah, all right, we have Jay Buds on our Reddit that
says as a wise man said,forgiveness is divine, but never
pay full price for late pizza.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
That was a very common quote obviously from the
movie we have.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Asco says that it's absolute cinema, which was also
agreed upon by 43 other users.
Some people have said that itis easily the best comic book
adaptation movie of all time.
On our Reddits as well.
We have Dirty Old Sock Lifefrom Reddit, great name comic
book adaptation movie of alltime.
On our reddits as well.
We have dirty old sock lifefrom reddit.
Great name says this is legitpeak turtles until the mutant
(08:32):
mayhem movie came out.
Yeah, we also have easy goatfrom reddit.
That says remarkably dark for achildren's franchise, whereas
the sequels are much moreflippant and typical family
action films.
The original was unique and wasmy first introduction to
heavier themes in a film as ayoung person and there is a
reason for that too yeah, yeah,and we'll probably go into that
a little bit later.
(08:52):
Over onto our threads we put apost up that says what do you
think of this movie, the teenagemutant ninja turtles movie from
1990.
We put the poster up there andwe have thrash and treasure
podcast.
Who's a good friend his name'salso aaron, by the way he says
why are you asking such a loadedquestion?
We all know this is a cinematicmasterpiece.
Kamozi Mills says I enjoyed it,splinter had my favorite
moments in the whole movie andwe also had Agent Sonar who said
(09:15):
I think you spelled cinematicmasterpiece wrong.
So there's a lot of fans of thismovie, brash.
And the word nostalgia comes tomind once again through the
1990s, because during the timewhen this came out it was like
in the late 80s, early 90s,incredibly popular ip.
It was like everywhere therewas turtle mania that was
streaming through, especiallyamerica, and, um, you know,
(09:36):
there was a toy line.
There was the famous cartoon,obviously, that obviously
debuted in 1987, which made itvery popular for kids, and there
was the comic book that wascreated by Eastman and Laird.
That really surprised them whenthey released it to have it be
so popular.
So there's definitely some lovefor the Teenage Mutant Ninja
(09:56):
Turtles.
All right, are you ready to getinto our fandom fact face-off?
Brash, ready, ready, all right,everybody.
This is our fandom fact faceoff.
One hosts ask another a seriesof trivia questions associated
with the focus media.
The host with the mostcollected points from the fandom
fact face off segment willshout the opposing co-host to an
all expenses paid trip to themovies.
(10:18):
Now, this is our last week forthe month of may and we're at
eight.
All I'm instigating.
Another rule, brash, oh, okay.
The rule is you can askclarifying questions, but you're
only allowed to ask for onehint through the whole segment.
Okay, okay, because we've gotto get to it.
Okay, now remember, this moviewas directed by Steve Barron, it
(10:39):
was written by Kevin Eastman,peter Laird and it actually
stars Judith Hogue and EliasCochise, who plays April O'Neill
, and also Casey Jones, beforewe jump into the Fandom Fact
Face-Off segment.
Brash, probably not a questionof yours.
If it is, I'll cut it, but doyou know the budget for this
movie?
Um was it like 1.25 mil no itwas a little bit more than that
(11:02):
1.3 mil.
It was $13 million.
Yeah $13 or 1.3?
No, $13.
$13.
, yeah, yeah, $13 million.
It was the highest grossingindependent movie of all time,
until the Blair Witch Projectcame out, and it made $202
million gross, so it wasdefinitely something that people
slept on in terms of IP.
Do you want to go first or me?
(11:22):
I'll go first.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I'll go first All right.
Okay, first question.
Well, do you know whatMichelangelo hated as a topping
on his pizza in the movie thathe actually loved in the cartoon
?
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yes, I do so.
He's on the phone in his lair.
That's the first time we seethe lair in full.
Really great set design.
And he hates anchovies.
He does hate anchovies, butloves them in the cartoons?
Yeah, loves them in the cartoonsand you know it makes sense
because he's a turtle andturtles eat more fish.
Okay, so it does make sense.
And watching the cartoon withmy son this morning the original
1987 cartoon they, in the veryfirst episode that was run by,
(12:11):
like the foot ninja and thingslike that, and rafael ordered a
sashimi pizza and the remainingthree turtles ordered a whipped
cream pizza.
I was like, you know, anchovieson the pizza doesn't seem so
out of place, but I digress.
Um, so that's one for me, thankgoodness, and all right, my
question.
Here we go.
So with my question, there area number of key story elements
from the original comics thatwas adapted into this film
script.
Can you tell me, because mostof it was, as we said, adapted
(12:33):
from the comic books and it hada bit of a darker vibe, but they
did borrow some things from the1987 cartoon.
Can you name three of thosethings, three things from the
cartoon?
Yes, that made it into thismovie and was not from the comic
books uh, the colored headbandscorrect?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
uh is what I said, what I said earlier about um
april and neil being a tvreporter instead of a love
assistant, correct?
The third one?
Oh, then that's the other thingwe're talking about too.
I believe uh, splinter, he wasactually uh.
In the cartoon he's a manturned into a rat, but it
realistically he's just a ratwith that used to train like
watch his master train, andthat's how he learned how to do
(13:12):
ninja stuff and yep, exactly sothose are three things that had
appeared in the comic books thatthey borrowed for or changed uh
in the movie.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Some other things I would have accepted was the
turtles love for pizza.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
That came from the cartoon.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
And wasn't actually part of the comic books.
Another one that I had wasMichelangelo's surfer accent.
Obviously you can't do that ina comic book, but that was
directly ripped from the cartoon.
He spoke differently to all hisbrothers and they brought it
into the movie as well.
Fun fact as well.
Everybody kind of wonders whySplinter talks the way he does.
(13:47):
He raised the turtles and thenthe turtles speaking those fancy
and different kind of Americanaccents.
Do you know why they do that?
Speaker 2 (13:54):
I don't.
I do know that in the movie thevoice of Raphael, his voice to
be very thick Boston accent, wasactually just something that
his voice had to come up withand suggested to do Exactly
right.
That's why he's got such athick Boston accent?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, I think it works for the character of
Raphael 100%.
Yeah, and that's Josh Payas,who is the only one to have done
both roles in the turtle suit,and also the voice actor.
Yeah, and he suggested that, Ithink, because it made him sound
a little bit tougher and he wasobviously the tougher that New
York accent.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah, more New York turtle I'm walking in.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yeah, exactly six runs.
So no, the actual reason thatthey all talk in those different
kind of American accents wasbecause the turtles were raised
on TV like they watch so muchAmerican TV.
Yep, yep, yep, true, true.
And you can see it kind of inthis movie where they take their
inspirations from, in terms ofdifferent characters that they
would have seen in 90s TV, whereRaphael dresses up in a hat and
(14:49):
a trench coat, which was verylike PI kind of vibes, and he
has that Boston American accentwhich is what those characters
had.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Mikey obviously watched a lot of vibe, uh, and
then, yeah, so they got it fromwatching too much tv and you see
it when that splinter is tryingto say you know, everyone's
sitting down, calm your mind.
And instead they go off andjust start dancing and singing
whatever they want, yeah, yeah,yeah, and ordering a pizza and
ordering pizza exactly right anddoing the yeah, the.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
You know, you know how many movies we've actually
done that have a dance sequencein it.
It's just, yeah, the ninjutsutequila dance.
Funny, you know, if I had anickel for every time that
happens, I'd have two nickels,which isn't a lot.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
But Great karaoke song that tequila.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Oh yeah, stand up and wiggle a little and then say
tequila, exactly, and you cansay it differently every single
time, all right, so that makesit one all in our fandoma-fandom
.
Fact face-off with yourquestion coming Brash.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Okay, my question is what pizza company do they use
in the movie?
And there's a fun fact questionafter this if you can get it.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Okay.
So Mikey orders his pizza.
They had a 30-minute guarantee,which they now have revoked due
to the fact that they had toomany traffic collisions trying
to keep to that 30 minutes andthat they had too many traffic
collisions, trying to keep tothat 30 minutes and it was
Domino's.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
It was Domino's.
Now for a fun fact.
Who actually sponsored?
Speaker 1 (16:09):
the movie I know this as well it was actually
sponsored by Pizza Hut.
So in post-production, afterthe movie had been made, Pizza
Hut.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
They did a special promotion through Pizza Hut.
They did.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
And it was about a $20 million post-production
product placement promotionwhere you know they did the
advertisement and some peoplethat have the old vhs can still
see that advertisement playbefore the movie.
And you know they did a toyline through through, uh, pizza
hut sponsorship as well.
So, yeah, it's, it's veryamazing to see that they allowed
the domino's guy to be in themovie but then heavily sponsored
(16:39):
by pizza hut crazy.
Another fun fact about that doyou know the special actor that
was involved in that scene beingthe pizza delivery guy?
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Oh, yeah, the guy who does the voice of Michelangelo.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Exactly so Michelangelo was delivering
pizza to himself.
Yeah, the guy that was in thesuit of Michelangelo because the
director, steve Barron, wantedall the stuntmen who played in
the suits to have a little cameooutside of the suits in the
movie Michelangelo's cameo whowas Michel and Sisti actually
delivered pizza to himself inthat incident.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Do you know where all the other voice?
Speaker 1 (17:17):
actors were placed.
I know where rafael's was.
Rafael is in the back of thetaxi that hits rafael.
Yep, I don't know the others,so donatello's.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
He's was, uh, the foot ninja.
Um that talks to april in thesubway, the one that slaps her
yep, yep and um leonardo's wasthe thug that was standing next
to Tatsu.
When Casey fights Tatsu, he'sthe one smoking a cigar.
(17:47):
I believe.
Thug number three, thug numberthree next to Tatsu, very good.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Very cool, yeah, so they all got their little cameo
appearance, which is, you know,a small little reward for the
arduous work that they did.
We're going to go into that alittle bit later too, all right,
so that is two for me with myquestion to come.
All right, your question, brash.
Why did major Hollywood studiosrefuse to back the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1990?
(18:12):
, given that it was such apowerful IP.
