Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
I guess Stuart Gillard did his History homework!
I warned you I’d be writing about TMNT III, and today I make good on that promise. Flee now while you can, for this is pure nostalgic romanticism. Also the source for a sound clip that has lived rent-free in my mind for decades.
First I probably need to remind everyone that this is not a statement of film superiority, because as we all know, the first live-action TMNT was the greatest of the films and, if modern adaptations are any indication, is likely to remain so:
This is an introspective that came about after weeks of serendipitous flow, and I find it only right to give credit where it’s due, even if that credit goes to a movie that even most Ninja Turtles fans find little tolerance for.
This was one of the only VHS’s that 7-year-old-me had access to that included cool fights, samurai, Japanese language, and age-appropriate humor. It was an oasis I could throw on the television midst reruns of Star Trek, Columbo, and Murder She Wrote, all of which I would only come to appreciate much later in life, but found paint-dry-boring at the age of 7.
Nothing quite hit the same as it did before, but as I was cringing from past memories, I found ample explanation for why I loved this film so much. Ample aside from the phenomenally executed Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court shenanigans, of course.
When the movie opened with “Japan 1603” I was braced to notice how incorrect the period armor was, and how many historical errors there likely were with the final years of the Sengokujidai, and instead I was becoming more and more uncomfortable with how a movie this corny could have done so well on their attention to finer details like Ashigaru uniforms, foreign trade dynamics, the prevalence of firearms and their role in the Sengokujidai conflicts, and actual Japanese actors (including one with family roots in Samurai royalty to play the prince.)
Now the humor, dialogue, plot, and pacing leave a lot to be desired, but for a young kid who wanted to see cool fights and more of the Japanese stuff she grew up surrounded by, this movie delivered in spades. Also there are some shots that just turn up the cool factor, these have no right to be as gorgeous as they are in this movie:
When it comes to New Line Cinema in the 90’s, I’ve learned to not worry too much about the finer points of stage craft, narrative, and editing, because at the end of the day, that company has created the majority of my fondest “cool factor” films.