Subscribe The Jim Henson Creature Shop Did Spectacular WorkĪs for the Turtles and Splinter, they are remarkable, brought to life in impressive fashion by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. It couldn’t possibly look less like the hyper-stylized worlds of comic book movie contemporaries Batmanor Dick Tracy, or the CGI-assisted blockbuster sheen of the 2014 reboot or its sequel. In fact, the Foot were mostly comprised of teenagers who had fallen under the sway of the Shredder, who runs their hideout like its Pleasure Island in Pinocchio.īasically, the Turtles are mostly whupping the asses of misguided juvenile delinquents in the movie, although I figure that the ones who were actually bad enough to wear the full Foot Clan uniform were probably fairly hardened criminals by that point.ĭirector Steve Barron (probably best known for A-Ha’s memorable “Take on Me” live-action/animation hybrid video) and cinematographer John Fenner opted for a grainy, low-budget look for much of the film, while also not shying away from natural daylight and outdoor shots. The movie stuck to flesh-and-blood (and decidedly non-mutated) adversaries. The show’s sensible solution was to turn the Foot Clan into robots. The animated Turtles weren’t permitted to use their martial arts skills or their weapons to actually hit anyone. This may not seem like much of a big deal, but keep in mind that the early black and white TMNT comics were fairly bleak, violent affairs. Here’s the short version, though.ĭespite the fact that the TMNT were winning fans on a daily basis at this point with an animated series and toy line that were both impossible to escape, the movie chose to go back to the original source material for its story inspiration.

So much so that I wrote an entire article about exactly that. It’s extraordinarily faithful to the original comics. Watching the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action movie today, over 25 years after its release, and in the wake of two blockbuster movies that are considerably more expensive than the modest $13 million that the original cost, there are a few amazing details worth pointing out. Their final frontier was live action, something which seemed more than a little ambitious considering the limitations of special effects technology of the day. With an animated series bringing in millions of viewers entering its third season, the most popular boys’ toy line on the market, breakfast cereals, frozen pizzas, video games… the world belonged to the TMNT. In 1990 the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were at the absolute peak of their popularity.

Teenage mutant ninja turtles tmnt