It had an established cartoonbrand, it was a big comic book
IP.
There was a toy line.
Even that withstanding, a lotof the major distribution
companies failed to back theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Was it because I think I'll do this, or this
might be another reason, or forsomething else?
But was it because they thoughtit was going to bomb just like
Masters of the Universe?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Exactly right.
Yes, he-man Masters of theUniverse came out and it was
going to ruin, just like Mastersof the Universe.
Exactly right, yes, he-manMasters of the Universe came out
and it was going to ruin theirtoy sales Just before yep, and
they thought it would ruin theirtoy sales.
Another reason I would haveaccepted was because during the
late 1980s, hollywood was veryskeptical about comic movies in
general.
George Lucas's next projectafter his Star Wars trilogy was
Howard the Duck.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Which is a little bit obscure.
We don't talk about Howard theDuck.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
But you know it had that obscure sort of reference
like the TMNT was.
It had animatronics in terms ofthe lead sort of character
design as well and it didn't govery well at all Howard the Duck
.
So there was a lot of lostfaith.
The Superman sequels as well.
After the initial Superman themovie didn't go so well.
The only outlier was the 1989Tim Burton Batman film.
(19:27):
However, studios backed thatbecause it had Tim Burton as the
director backing it and theyalso had Michael Keaton who was
a very famous actor at the time.
So that pull allowed studios toget behind it.
But this one here, the TeenageMutant Ninja Turtles, everybody
passed on it, thinking that itwould bomb, and they ended up
going to a Hong Kong filmcompany called Golden Harvest
that financed some of the filmsand then it was actually
(19:50):
distributed by New Line Cinema,which at the time was a very
indie and niche distributioncompany that was just getting
its start.
So without New Line Cinema wewouldn't have the Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles.
So that's another one correctfor you, brash.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
And I only knew that because I only just sort of I
didn't even mean to stumble uponit, but I just saw it there
because when I was doing theresearch on the Pizza Art one
question that I had, it sort ofpopped up too, saying how that?
Saying that even though it hadthis $20 million pizza deal
after the post-production theystruggled to even start because
of the fact that they're worriedabout the toy sales.
(20:27):
Yeah, yeah, the only reason whyI know it, otherwise I wouldn't
have known it, and toy saleswere big back then.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
you know, not like now where it's.
You know toy sales and videoand gaming and things like that,
so definitely a big part oftheir budget which they needed.
All right, your third and lastquestion, rash.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Got to make it a hard one because one of us has to
lose.
I do have two, I just don'tknow which one would be harder.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Well, we both have our clues remaining, true, true.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
No, this one's the easy one, but I like this one.
Because I like this one, aprominent actor plays a, not a
foot thug, but one of theteenage thugs.
Do you know who it is?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yeah, of course you do.
Yeah, I know who this is.
This is a young Rob Lowe.
No, no, not Rob Lowe, it is ayoung Sam Rockwell.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yes, yes, oh my god, sam Rockwell.
My sphincter tightened then.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Lucky we don't accept first answers here, we get a
chance to run it back.
But yeah, sam Rockwell, he wasthe guy on the stairs who was
introducing the new children to,you know, the Pleasure Island
sort of foot clan teenagewasteland fun house.
And he did so by saying like,do like, do you have any smokes?
And the guy was just likeregular or menthol.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
That was Sam Rockwell yep, he's also the one at the
end that talks to the policechief and when they ask him or
he says if you want to know, goto go to the east, east, end,
eastman and Laird who wereactually Laird.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Laird Mid-Island, because Laird was the last of
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Yeah, good question.
But yeah, I do like that factas well.
Yeah, I love Sam Rockwell.
Yeah, yeah, and this was one ofhis.
This was actually his firstrole and I looked at the
director's commentary done bySteve Barron and he said you
(22:14):
know, this was his first roleand we we could also see like a
little bit of inspired actingthere, even though he did have a
smaller role.
So they kind of knew that hewas going to go on to some some
bigger and better things.
But there you go, got his start.
I like that.
Well done, all right.
So I am.
You know, full scores, three apiece.
Here we go brash.
Last one.
All right.
So this movie legal challengeswhen they were releasing the
(22:43):
movie in the United Kingdom, inEngland.
One of those was that they hadto rename the movie from Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles to theTeenage Mutant Hero Turtles.
However, they had to do someclever editing to fix another
thing in the movie that theywould not accept in their UK
release.
Do you know what that was?
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Don't have a clue.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Do you want your clue ?
Yes, please.
Okay, so your clue is it had todo with an item that is
restricted in the United Kingdomand they couldn't show it on
film.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Oh, an item that's restricted.
My first thought goes to like afirearm, but I don't know, you
don't know, nah, all right.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
So in the 1990s I don't know, you don't know, nah,
all right.
So in the 1990s the UK had verystrict regulations on the
depiction of martial artsweapons, most notably nunchucks.
Really, yeah, yeah,michelangelo's nunchucks.
They had to edit around his useof his signature weapon and
they were only allowed to showhim using punching and kicking
to the point where they actuallyfollowed that through and
(23:39):
obviously making some tonalchanges in number two and number
three of these Teenage MutantNinja Turtles movie where they
start to fight with more comicalsort of objects like food and
things like that.
So the nunchuck had to bebanned and avoided and couldn't
be promoted and the censorshiparound that would remain in
place for years until theyreleased the uncut version in
(24:01):
about 2012.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
That's so dumb I know that's so dumb Out of all the
weapons nunchucks.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah, the blunt force trauma weapon, but the katana's
okay, the size is okay.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Size is okay.
Donnie's quarterstaff, which ispretty much nunchucks without
the chain.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Absolutely, that's fine, fine, yeah, righto, yep.
So that whole scene in themiddle when they crash through
April O'Neil's antique shop roofand they have that nunchaku off
, you might say scrappedcompletely from the movie.
They don't have it in there,yep, in the British version.
So, yeah, that means I win.
I win.
How you doing, woohoo.
So with a total of 11 pointsand you ended up with a total of
(24:44):
10 points, very close whichmeans we'll be going to the
cinema on your dollar and I'm sohappy.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
I wonder actually, because my other question was um
there, uh, there's a reason.
April o'neill's character thatcharacter after o'neill doesn't
look like her character fromeither the comics or the uh
cartoon.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
That they do know why is this in terms of a yellow
jumpsuit?
Yes, I know that it.
Maybe it wasn't practical.
She thought it was overlysexualized.
I don't know that one.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
No, it's just, it's because the actress thought it
was gaudy.
She's like it looks ugly, Idon't want to wear it.
No, thank you.
I was like, ah, so you're justruining the whole time character
because you think the jumpsuitlooks ugly.
Yeah, yeah, because it's likewell, she's not even really
overly sexualized too, becauseit's a jumpsuit.
It's a full body jumpsuit,exactly.
But yeah, because she thoughtit was gaudy.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I do know that they kind of paid homage to it
because at the very start, inone of her first scenes, she was
wearing a yellow raincoat.
Yes, that was the part, thecompromise and she was like,
okay, I'll do that, but I'm notwearing that ugly suit the whole
time through.
Um, my other question that Iwas going to give you was there
is a special reason why splintergives each turtle their weapons
.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Do you know?
Speaker 1 (25:49):
what they are.
Oh no, I wouldn't know either.
Like so, leonardo has a lot ofgood leadership traits and is
realistically the one who ismost capable of deciding whether
somebody should live or die incombat.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
So the sword is a lethal kind of weapon.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Raphael has size because traditionally they're
used as a defensive weapon andhe's a very aggressive and
hot-headed, so it's training himto use a defensive fighting
style instead of an offensivefighting style.
Michelangelo is very bombasticand he is impulsive.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
And dumpt trucks take a lot more focus to use and
discipline and not to injureyourself with and.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Donatello is very tech savvy and into technology
and smart he's given like themost basic simple stick.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Yeah, because that's the same reason they use in the
later, later movie.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yeah, and I really like that.
I thought that's a really goodway to like tell you something
about the characters, just byinserting a simple weapon.
Another thing I really likebecause I have read the original
comic books and in the firstfew issues, every single turtle
does have a red bandana.
And the reason that they have ared bandana is because when
you're introduced to the turtles, they talk about one of their
turtle brothers that is lost,and the turtle that's lost is
(26:54):
Raphael, so they're all wearingred in homage to him, to try and
find him and just keep itconstantly on their mind that
that's what they're doing, yeah,but then later on in the series
they they change to thetraditional colors that you see.
So, uh, I like that.
In this movie they followed thethe cartoon sort of channel,
and the reason they did that wasobviously because children need
to be able to tell the turtlesapart as well.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
So, yeah, realistically, the only way you
could tell any of them reallyapart is probably raf, a bit
easier to tell apart becausehe's got all the scars and
scratches on his shells, becausehe's always he's bruising
jumping into trouble.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
That's it, alright.
So that was our fandom factface off segment for the month
of March.
We'll be bringing you anotherone in April.
Alright, we're going to move toour set secret segment.
Our set secret segment is wherethe hosts take a look behind
the scenes of the famous movieto give you all the information
on what went right, what wentwrong and what was interesting
about the way the movie was made.
(27:46):
And the most interesting andunique thing about this movie,
directed by Steve Barron theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in
1990, was those incredible suitsBrash.
Those animatronic puppeteeredsuits.
They brought these turtles tolife.
It was cutting edge in 1990.
So today in our set secretsegment, we're going to talk to
you all about those.
These suits were commissionedby the Jim Henson's creature
(28:10):
shop and a little fun fact aboutthat was when Steve Barron came
on he actually suggested thatthey use animatronics and suits.
Prior to that it was going tobe like a who Framed Roger
Rabbit sort of situation, whichwould have been weird yeah,
really weird, and probably notreally fitting to the tones that
they wanted to use in the movie.
So he actually commissioned JimHenson's Creature Shop before
(28:32):
they got budget to make them.
So Jim Henson agreed because hewas very curious?
Yeah, because they're the mostadvanced sort of suit puppets,
animatronics he's ever made,yeah, and the combination of the
suit and then the person in thesuit, as well as the puppeteer
conducting the animatronics inthe head.
