Wise man says “forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza.”
He likes ketchup on his hot dogs? I like mustard.
Blue Rapala? Chartreuse.
He-Man? Skeletor.
Mario? Luigi.
Wolverine? Cyclops.
Dale? Chip.
Trombone? Saxophone.
Hip-hop? Ska.
Leonardo? Raphael.
My brother and I had a combative relationship growing up. I’m not spilling deep family secrets when I say that. I think that anyone who knew us then, or who spends five minutes around us now, can determine that. I imagine it is pretty common when siblings are close in age, and even more so when resources are scarce. There was the one computer, or the one TV, the secret clubhouse above the shed, the limited number of proximal friends. But fighting is really the significant word there, and I imagine that we went at it worse than a lot of siblings.
Our childhood is a wasteland of broken family heirlooms, broken bones, deep-buried resentments, and there’s this thin layer of polite topsoil that we’ve sprinkled on top. I don’t hold any grudges at this point and enjoy talking to my brother when I get the chance. But I knew when I started this series that I’d have to at least mention what it was like growing up with hostility simmering at all times.
At least we had the Teenage Mutant goddamned Ninja Turtles, though. What a perfect thing for people who are used to fighting over the one cool character in a show or movie. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had FOUR main characters with varying amounts of personality, and the toy line that accompanied that cartoon had roughly a thousand iterations of each of these four main heroes (plus a rogues gallery that puts Batman to shame). My brother and I didn’t have to make a binary choice with this one. He gravitated toward Leonardo and I toward Raphael, and that gave us the demilitarized zone of Donatello and Michelangelo as a buffer. (Admittedly, those two were also claimed, Mike by my brother and Donatello by me. –Ed.)
This was a huge quality-of-life improvement. We could share a hobby without it feeling like someone was losing out. And TMNT included a fun adventure cartoon, one absurdly hard Nintendo game, one fun Nintendo game, aisles of toys, and our 1990 entry, the movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
The movie is pretty good! The costuming/prosthetics are iconic and surprisingly emotive for heavy green foam. The voice acting is pretty good, the action is pretty good, and the stakes are suitably scaled to bumbling kung fu teens. (I do miss the days when dingy localized action heroes fought for the safety of a grocery store or a neighborhood, as opposed to every movie ending in cataclysmic global stakes on board a collapsing CGI glob. —Ed.).
The pacing is the most notable difference between it and newer movies. There is an extended sequence in an upstate New York farmhouse that is probably one-third of the movie. The turtles faced a defeat and carried their fallen brother away from town, hoping that some time in a claw-foot bathtub would revive him (it did). But there are several action set pieces, and… Shredder gets pulverized in a garbage truck compactor. With the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, we know that it wasn’t a fatal smooshing, but it sure seemed permanent to an eight-year old.
Turtlemania lasted for a couple of years into the 1990s. I remember feeling jealousy when my brother saw the Turtles national music tour and I didn’t. The two sequels to TMNT were much worse than the first film, and we sort of aged out of playing with toys right as the Turtles aged out of being pop culture titans.
The movie and the toys have indelible links to my childhood. I think of my brother when I see Michelangelo or Leonardo. The Technodrome reminds me of the first episode of the cartoon that I saw, which was overwhelming and weird and I believe the back half of a two-parter. Back then, you didn’t really see TV shows ever again once they went off the air, unless it was something that was in syndication, so you rolled with the punches when you caught the end of a story arc on The X-Files, for instance, and didn’t panic that it was spoiled.
What else? I associated the hockey mask with Casey Jones long before I saw a Friday the 13th movie. In fact, to this day I think of Elias Koteas as Casey Jones when I see him in movies. The “A little too Raph” joke in TMNT 2: The Secret of the Ooze confused me for about five years after I first heard it, as it is just a nonjoke to punch up a scene. But young Matt really, really thought there was some deeper meaning behind it. My country ass also associated hiphop with Bebop and Rocksteady through most of elementary school (the closest that I’d come to rap music at that age was Coolio). I experienced a lot of regrets as I got older and finally had access to all of the cool shit that I missed out on at that age due to circumstance. That’s just life, though. Gotta roll with the punches, just like a mutated pet turtle, deep in the comfy sewers of Manhattan.
Other 1990 Candidates: Ghost; Home Alone; Pretty Woman; Dances with Wolves; Total Recall; Kindergarten Cop; Dick Tracy; The Hunt for Red October; Joe versus the Volcano; Ghost Dad; Darkman; Men at Work; Quick Change
I turn 40 in December. To commemorate the milestone, I’m writing 40 short biographical essays pertaining to a movie per year of my life.