It was all a differentchallenge to him, so he agreed
(28:54):
to do it and then the onlyreason that they were able to
continue because they had to flythem over to North Carolina
from London was that they hadthat New Line Cinema backing
that came in at the final hourto do it.
Otherwise Turtles would havebeen scrapped.
So they're probably the mostexpensive thing in the whole
movie and a lot of budget sortof had to be moved around in
order for them to keep thoseTurtles looking how they did
(29:17):
Before we go any further Brash.
How do you think they hold up?
How do you think they look did,uh, before we go any further,
brash what?
Speaker 2 (29:22):
how do you think they hold up?
How do you think they look?
What do you think of them?
Nightmare fuel?
Yeah, no, they're pretty good,but yeah, nightmare like the
like.
I wouldn't say that they're badper se well at all, really.
But just if I was to comeacross any of these guys in a
dark alley and I saw their facesmove like that, that would
scare the living hell out of me.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yep, I could see that .
Speaker 2 (29:48):
They are weird.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, they are.
They're definitely weird andyou know what the animatronics
in them as well are.
You know, for the time it wasrevolutionary.
Looking at it now I think theydo hold up and they do give that
mutant kind of vibe, butthere's definitely something
unsettling about the way thatthey look.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
I think it's because they're sort of like the first
of their sort of kind.
They're still very robotic.
So even though they are doingthose like giving, like the
expressions and the facialexpressions, they're unsettling,
I think, because they'rerobotic, and so when they're
smiling, I don't know really howto explain it.
(30:28):
It's just, it's just it's justunnatural.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah, I actually found myself watching the faces
of these turtles move, uh,during scenes.
So I watched the way their lipsmove, I watched what their
eyebrows did, their eyes widen,and you know what?
I agree with you, they'reextremely unsettling at times.
I think it works for the movieand I think they're done really,
really well.
Uh, but they actually took acollaboration between multiple
(30:54):
performers to do so.
As we talked about before,there was the stunt performers
inside the suits, which was madeout of latex and rubber, which
they molded on fiberglass andmolded off of the actors or the
stunt men's bodies.
Then they also had thepuppeteer who robotically
controlled the animatronics inthe head, and they had to listen
to pre-recorded dialogue andkind of do it on the fly, so
(31:17):
they actually had to react towhat they were hearing and that
was being relayed through servosand radio waves inside the head
of the actual turtle.
And then they obviously had thevoice actors as well, which
recorded in a studio, and thentheir lines were what we hear in
the movie.
So three different performersper turtle, so 12 people in
total, were what we hear in themovie.
So three different performersper turtle, so 12 people in
total, and we're actuallyresponsible for bringing those
(31:38):
turtles to us.
Did you know as well?
Master Splinter took threepuppeteers to maneuver, and one
of them is very famous.
Do you know who he is?
I did see that it was KevinClash, who you might recognize
as the puppeteer who controlsElmo.
Yes, so yeah, he was as thepuppeteer who controls Elmo.
Yes, so yeah, he was theprimary puppeteer for Splinter.
And then, when we're talkingabout the stunt performers, the
(32:00):
guys inside the suit, we hadDavid Foreman as Leonardo,
michelin, sisti for Michelangelo, leif Tilden and Josh Pius, as
we said, for Raphael, who alsodid the voices.
Now, do you know what all ofthem had in common?
Brash, in terms of theirexperience with this role, these
stuntmen, these amazing heroes,didn't they all hate it?
Yes, they absolutely hated it.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Like who was it?
Because one of the Foot Clanstuntmen had to take over for
Raphael's stuntman in the suit,because when he got hit into the
trash can by Casey it actuallycaved in the animatronics and
broke his nose.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
So in the movie you can just see it when he gets up
out of the trash, can he'sholding onto the front of his
face because it broke his nose?
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yep, that was probably the 1990s version of
Aragorn kicking the helmet andbreaking his toe in real life.
I think that's a.
That's a history that everybodyfound really fun.
And uh, yeah, you're correct,josh Pius actually broke his
nose during that time and theyall found those suits extremely
claustrophobic.
However, josh Pius himself was,in fact, a little bit
claustrophobic and they had todo short stints at the takes
(33:07):
that they were doing so he couldtake the helmet off and get
some air and breathe andactually, you know, regulate
himself in that time Because, aswe said, the suits were made
out of rubber and latex, not avery breathable costume material
.
But they were also shooting inNorth Carolina and at the time
it was extremely hot conditions,the suits were restrictive, was
so humid, and I rememberwatching an interview with Leif
(33:29):
Tilden, who was the stuntman inDonatello, and he said between
takes you'd hear like a muffleof things which I'll get into in
a little bit, but when you'dhear cut, they'd come in with
like an air hose and they'd pumpit straight into the mouth of
the turtle and it wouldliterally just blow them away
with all this cool pressurizedair that sort of came into the
suit at the time, so it was veryuncomfortable and very
(33:50):
restricting is what all of themsaid.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Yeah, restricting is what all of them said.
Yeah, well, um, the guy whotook over for raf's character
said he had to drink a gallon ofwater a day just to stay
hydrated because it was so hotin those suits.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Yeah, you'd have your own climate in there.
You'd be sweating profusely.
One of the big things that wasa was a problem as well was they
had no sense of.
They had no sense of actuallyspace around them because the
animatronics were inside thehead, which contained a lot of
servo motors and robotics andalso transmitters that they were
constantly moving and rushingso they could hear the clatter
(34:24):
and the whirring of those, andthen they'd have an earpiece
that had everybody's dialoguecoming into them and then they'd
have the outside sounds ofeverybody, the sensory overload?
Yeah, yeah, exactly right, andthat's what one of them said.
The sensory overload yeah, yeah, exactly right, and that's what
one of them said.
They said that it was likebeing at Grand Central Station
and then also trying to act.
So I think the unsung heroes ofthis movie is, in fact, these
four stuntmen.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Inside the suits.
Inside the suits.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah, two of them continued on to do the sequel
and the third movie, two of themdidn't, two of them did not.
So the two that continued wasLeonardo and Michelangelo.
They continued.
So there was a big challenge aswell in the behind the scenes
with the turtles, and they had alot of trouble with the turtle
heads functioning properly,because where they were filming
(35:02):
in North Carolina there was alot of planes and radio signals
going over, so at times they hadto make them all tweak they
actually would.
They would be doingunsuspecting things and the
turtle heads would haveincredibly open mouths or their
eyebrows would do weird things,just mid-take.
Apparently it sent people intohysterics, but it was also very
annoying because they'd have tothen redo the take and the
people were feelinguncomfortable in the suits as
well.
Uh, it actually caused one ofthe most famously memed easter
(35:26):
eggs of nightmare fuel thatpeople see today on the internet
.
Uh, do you know what?
That one is right?
Is that the?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
mickey one.
Yeah, yeah, where it's likethat.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Actually there's two then, because that's one but
then there's the other one.
It's literally like anaggressive Mikey with bulging
popping up to your eyes and histeethy mouth is just sort of
vibrating in this space and justclicking and clacking.
That's one of them.
The second one is an extremelywide-mouthed Donatello, and you
can see him standing next toApril and inside Donatello's
open mouth you can actually seethe eyes and mouth and nose of
(36:00):
the voice actor and it justlooks so unsettling like a frog
that swallowed a cat orsomething, I don't know.
It just looks so weird.
But those glitches were allcaused by interference with
radio waves, which made it verytricky for them to shoot in a
very fluid manner.
That being said, though, jimHenson, this was probably one of
his last projects before heunfortunately passed away, and
(36:25):
he was very proud of what theturtles looked like and how they
actually motioned and what theylooked like on film.
He also, however, was notreally fond of the violence and
dark tone in the movie, sayingthat it wasn't really his style
or anything that he'd donebefore.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Well, that's also the reason.
Towards the end of the actualproduction itself, steve Bannon
was actually reportedly let go.
Yes, because they were worriedabout how dark the movie was
going to be how dark the moviewas going to be.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Yeah, and that explains the subsequent two
movies being obviously a littlemore lighthearted.
Yeah, because Steve Barron, thedirector, was indeed let go
because of the tone of the movie.
Another thing, with the suitsas well, because they were made
of latex foam and rubber, he hadto be very careful around water
because otherwise those suitswould swell, becoming extremely
cumbersome and heavy, and thenthey would be unable to continue
for the day because the suitswere just overloaded with weight
(37:19):
.
All right, so with that,overall, for me I think the
suits they are unsettling, butthey're very impressive.
I wouldn't want to see thisdone in any other way.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Really, I really like the way that they're sort of
portrayed Like going back intime, like, oh, if I could go
back in time, and they're like,oh, if you go back in time and
change it, would you?
I?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
would say no, yeah, exactly, I think that they.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
I mean, if the stunt actors ever said, do you want to
go back in time, would youchange it?
Speaker 1 (37:43):
They'd probably be like yes.
They'd probably say yes.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
But I'd be like no.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
But you know, I think if they did it now they'd be
able to install coolingmechanisms and a lot of
different animatronic sort ofinventions in the head to make
it a little bit more comfortable.
I'd probably like to see onethat they'd make these days with
the technology that they have,because the new one which we're
going to go into in that Devil'sAvocado segment made by Michael
Bay, obviously done throughmotion capture, which garnered
(38:08):
some different results With thegreen suits and the green
backpacks.
Yeah, All right.
So let's get into our Devil'sAvocado segment right now.
The Devil's Avocado segment iswhere we ask a series of
questions designed to analyzealternate aspects of the film or
media.
This may be an alternate ending, a casting choice or a story
beat altogether, and we analyzethese elements to determine if
(38:28):
they are better or worse thanthe originally filmed version.
So filmed version.
So in this part of the Devil'sAvocado, we're actually going to
be looking at how the 1990sTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
movie compares with MichaelBay's version that was made in
the 2010s, specifically 2014 and2016.
And we're talking not about theactual stories but the turtles
themselves.
So we talked a lot about theanimatronics and the way that
(38:50):
they look on film for the 1990sversion, but with the Michael
Bay version, the biggest thingfor me is that the turtles'
design is completely off in theMichael Bay version, so they're
oversized, extremely muscular.
I do like that.
They have their unique littletidbits on their suits and I
think that the turtles do looksignificantly different from
each other.
But I actually think thepractical effects with Jim
(39:12):
Henson's animatronic suits looksmore expressive, realistic and
lifelike as opposed to the theuncanny looking turtles of
Michael Bay's film.
What are your thoughts onMichael Bay's version?
Speaker 2 (39:22):
I think I've only watched both these or those
Michael Bay movies like onceeach, but I do have to agree
that they are oversized.
They're more like TeenageMutant Ninja Tortoises rather
than Ninja Turtles, Like when inthat scene, I think when
they're in the elevator andthey're all bunched in there
it's like massive.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
You guys are huge.
Yeah, they actually do someupward facing shots to show how
huge they are, because they'rekind of imposing onto humans at
that point and trying to lookscary.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
and you know, Raph's got his Batman voice on and yeah
, and it's just weird Becauseeven in all the cartoon versions
and anime versions they're allwell, because they're meant to
be ninjas.
How are they meant to jump andflip around with big-ass, heavy
shells on and their musclesbulging out like they're
bodybuilders?
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yeah, even Like their dexterity would be gone Exactly
.
And even Donatello, the meekestkind of turtle you might say,
is really over-the musclyshredded.
And how do they maintain thatphysique?
On a diet of pizza and noanchovies and protein.
Yeah, I think that I don't knowwhat the creative direction was
(40:27):
for Michael Bay in terms ofdesigning these turtles.
I think that the I think it wasmore cool for cool's sake?
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Yeah, like just try and make them look cool, but
neither of them made look cool.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
They're really cool, yeah, and yeah, it popped up,
popped to like early 2000sculture as well.
And you know, I think that thecomic accurate that we're
looking at in the 1990s versionis what hits better for me.
And we're actually finding thatshift happening now in the MCU.
If we're looking at the Marvelmovies and you're looking at all
(40:58):
the costumes that are comingout and people looking at them
and seeing how comic accuratethey are, as opposed to the MCU
taking liberties in characterdesign, I think they're landing
a little bit better than whatthey have been previously, in my
opinion anyway.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah, but then again some of those costumes are hard
to translate from comic to theactual on screen because of just
how, like in the comics andeverything, they look cool as
yeah, and they work.
And they work.
And then you look at it like,even like Hawkeyes, like I
reckon they'd be cool as to seehim in his Purple Purple.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
With the winged mask Mask.
I reckon it'd be cool to seehim in his purple purple with
the winged mask.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
I reckon that'd be cool as, but then you see him in
later adaptations of likeanimated movies and he's got
this more black and black andpurple sort of just like like no
sleeved um, it looks more likethe Ultimates version, yeah,
with the blonde hair and thepetal sunglasses, petal sunnies
and everything like that yeah,yep, I can tell that was a good
(41:58):
choice using that sort ofversion rather than the old
school version, and I do likeWanda's version where it's like
the long jacket and everythinglike that.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
They poke fun at that in WandaVision, don't they?
Yeah, when they dress up inHalloween, they dress up in
Halloween.
And the one that first came tomind when you mentioned that
sometimes they don't really hitright was the Vision, because if
you think of the Vision wherehe's got his massive cave, pink
face, green on yellow and redtraffic light, look, and then
you look at how he was actuallyportrayed by Paul Bettany in the
MCU, I think it's a lot betterthat they took liberties on that
one.
Another one that comes to myCaptain America suit is the one
(42:31):
from the Winter Soldier wherethey've taken some modern kind
of Liberty vibes in terms ofmilitaristic uniform, as opposed
to his Just spandex in thefirst Avenger movie, where he's
literally in blue, white and redspandex.
And, yeah, nobody seemed tolike that one too.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, which is comic accurate.
But I do prefer him having thetactical belt and harness and
everything like that.
That has pouches.
And one thing I did like aboutthe first Avenger was the fact
that he used a pistol.
Yeah, Yep.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
He had a shielder.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
He used a pistol.
Ah Nazis, yeah God in the Nazis, oh man.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Until later on when he's like oh, I'm just going to
use a shield now.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Purely defense.
But yeah, the other thing withthe Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
in the 1990s that I kind oflooked at was, you know, they
see the characters themselvesseem to be portrayed as being
more like teenagers.
Yes, than Michael Bay's Ahundred percent Adult turtles,
seem to me at least.
Yeah, adult turtles seem to meat least yeah.
I think the turtles are bestportrayed when they're portrayed
(43:38):
by teenagers or actors that areyounger yeah, which is what
they did for the 1990s movie.
A lot of the actors were intheir teens, or at least early
20s, and they did it as well forthe mutant mayhem movie.
They actually got four of thekids that were voicing those
turtles in the room together sothey could riff off each other.
They could develop arelationship, which was
extremely important to get theauthenticity of these turtles
(43:58):
being brothers in the movie.
So I think it works best there,whereas the turtles in the
michael bay movie it has beenlargely spoken about, especially
by alan richardson who playsrafael, that their treatment and
conditions were not so good sotheir relationship wasn't there,
but also they were being playedby adult men in their late
twenties, early thirties.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
All right, let's do our sign off, okay.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys andgirls, this episode has been
brought to you by at Boreal Seth, who is one of our threads.
Community members, we want tothank you for talking to us or
for choosing the Teenage MutantNinja Turtles 1990 for us to
look at.
If you want to be a part of ourcommunity, you can do so on
(44:39):
threads and also Instagram.
We also have a letterbox whereyou can actually add to our
watch list and we use thosewatch lists to come up with what
our portal is.
Pick episodes are going to beat the end of the month.
You can also contact us on ourbrand new website, which is
wwwfandomportalspodcastcom.
In our next episode, in part two, we're going to be looking at
our popcorn perspective.
(44:59):
Specifically, we're going to belooking at the character arcs
of Raphael and Donatello andwe're also going to be looking
into our MVTs, our most valuabletakeaways and our real deal
segment for the 1990 hit TeenageMutant Ninja Turtles.
So if you haven't already, makesure you go and check out part
two in our playlist below.
This is Aaron signing out.
This is Brash signing out andwe'll see you next time.
(45:21):
Bye, bye.
Hello everybody.
It's Aaron here from the FandomPortals Podcast.
I'm joined here, as always, bymy amazing turtle brother, brash
.
How you going, brash?
How about yourself?
Oh, mate, I'm having a greatday.
It's Boston over time.
The reason we're talking likethis, guys, is because this is
our Portal is Pick episode, andwe are happy to announce that
this episode is all about theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
(00:36):
the 1990 original motion picturemovie.
We want to thank Biorial Sethon our threads community for
suggesting this one.
You we want to thank BiorealSeth on our threads community
for suggesting this one.
You guys voted for it amongstsome of our other titles that
are on our Letterboxd watch list.
So thank you very much, biorealSeth.
This one goes out to you.
So, yes, today we're going tobe talking about Teenage Mutant
(00:59):
Ninja Turtles, the 1990 version.
There's been lots and lots ofremakes and different kind of
medias since then.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
But before we get into all that, we always start
with our gratitudes and growths.
Uh, brash, we're gonna startwith you today.
Oh shit, yeah, all right.
Uh, I am grateful for having aperson above me that can take my
on-call phone calls when I'masleep and I don't answer my
phone because it doesn't wake meup.
Twice now in my week of beingon call, I have slept through my
phone ringing and they've hadto escalate it to the next
person up who has issued outthose jobs.
So thank you, graham.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Thank you, graham.
Save my ass, all right.
My gratitude for the week,brash, is you.
I'm grateful for you because wehave kind of chalked out a
little space in our week to dothis and I look forward to it
all the time.
And I look forward to it notonly because I'm doing something
that I love, but I also lookforward to it because I'm doing
it with you.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Oh, thanks man, Me too, me too.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, no, I'm really grateful for you man, really,
Really grateful for being such agood friend and sharing
interests and, you know, divinginto this with me headfirst and
being there along the way.
So we get into some, you know,some big topics in our MVT
section sometimes, yeah, andit's good to be able to talk to
somebody and, you know, reflectwhen you need to and do that
kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, well, there's one of my highlights of my week.
Hmm, yeah, I really think thehighlight I have is when I take
Ace to the Dog.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Well, now there's two and I'm happy to be a part of
it.
But, yeah, thank you, brash,I'm grateful for you.
Man, oh, thank you All good.
All right, let's do our firsttakes segment.
The first takes segment iswhere we discuss how we first
encountered the movie, what ourinitial impressions of the movie
(02:43):
were and our feelings on themedia after having watched it.
We also share our community'sthoughts on the media.
For those that have contributedto our social pages, if you
would like to, those links arein the show notes below.
The best place to do it is onThreads and on Instagram, and
you can also now do it on ourwebsite, which is
wwwvendumpoddlespodcastcom.
Obviously, today we're talkingabout the Teenage Mutant Ninja
(03:03):
Turtles suggested for us for ourPullers Pick episode by Boreal
Seth from our Threads community,and this is a movie about four
teenage mutant ninja turtlesemerging from the shadows to
protect New York City from agang of criminal ninjas who have
also kidnapped their rat father.
Now, if you say that in anormal conversation without
context, it sounds ludicrous.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
No, it sounds like you need a room in a padded cell
exactly right.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
It is definitely a like a far-fetched kind of ip,
originating in the 1990s,obviously 1980s actually.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
But we're going to actually talk now, brash, about
how you first encountered theseturtles, what was your first
memories of them and whetheryou'd watch this particular
movie, the one from 1990, beforeor not yeah, so my first
encounter with this was probablyback when I was uh, I'd have to
say about five, five or four,probably earlier, but I'll be
(03:57):
doing too young to remember thatkind of stuff.
But, um, uh, because it wasalways ninja Turtles, power
Rangers, batman animated seriesand Biker, meister of Mars and
Street Sharks, that is thestaples of a very good childhood
.
Saturday morning so those weremy favorite shows growing up.
(04:18):
I used to have a dress up ofDonatello, yeah, yeah, because
he had his quarter staff andeverything.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Very cool.
So what about the Ninja Turtles?
Is this the first thing thatyou saw of the Ninja Turtles?
Do you think, Do you remember?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
No, so the animated show would have been the first
thing I watched, and I probablydidn't watch the actual movie
until probably later in the 90s,I reckon, because I think, well
, we'll probably get into it abit later.
The movie's actually quite dark.
Yes, yeah, so I don't think Iwas.
I mean, even though, to be fair, my sister and my brother have
(04:56):
made me watch some pretty heavystuff when I was younger,
because it's Ninja Turtles.
They probably weren't thatinterested in it as I was, so
it's probably not one of theones they made me watch, so as I
was, so it's probably not oneof the ones that made me watch.
So I had to watch it on my ownwhen I was able to, but later on
in life, so for me, the NinjaTurtles I can't remember my life
without them in it.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Honestly, they're like that long lost brother that
you haven't seen for a verylong time.
But from from my memoryflashbacks, I remember having a
bedspread of the Teenage MutantNinja Turtles in the early 90s
and from there I also rememberwatching the cartoon at one of
my cousin's house, the themesong.
I remember my mom singing thatwith me when I was a kid and
(05:31):
this was just like fragments ofmemories that I've seen as well
and I've also felt alwaysconnected to the Ninja Turtles,
just because of the themes andthe colors and the awesomeness
of the turtles, how they are Forthis movie.
I was saying off mic beforethat I thought I had seen this
movie but in fact I had not.
The first time I watched thismovie was for this podcast, and
the one that I thought that Iwatched that was this one was
(05:52):
actually the third one Turtlesin Time.
Turtles in Time, yeah, becauseI was like when are they going
to get into samurai suits?
And it never happened.
Yeah, or the fifth turtle, venus, venus Venus, her name was oh
sorry, yeah sorry, there arefour turtles.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yes, yeah, venus.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah.
So that was a shock to mebecause I was waiting for them
to go to feudal Japan and I waslike how is this going to happen
?
But it never did.
It never came.
So this was a delightfulsurprise to me.
I also own a lot of the comicbooks when they updated them to
the IDW distributing studio andthey're probably one of my
favourite kind of comic booksthat I've read in trade
paperback.
They're really good.
(06:32):
The 2003 cartoon I believe itwas 2003 TMNT, what it was
called that used to be on CheeseTV in Australia.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, that like blew me away.
Oh, that was probably myfavourite animated adaption of
Champions of the New Geeks.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yeah, I think so too, and I actually found a lot of
similarities between this movieand that cartoon, at least in
the first season, at leastbefore they started going.
You know, intergalactic andU-Tron.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It was such a great animation though.
Yeah, the fight scenes wereactually really good, and it
just got me excited every time Iwatched it?
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah, absolutely I loved it.
So yeah, let's flick to oursocial medias now, because we
had quite a number of responsesto this one On our Reddit page.
We had 152 upvotes and over 62original comments.
It says Trapper Keeper says Iwant an R-rated movie.
I believe the Last Ronin iscoming out.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, and that should be pretty hectic, because
that's when Mickey goes all.
Yes, he's the last one, yeah,he goes all, but it becomes like
it goes like Super Saiyan in it, yeah, yeah, where he's like
super powerful and has likeextra powers and everything.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, and I think the best thing about that version
of the Ninja Turtles is that,for the first couple of issues
at least, they kept it a verybig secret about who that Ronin
Turtle was.
Everybody was trying to guesswho it was, and it was a very
big shock when it turned out tobe Michelangelo.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yeah, the one who you'd think would be the most
passive, fun-loving one justends up being this fucking
badass brutal.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah, all right, we have Jay Buds on our Reddit that
says as a wise man said,forgiveness is divine, but never
pay full price for late pizza.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
That was a very common quote obviously from the
movie we have.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Asco says that it's absolute cinema, which was also
agreed upon by 43 other users.
Some people have said that itis easily the best comic book
adaptation movie of all time.
On our Reddits as well.
We have Dirty Old Sock Lifefrom Reddit, great name comic
book adaptation movie of alltime.
On our reddits as well.
We have dirty old sock lifefrom reddit.
Great name says this is legitpeak turtles until the mutant
(08:32):
mayhem movie came out.
Yeah, we also have easy goatfrom reddit.
That says remarkably dark for achildren's franchise, whereas
the sequels are much moreflippant and typical family
action films.
The original was unique and wasmy first introduction to
heavier themes in a film as ayoung person and there is a
reason for that too yeah, yeah,and we'll probably go into that
a little bit later.
(08:52):
Over onto our threads we put apost up that says what do you
think of this movie, the teenagemutant ninja turtles movie from
1990.
We put the poster up there andwe have thrash and treasure
podcast.
Who's a good friend his name'salso aaron, by the way he says
why are you asking such a loadedquestion?
We all know this is a cinematicmasterpiece.
Kamozi Mills says I enjoyed it,splinter had my favorite
moments in the whole movie andwe also had Agent Sonar who said
(09:15):
I think you spelled cinematicmasterpiece wrong.
So there's a lot of fans of thismovie, brash.
And the word nostalgia comes tomind once again through the
1990s, because during the timewhen this came out it was like
in the late 80s, early 90s,incredibly popular ip.
It was like everywhere therewas turtle mania that was
streaming through, especiallyamerica, and, um, you know,
(09:36):
there was a toy line.
There was the famous cartoon,obviously, that obviously
debuted in 1987, which made itvery popular for kids, and there
was the comic book that wascreated by Eastman and Laird.
That really surprised them whenthey released it to have it be
so popular.
So there's definitely some lovefor the Teenage Mutant Ninja
(09:56):
Turtles.
All right, are you ready to getinto our fandom fact face-off?
Brash, ready, ready, all right,everybody.
This is our fandom fact faceoff.
One hosts ask another a seriesof trivia questions associated
with the focus media.
The host with the mostcollected points from the fandom
fact face off segment willshout the opposing co-host to an
all expenses paid trip to themovies.
(10:18):
Now, this is our last week forthe month of may and we're at
eight.
All I'm instigating.
Another rule, brash, oh, okay.
The rule is you can askclarifying questions, but you're
only allowed to ask for onehint through the whole segment.
Okay, okay, because we've gotto get to it.
Okay, now remember, this moviewas directed by Steve Barron, it
(10:39):
was written by Kevin Eastman,peter Laird and it actually
stars Judith Hogue and EliasCochise, who plays April O'Neill
, and also Casey Jones, beforewe jump into the Fandom Fact
Face-Off segment.
Brash, probably not a questionof yours.
If it is, I'll cut it, but doyou know the budget for this
movie?
Um was it like 1.25 mil no itwas a little bit more than that
(11:02):
1.3 mil.
It was $13 million.
Yeah $13 or 1.3?
No, $13.
$13.
, yeah, yeah, $13 million.
It was the highest grossingindependent movie of all time,
until the Blair Witch Projectcame out, and it made $202
million gross, so it wasdefinitely something that people
slept on in terms of IP.
Do you want to go first or me?
(11:22):
I'll go first.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I'll go first All right.
Okay, first question.
Well, do you know whatMichelangelo hated as a topping
on his pizza in the movie thathe actually loved in the cartoon
?
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yes, I do so.
He's on the phone in his lair.
That's the first time we seethe lair in full.
Really great set design.
And he hates anchovies.
He does hate anchovies, butloves them in the cartoons?
Yeah, loves them in the cartoonsand you know it makes sense
because he's a turtle andturtles eat more fish.
Okay, so it does make sense.
And watching the cartoon withmy son this morning the original
1987 cartoon they, in the veryfirst episode that was run by,
(12:11):
like the foot ninja and thingslike that, and rafael ordered a
sashimi pizza and the remainingthree turtles ordered a whipped
cream pizza.
I was like, you know, anchovieson the pizza doesn't seem so
out of place, but I digress.
Um, so that's one for me, thankgoodness, and all right, my
question.
Here we go.
So with my question, there area number of key story elements
from the original comics thatwas adapted into this film
script.
Can you tell me, because mostof it was, as we said, adapted
(12:33):
from the comic books and it hada bit of a darker vibe, but they
did borrow some things from the1987 cartoon.
Can you name three of thosethings, three things from the
cartoon?
Yes, that made it into thismovie and was not from the comic
books uh, the colored headbandscorrect?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
uh is what I said, what I said earlier about um
april and neil being a tvreporter instead of a love
assistant, correct?
The third one?
Oh, then that's the other thingwe're talking about too.
I believe uh, splinter, he wasactually uh.
In the cartoon he's a manturned into a rat, but it
realistically he's just a ratwith that used to train like
watch his master train, andthat's how he learned how to do
(13:12):
ninja stuff and yep, exactly sothose are three things that had
appeared in the comic books thatthey borrowed for or changed uh
in the movie.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Some other things I would have accepted was the
turtles love for pizza.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
That came from the cartoon.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
And wasn't actually part of the comic books.
Another one that I had wasMichelangelo's surfer accent.
Obviously you can't do that ina comic book, but that was
directly ripped from the cartoon.
He spoke differently to all hisbrothers and they brought it
into the movie as well.
Fun fact as well.
Everybody kind of wonders whySplinter talks the way he does.
(13:47):
He raised the turtles and thenthe turtles speaking those fancy
and different kind of Americanaccents.
Do you know why they do that?
Speaker 2 (13:54):
I don't.
I do know that in the movie thevoice of Raphael, his voice to
be very thick Boston accent, wasactually just something that
his voice had to come up withand suggested to do Exactly
right.
That's why he's got such athick Boston accent?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, I think it works for the character of
Raphael 100%.
Yeah, and that's Josh Payas,who is the only one to have done
both roles in the turtle suit,and also the voice actor.
Yeah, and he suggested that, Ithink, because it made him sound
a little bit tougher and he wasobviously the tougher that New
York accent.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah, more New York turtle I'm walking in.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yeah, exactly six runs.
So no, the actual reason thatthey all talk in those different
kind of American accents wasbecause the turtles were raised
on TV like they watch so muchAmerican TV.
Yep, yep, yep, true, true.
And you can see it kind of inthis movie where they take their
inspirations from, in terms ofdifferent characters that they
would have seen in 90s TV, whereRaphael dresses up in a hat and
(14:49):
a trench coat, which was verylike PI kind of vibes, and he
has that Boston American accentwhich is what those characters
had.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Mikey obviously watched a lot of vibe, uh, and
then, yeah, so they got it fromwatching too much tv and you see
it when that splinter is tryingto say you know, everyone's
sitting down, calm your mind.
And instead they go off andjust start dancing and singing
whatever they want, yeah, yeah,yeah, and ordering a pizza and
ordering pizza exactly right anddoing the yeah, the.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
You know, you know how many movies we've actually
done that have a dance sequencein it.
It's just, yeah, the ninjutsutequila dance.
Funny, you know, if I had anickel for every time that
happens, I'd have two nickels,which isn't a lot.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
But Great karaoke song that tequila.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Oh yeah, stand up and wiggle a little and then say
tequila, exactly, and you cansay it differently every single
time, all right, so that makesit one all in our fandoma-fandom
.
Fact face-off with yourquestion coming Brash.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Okay, my question is what pizza company do they use
in the movie?
And there's a fun fact questionafter this if you can get it.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Okay.
So Mikey orders his pizza.
They had a 30-minute guarantee,which they now have revoked due
to the fact that they had toomany traffic collisions trying
to keep to that 30 minutes andthat they had too many traffic
collisions, trying to keep tothat 30 minutes and it was
Domino's.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
It was Domino's.
Now for a fun fact.
Who actually sponsored?
Speaker 1 (16:09):
the movie I know this as well it was actually
sponsored by Pizza Hut.
So in post-production, afterthe movie had been made, Pizza
Hut.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
They did a special promotion through Pizza Hut.
They did.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
And it was about a $20 million post-production
product placement promotionwhere you know they did the
advertisement and some peoplethat have the old vhs can still
see that advertisement playbefore the movie.
And you know they did a toyline through through, uh, pizza
hut sponsorship as well.
So, yeah, it's, it's veryamazing to see that they allowed
the domino's guy to be in themovie but then heavily sponsored
(16:39):
by pizza hut crazy.
Another fun fact about that doyou know the special actor that
was involved in that scene beingthe pizza delivery guy?
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Oh, yeah, the guy who does the voice of Michelangelo.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Exactly so Michelangelo was delivering
pizza to himself.
Yeah, the guy that was in thesuit of Michelangelo because the
director, steve Barron, wantedall the stuntmen who played in
the suits to have a little cameooutside of the suits in the
movie Michelangelo's cameo whowas Michel and Sisti actually
delivered pizza to himself inthat incident.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Do you know where all the other voice?
Speaker 1 (17:17):
actors were placed.
I know where rafael's was.
Rafael is in the back of thetaxi that hits rafael.
Yep, I don't know the others,so donatello's.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
He's was, uh, the foot ninja.
Um that talks to april in thesubway, the one that slaps her
yep, yep and um leonardo's wasthe thug that was standing next
to Tatsu.
When Casey fights Tatsu, he'sthe one smoking a cigar.
(17:47):
I believe.
Thug number three, thug numberthree next to Tatsu, very good.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Very cool, yeah, so they all got their little cameo
appearance, which is, you know,a small little reward for the
arduous work that they did.
We're going to go into that alittle bit later too, all right,
so that is two for me with myquestion to come.
All right, your question, brash.
Why did major Hollywood studiosrefuse to back the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1990?
(18:12):
, given that it was such apowerful IP.
It had an established cartoonbrand, it was a big comic book
IP.
There was a toy line.
Even that withstanding, a lotof the major distribution
companies failed to back theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Was it because I think I'll do this, or this
might be another reason, or forsomething else?
But was it because they thoughtit was going to bomb just like
Masters of the Universe?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Exactly right.
Yes, he-man Masters of theUniverse came out and it was
going to ruin, just like Mastersof the Universe.
Exactly right, yes, he-manMasters of the Universe came out
and it was going to ruin theirtoy sales Just before yep, and
they thought it would ruin theirtoy sales.
Another reason I would haveaccepted was because during the
late 1980s, hollywood was veryskeptical about comic movies in
general.
George Lucas's next projectafter his Star Wars trilogy was
Howard the Duck.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Which is a little bit obscure.
We don't talk about Howard theDuck.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
But you know it had that obscure sort of reference
like the TMNT was.
It had animatronics in terms ofthe lead sort of character
design as well and it didn't govery well at all Howard the Duck
.
So there was a lot of lostfaith.
The Superman sequels as well.
After the initial Superman themovie didn't go so well.
The only outlier was the 1989Tim Burton Batman film.
(19:27):
However, studios backed thatbecause it had Tim Burton as the
director backing it and theyalso had Michael Keaton who was
a very famous actor at the time.
So that pull allowed studios toget behind it.
But this one here, the TeenageMutant Ninja Turtles, everybody
passed on it, thinking that itwould bomb, and they ended up
going to a Hong Kong filmcompany called Golden Harvest
that financed some of the filmsand then it was actually
(19:50):
distributed by New Line Cinema,which at the time was a very
indie and niche distributioncompany that was just getting
its start.
So without New Line Cinema wewouldn't have the Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles.
So that's another one correctfor you, brash.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
And I only knew that because I only just sort of I
didn't even mean to stumble uponit, but I just saw it there
because when I was doing theresearch on the Pizza Art one
question that I had, it sort ofpopped up too, saying how that?
Saying that even though it hadthis $20 million pizza deal
after the post-production theystruggled to even start because
of the fact that they're worriedabout the toy sales.
(20:27):
Yeah, yeah, the only reason whyI know it, otherwise I wouldn't
have known it, and toy saleswere big back then.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
you know, not like now where it's.
You know toy sales and videoand gaming and things like that,
so definitely a big part oftheir budget which they needed.
All right, your third and lastquestion, rash.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Got to make it a hard one because one of us has to
lose.
I do have two, I just don'tknow which one would be harder.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Well, we both have our clues remaining, true, true.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
No, this one's the easy one, but I like this one.
Because I like this one, aprominent actor plays a, not a
foot thug, but one of theteenage thugs.
Do you know who it is?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yeah, of course you do.
Yeah, I know who this is.
This is a young Rob Lowe.
No, no, not Rob Lowe, it is ayoung Sam Rockwell.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yes, yes, oh my god, sam Rockwell.
My sphincter tightened then.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Lucky we don't accept first answers here, we get a
chance to run it back.
But yeah, sam Rockwell, he wasthe guy on the stairs who was
introducing the new children to,you know, the Pleasure Island
sort of foot clan teenagewasteland fun house.
And he did so by saying like,do like, do you have any smokes?
And the guy was just likeregular or menthol.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
That was Sam Rockwell yep, he's also the one at the
end that talks to the policechief and when they ask him or
he says if you want to know, goto go to the east, east, end,
eastman and Laird who wereactually Laird.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Laird Mid-Island, because Laird was the last of
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Yeah, good question.
But yeah, I do like that factas well.
Yeah, I love Sam Rockwell.
Yeah, yeah, and this was one ofhis.
This was actually his firstrole and I looked at the
director's commentary done bySteve Barron and he said you
(22:14):
know, this was his first roleand we we could also see like a
little bit of inspired actingthere, even though he did have a
smaller role.
So they kind of knew that hewas going to go on to some some
bigger and better things.
But there you go, got his start.
I like that.
Well done, all right.
So I am.
You know, full scores, three apiece.
Here we go brash.
Last one.
All right.
So this movie legal challengeswhen they were releasing the
(22:43):
movie in the United Kingdom, inEngland.
One of those was that they hadto rename the movie from Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles to theTeenage Mutant Hero Turtles.
However, they had to do someclever editing to fix another
thing in the movie that theywould not accept in their UK
release.
Do you know what that was?
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Don't have a clue.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Do you want your clue ?
Yes, please.
Okay, so your clue is it had todo with an item that is
restricted in the United Kingdomand they couldn't show it on
film.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Oh, an item that's restricted.
My first thought goes to like afirearm, but I don't know, you
don't know, nah, all right.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
So in the 1990s I don't know, you don't know, nah,
all right.
So in the 1990s the UK had verystrict regulations on the
depiction of martial artsweapons, most notably nunchucks.
Really, yeah, yeah,michelangelo's nunchucks.
They had to edit around his useof his signature weapon and
they were only allowed to showhim using punching and kicking
to the point where they actuallyfollowed that through and
(23:39):
obviously making some tonalchanges in number two and number
three of these Teenage MutantNinja Turtles movie where they
start to fight with more comicalsort of objects like food and
things like that.
So the nunchuck had to bebanned and avoided and couldn't
be promoted and the censorshiparound that would remain in
place for years until theyreleased the uncut version in
(24:01):
about 2012.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
That's so dumb I know that's so dumb Out of all the
weapons nunchucks.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah, the blunt force trauma weapon, but the katana's
okay, the size is okay.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Size is okay.
Donnie's quarterstaff, which ispretty much nunchucks without
the chain.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Absolutely, that's fine, fine, yeah, righto, yep.
So that whole scene in themiddle when they crash through
April O'Neil's antique shop roofand they have that nunchaku off
, you might say scrappedcompletely from the movie.
They don't have it in there,yep, in the British version.
So, yeah, that means I win.
I win.
How you doing, woohoo.
So with a total of 11 pointsand you ended up with a total of
(24:44):
10 points, very close whichmeans we'll be going to the
cinema on your dollar and I'm sohappy.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
I wonder actually, because my other question was um
there, uh, there's a reason.
April o'neill's character thatcharacter after o'neill doesn't
look like her character fromeither the comics or the uh
cartoon.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
That they do know why is this in terms of a yellow
jumpsuit?
Yes, I know that it.
Maybe it wasn't practical.
She thought it was overlysexualized.
I don't know that one.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
No, it's just, it's because the actress thought it
was gaudy.
She's like it looks ugly, Idon't want to wear it.
No, thank you.
I was like, ah, so you're justruining the whole time character
because you think the jumpsuitlooks ugly.
Yeah, yeah, because it's likewell, she's not even really
overly sexualized too, becauseit's a jumpsuit.
It's a full body jumpsuit,exactly.
But yeah, because she thoughtit was gaudy.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I do know that they kind of paid homage to it
because at the very start, inone of her first scenes, she was
wearing a yellow raincoat.
Yes, that was the part, thecompromise and she was like,
okay, I'll do that, but I'm notwearing that ugly suit the whole
time through.
Um, my other question that Iwas going to give you was there
is a special reason why splintergives each turtle their weapons
.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Do you know?
Speaker 1 (25:49):
what they are.
Oh no, I wouldn't know either.
Like so, leonardo has a lot ofgood leadership traits and is
realistically the one who ismost capable of deciding whether
somebody should live or die incombat.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
So the sword is a lethal kind of weapon.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Raphael has size because traditionally they're
used as a defensive weapon andhe's a very aggressive and
hot-headed, so it's training himto use a defensive fighting
style instead of an offensivefighting style.
Michelangelo is very bombasticand he is impulsive.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
And dumpt trucks take a lot more focus to use and
discipline and not to injureyourself with and.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Donatello is very tech savvy and into technology
and smart he's given like themost basic simple stick.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Yeah, because that's the same reason they use in the
later, later movie.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yeah, and I really like that.
I thought that's a really goodway to like tell you something
about the characters, just byinserting a simple weapon.
Another thing I really likebecause I have read the original
comic books and in the firstfew issues, every single turtle
does have a red bandana.
And the reason that they have ared bandana is because when
you're introduced to the turtles, they talk about one of their
turtle brothers that is lost,and the turtle that's lost is
(26:54):
Raphael, so they're all wearingred in homage to him, to try and
find him and just keep itconstantly on their mind that
that's what they're doing, yeah,but then later on in the series
they they change to thetraditional colors that you see.
So, uh, I like that.
In this movie they followed thethe cartoon sort of channel,
and the reason they did that wasobviously because children need
to be able to tell the turtlesapart as well.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
So, yeah, realistically, the only way you
could tell any of them reallyapart is probably raf, a bit
easier to tell apart becausehe's got all the scars and
scratches on his shells, becausehe's always he's bruising
jumping into trouble.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
That's it, alright.
So that was our fandom factface off segment for the month
of March.
We'll be bringing you anotherone in April.
Alright, we're going to move toour set secret segment.
Our set secret segment is wherethe hosts take a look behind
the scenes of the famous movieto give you all the information
on what went right, what wentwrong and what was interesting
about the way the movie was made.
(27:46):
And the most interesting andunique thing about this movie,
directed by Steve Barron theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in
1990, was those incredible suitsBrash.
Those animatronic puppeteeredsuits.
They brought these turtles tolife.
It was cutting edge in 1990.
So today in our set secretsegment, we're going to talk to
you all about those.
These suits were commissionedby the Jim Henson's creature
(28:10):
shop and a little fun fact aboutthat was when Steve Barron came
on he actually suggested thatthey use animatronics and suits.
Prior to that it was going tobe like a who Framed Roger
Rabbit sort of situation, whichwould have been weird yeah,
really weird, and probably notreally fitting to the tones that
they wanted to use in the movie.
So he actually commissioned JimHenson's Creature Shop before
(28:32):
they got budget to make them.
So Jim Henson agreed because hewas very curious?
Yeah, because they're the mostadvanced sort of suit puppets,
animatronics he's ever made,yeah, and the combination of the
suit and then the person in thesuit, as well as the puppeteer
conducting the animatronics inthe head.
It was all a differentchallenge to him, so he agreed
(28:54):
to do it and then the onlyreason that they were able to
continue because they had to flythem over to North Carolina
from London was that they hadthat New Line Cinema backing
that came in at the final hourto do it.
Otherwise Turtles would havebeen scrapped.
So they're probably the mostexpensive thing in the whole
movie and a lot of budget sortof had to be moved around in
order for them to keep thoseTurtles looking how they did
(29:17):
Before we go any further Brash.
How do you think they hold up?
How do you think they look did,uh, before we go any further,
brash what?
Speaker 2 (29:22):
how do you think they hold up?
How do you think they look?
What do you think of them?
Nightmare fuel?
Yeah, no, they're pretty good,but yeah, nightmare like the
like.
I wouldn't say that they're badper se well at all, really.
But just if I was to comeacross any of these guys in a
dark alley and I saw their facesmove like that, that would
scare the living hell out of me.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yep, I could see that .
Speaker 2 (29:48):
They are weird.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, they are.
They're definitely weird andyou know what the animatronics
in them as well are.
You know, for the time it wasrevolutionary.
Looking at it now I think theydo hold up and they do give that
mutant kind of vibe, butthere's definitely something
unsettling about the way thatthey look.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
I think it's because they're sort of like the first
of their sort of kind.
They're still very robotic.
So even though they are doingthose like giving, like the
expressions and the facialexpressions, they're unsettling,
I think, because they'rerobotic, and so when they're
smiling, I don't know really howto explain it.
(30:28):
It's just, it's just it's justunnatural.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah, I actually found myself watching the faces
of these turtles move, uh,during scenes.
So I watched the way their lipsmove, I watched what their
eyebrows did, their eyes widen,and you know what?
I agree with you, they'reextremely unsettling at times.
I think it works for the movieand I think they're done really,
really well.
Uh, but they actually took acollaboration between multiple
(30:54):
performers to do so.
As we talked about before,there was the stunt performers
inside the suits, which was madeout of latex and rubber, which
they molded on fiberglass andmolded off of the actors or the
stunt men's bodies.
Then they also had thepuppeteer who robotically
controlled the animatronics inthe head, and they had to listen
to pre-recorded dialogue andkind of do it on the fly, so
(31:17):
they actually had to react towhat they were hearing and that
was being relayed through servosand radio waves inside the head
of the actual turtle.
And then they obviously had thevoice actors as well, which
recorded in a studio, and thentheir lines were what we hear in
the movie.
So three different performersper turtle, so 12 people in
total, were what we hear in themovie.
So three different performersper turtle, so 12 people in
total, and we're actuallyresponsible for bringing those
(31:38):
turtles to us.
Did you know as well?
Master Splinter took threepuppeteers to maneuver, and one
of them is very famous.
Do you know who he is?
I did see that it was KevinClash, who you might recognize
as the puppeteer who controlsElmo.
Yes, so yeah, he was as thepuppeteer who controls Elmo.
Yes, so yeah, he was theprimary puppeteer for Splinter.
And then, when we're talkingabout the stunt performers, the
(32:00):
guys inside the suit, we hadDavid Foreman as Leonardo,
michelin, sisti for Michelangelo, leif Tilden and Josh Pius, as
we said, for Raphael, who alsodid the voices.
Now, do you know what all ofthem had in common?
Brash, in terms of theirexperience with this role, these
stuntmen, these amazing heroes,didn't they all hate it?
Yes, they absolutely hated it.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Like who was it?
Because one of the Foot Clanstuntmen had to take over for
Raphael's stuntman in the suit,because when he got hit into the
trash can by Casey it actuallycaved in the animatronics and
broke his nose.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
So in the movie you can just see it when he gets up
out of the trash, can he'sholding onto the front of his
face because it broke his nose?
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yep, that was probably the 1990s version of
Aragorn kicking the helmet andbreaking his toe in real life.
I think that's a.
That's a history that everybodyfound really fun.
And uh, yeah, you're correct,josh Pius actually broke his
nose during that time and theyall found those suits extremely
claustrophobic.
However, josh Pius himself was,in fact, a little bit
claustrophobic and they had todo short stints at the takes
(33:07):
that they were doing so he couldtake the helmet off and get
some air and breathe andactually, you know, regulate
himself in that time Because, aswe said, the suits were made
out of rubber and latex, not avery breathable costume material
.
But they were also shooting inNorth Carolina and at the time
it was extremely hot conditions,the suits were restrictive, was
so humid, and I rememberwatching an interview with Leif
(33:29):
Tilden, who was the stuntman inDonatello, and he said between
takes you'd hear like a muffleof things which I'll get into in
a little bit, but when you'dhear cut, they'd come in with
like an air hose and they'd pumpit straight into the mouth of
the turtle and it wouldliterally just blow them away
with all this cool pressurizedair that sort of came into the
suit at the time, so it was veryuncomfortable and very
(33:50):
restricting is what all of themsaid.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Yeah, restricting is what all of them said.
Yeah, well, um, the guy whotook over for raf's character
said he had to drink a gallon ofwater a day just to stay
hydrated because it was so hotin those suits.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Yeah, you'd have your own climate in there.
You'd be sweating profusely.
One of the big things that wasa was a problem as well was they
had no sense of.
They had no sense of actuallyspace around them because the
animatronics were inside thehead, which contained a lot of
servo motors and robotics andalso transmitters that they were
constantly moving and rushingso they could hear the clatter
(34:24):
and the whirring of those, andthen they'd have an earpiece
that had everybody's dialoguecoming into them and then they'd
have the outside sounds ofeverybody, the sensory overload?
Yeah, yeah, exactly right, andthat's what one of them said.
The sensory overload yeah, yeah, exactly right, and that's what
one of them said.
They said that it was likebeing at Grand Central Station
and then also trying to act.
So I think the unsung heroes ofthis movie is, in fact, these
four stuntmen.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Inside the suits.
Inside the suits.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah, two of them continued on to do the sequel
and the third movie, two of themdidn't, two of them did not.
So the two that continued wasLeonardo and Michelangelo.
They continued.
So there was a big challenge aswell in the behind the scenes
with the turtles, and they had alot of trouble with the turtle
heads functioning properly,because where they were filming
(35:02):
in North Carolina there was alot of planes and radio signals
going over, so at times they hadto make them all tweak they
actually would.
They would be doingunsuspecting things and the
turtle heads would haveincredibly open mouths or their
eyebrows would do weird things,just mid-take.
Apparently it sent people intohysterics, but it was also very
annoying because they'd have tothen redo the take and the
people were feelinguncomfortable in the suits as
well.
Uh, it actually caused one ofthe most famously memed easter
(35:26):
eggs of nightmare fuel thatpeople see today on the internet
.
Uh, do you know what?
That one is right?
Is that the?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
mickey one.
Yeah, yeah, where it's likethat.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Actually there's two then, because that's one but
then there's the other one.
It's literally like anaggressive Mikey with bulging
popping up to your eyes and histeethy mouth is just sort of
vibrating in this space and justclicking and clacking.
That's one of them.
The second one is an extremelywide-mouthed Donatello, and you
can see him standing next toApril and inside Donatello's
open mouth you can actually seethe eyes and mouth and nose of
(36:00):
the voice actor and it justlooks so unsettling like a frog
that swallowed a cat orsomething, I don't know.
It just looks so weird.
But those glitches were allcaused by interference with
radio waves, which made it verytricky for them to shoot in a
very fluid manner.
That being said, though, jimHenson, this was probably one of
his last projects before heunfortunately passed away, and
(36:25):
he was very proud of what theturtles looked like and how they
actually motioned and what theylooked like on film.
He also, however, was notreally fond of the violence and
dark tone in the movie, sayingthat it wasn't really his style
or anything that he'd donebefore.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Well, that's also the reason.
Towards the end of the actualproduction itself, steve Bannon
was actually reportedly let go.
Yes, because they were worriedabout how dark the movie was
going to be how dark the moviewas going to be.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Yeah, and that explains the subsequent two
movies being obviously a littlemore lighthearted.
Yeah, because Steve Barron, thedirector, was indeed let go
because of the tone of the movie.
Another thing, with the suitsas well, because they were made
of latex foam and rubber, he hadto be very careful around water
because otherwise those suitswould swell, becoming extremely
cumbersome and heavy, and thenthey would be unable to continue
for the day because the suitswere just overloaded with weight
(37:19):
.
All right, so with that,overall, for me I think the
suits they are unsettling, butthey're very impressive.
I wouldn't want to see thisdone in any other way.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Really, I really like the way that they're sort of
portrayed Like going back intime, like, oh, if I could go
back in time, and they're like,oh, if you go back in time and
change it, would you?
I?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
would say no, yeah, exactly, I think that they.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
I mean, if the stunt actors ever said, do you want to
go back in time, would youchange it?
Speaker 1 (37:43):
They'd probably be like yes.
They'd probably say yes.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
But I'd be like no.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
But you know, I think if they did it now they'd be
able to install coolingmechanisms and a lot of
different animatronic sort ofinventions in the head to make
it a little bit more comfortable.
I'd probably like to see onethat they'd make these days with
the technology that they have,because the new one which we're
going to go into in that Devil'sAvocado segment made by Michael
Bay, obviously done throughmotion capture, which garnered
(38:08):
some different results With thegreen suits and the green
backpacks.
Yeah, All right.
So let's get into our Devil'sAvocado segment right now.
The Devil's Avocado segment iswhere we ask a series of
questions designed to analyzealternate aspects of the film or
media.
This may be an alternate ending, a casting choice or a story
beat altogether, and we analyzethese elements to determine if
(38:28):
they are better or worse thanthe originally filmed version.
So filmed version.
So in this part of the Devil'sAvocado, we're actually going to
be looking at how the 1990sTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
movie compares with MichaelBay's version that was made in
the 2010s, specifically 2014 and2016.
And we're talking not about theactual stories but the turtles
themselves.
So we talked a lot about theanimatronics and the way that
(38:50):
they look on film for the 1990sversion, but with the Michael
Bay version, the biggest thingfor me is that the turtles'
design is completely off in theMichael Bay version, so they're
oversized, extremely muscular.
I do like that.
They have their unique littletidbits on their suits and I
think that the turtles do looksignificantly different from
each other.
But I actually think thepractical effects with Jim
(39:12):
Henson's animatronic suits looksmore expressive, realistic and
lifelike as opposed to the theuncanny looking turtles of
Michael Bay's film.
What are your thoughts onMichael Bay's version?
Speaker 2 (39:22):
I think I've only watched both these or those
Michael Bay movies like onceeach, but I do have to agree
that they are oversized.
They're more like TeenageMutant Ninja Tortoises rather
than Ninja Turtles, Like when inthat scene, I think when
they're in the elevator andthey're all bunched in there
it's like massive.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
You guys are huge.
Yeah, they actually do someupward facing shots to show how
huge they are, because they'rekind of imposing onto humans at
that point and trying to lookscary.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
and you know, Raph's got his Batman voice on and yeah
, and it's just weird Becauseeven in all the cartoon versions
and anime versions they're allwell, because they're meant to
be ninjas.
How are they meant to jump andflip around with big-ass, heavy
shells on and their musclesbulging out like they're
bodybuilders?
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yeah, even Like their dexterity would be gone Exactly
.
And even Donatello, the meekestkind of turtle you might say,
is really over-the musclyshredded.
And how do they maintain thatphysique?
On a diet of pizza and noanchovies and protein.
Yeah, I think that I don't knowwhat the creative direction was
(40:27):
for Michael Bay in terms ofdesigning these turtles.
I think that the I think it wasmore cool for cool's sake?
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Yeah, like just try and make them look cool, but
neither of them made look cool.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
They're really cool, yeah, and yeah, it popped up,
popped to like early 2000sculture as well.
And you know, I think that thecomic accurate that we're
looking at in the 1990s versionis what hits better for me.
And we're actually finding thatshift happening now in the MCU.
If we're looking at the Marvelmovies and you're looking at all
(40:58):
the costumes that are comingout and people looking at them
and seeing how comic accuratethey are, as opposed to the MCU
taking liberties in characterdesign, I think they're landing
a little bit better than whatthey have been previously, in my
opinion anyway.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah, but then again some of those costumes are hard
to translate from comic to theactual on screen because of just
how, like in the comics andeverything, they look cool as
yeah, and they work.
And they work.
And then you look at it like,even like Hawkeyes, like I
reckon they'd be cool as to seehim in his Purple Purple.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
With the winged mask Mask.
I reckon it'd be cool to seehim in his purple purple with
the winged mask.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
I reckon that'd be cool as, but then you see him in
later adaptations of likeanimated movies and he's got
this more black and black andpurple sort of just like like no
sleeved um, it looks more likethe Ultimates version, yeah,
with the blonde hair and thepetal sunglasses, petal sunnies
and everything like that yeah,yep, I can tell that was a good
(41:58):
choice using that sort ofversion rather than the old
school version, and I do likeWanda's version where it's like
the long jacket and everythinglike that.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
They poke fun at that in WandaVision, don't they?
Yeah, when they dress up inHalloween, they dress up in
Halloween.
And the one that first came tomind when you mentioned that
sometimes they don't really hitright was the Vision, because if
you think of the Vision wherehe's got his massive cave, pink
face, green on yellow and redtraffic light, look, and then
you look at how he was actuallyportrayed by Paul Bettany in the
MCU, I think it's a lot betterthat they took liberties on that
one.
Another one that comes to myCaptain America suit is the one
(42:31):
from the Winter Soldier wherethey've taken some modern kind
of Liberty vibes in terms ofmilitaristic uniform, as opposed
to his Just spandex in thefirst Avenger movie, where he's
literally in blue, white and redspandex.
And, yeah, nobody seemed tolike that one too.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, which is comic accurate.
But I do prefer him having thetactical belt and harness and
everything like that.
That has pouches.
And one thing I did like aboutthe first Avenger was the fact
that he used a pistol.
Yeah, Yep.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
He had a shielder.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
He used a pistol.
Ah Nazis, yeah God in the Nazis, oh man.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Until later on when he's like oh, I'm just going to
use a shield now.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Purely defense.
But yeah, the other thing withthe Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
in the 1990s that I kind oflooked at was, you know, they
see the characters themselvesseem to be portrayed as being
more like teenagers.
Yes, than Michael Bay's Ahundred percent Adult turtles,
seem to me at least.
Yeah, adult turtles seem to meat least yeah.
I think the turtles are bestportrayed when they're portrayed
(43:38):
by teenagers or actors that areyounger yeah, which is what
they did for the 1990s movie.
A lot of the actors were intheir teens, or at least early
20s, and they did it as well forthe mutant mayhem movie.
They actually got four of thekids that were voicing those
turtles in the room together sothey could riff off each other.
They could develop arelationship, which was
extremely important to get theauthenticity of these turtles
(43:58):
being brothers in the movie.
So I think it works best there,whereas the turtles in the
michael bay movie it has beenlargely spoken about, especially
by alan richardson who playsrafael, that their treatment and
conditions were not so good sotheir relationship wasn't there,
but also they were being playedby adult men in their late
twenties, early thirties.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
All right, let's do our sign off, okay.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys andgirls, this episode has been
brought to you by at Boreal Seth, who is one of our threads.
Community members, we want tothank you for talking to us or
for choosing the Teenage MutantNinja Turtles 1990 for us to
look at.
If you want to be a part of ourcommunity, you can do so on
(44:39):
threads and also Instagram.
We also have a letterbox whereyou can actually add to our
watch list and we use thosewatch lists to come up with what
our portal is.
Pick episodes are going to beat the end of the month.
You can also contact us on ourbrand new website, which is
wwwfandomportalspodcastcom.
In our next episode, in part two, we're going to be looking at
our popcorn perspective.
(44:59):
Specifically, we're going to belooking at the character arcs
of Raphael and Donatello andwe're also going to be looking
into our MVTs, our most valuabletakeaways and our real deal
segment for the 1990 hit TeenageMutant Ninja Turtles.
So if you haven't already, makesure you go and check out part
two in our playlist below.
This is Aaron signing out.
This is Brash signing out andwe'll see you next time.
(45:21):
Bye, bye.
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