Still Mutant After All These Years: Love for TMNT at 30

It’s Monday March 30th 2020 and the world is on fire. I’m sure I’ll write about that more, again, at another time. (Wouldn’t now be a convenient time for a systems and integrity check on our society and the leaders in it? But, alas…) At the risk of sounding defeatist, I’ll go into the sewers instead. Not to give up, but because that’s where heroes are found. And if you’re of a certain age, some belief.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie came out thirty years ago today. Which means a lot of things, ranging from “Oh geez are we old enough for midlife existential crisis then?” to just being hungry for pizza.

But as a 4 year old in Youngstown, OH it meant part of why I fell in love with an art form and started to follow a calling. Even 30 years later, TMNT is still as much or more so magic as it is just nostalgia.

I don’t know how old I was when I was sitting in the breezeway and my Dad was reading the paper and told me as I was playing, “Hey, they’re making a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie” — but for the large hadron collider in my brain, this was like discovering the Higgs Boson. I exploded. WHAT.

I immediately demanded to know how he knew this. He showed me the small paragraph, one of probably three, above the TV listings. (TV listings used to be a thing… they also used to be in the paper… uh, the paper was also a thing… apparently easy jokes still are.)

In that very moment more foundation was poured in me for something I consider a core belief and value — journalism. How did they know? How did they find out? You mean if I read these boxes I could find out equally stunning information EVERY DAY?!

I started having my parents read me the boxes every day. I started occasionally watching Entertainment Tonight with my Mom — although I couldn’t tell you what I got out of Heathers Q+As or Night Court set visits — but I’m sure it’s layered in me somewhere. It was entertainment that got me in, but it was feeling like I knew a secret that got me hooked, and later the importance of knowing things in general that fed my conviction about, study of, and even occasional work in, journalism. A pretty weird thing to learn, at least in part, on accident from a turtle.

That same desire, thrill, and from time to time intellectual and cultural responsibility fuels much of the internet today. The movie (and TV) news sites and blogs — and Film Twitter — that celebrate shared passion, dig for rumor, and that aim to understand the alchemy that makes imagination reality all create #Spoilers! culture and consistently turn out content, even during crisis. They build a community.

So that was one thing. The moment I knew TMNT was going to be REAL I needed to know EVERYTHING. And in that statement was the most important thing—

Movies made things real. Somehow through a process of people and cameras and studio heads and background extras and score conductors and construction guys and captured light and shipped film, somehow through this mysterious conveyor belt of inspiration and labor, your wildest dreams as a five your old could come true. The impossible would be visible, the world you escaped to with plastic on the living room floor and in scribbles on blank pieces of paper could be sat in and shared in a theater. Lived.

I couldn’t believe it, and I’ve never abandoned it, even as I’ve seen how the sausage is made. It doesn’t matter. I still want it on my pizza — so to speak.

I look around my apartment and even my email address and realize this absurd concept, words so silly to take them at face value appropriately renders them nonsense - Teenage. Mutant. Ninja. Turtles. - an idea created as parody to undermine the self-seriousness of Frank Miller Daredevil runs — holds a serious place in my life… still.

So does that mean me and anyone that feels the same, or holds on to some totems of fandom — are crazy? Stilted children? I mean, it’s possible, probable? True in cases? But it also seems more probable to me, especially now that we’re all adults in a time of crisis, that a Michelangelo on a face mask or a cowabunga in conversation isn’t a denial of reality as much as it’s remembering the joys and values we want our realities to have, and the reason we got into them to begin with.

The same people that have a toy on their desk could be saving the world. Or at least are part of the generation that more often than not trusts scientists and doctors and a headline from a reputable source more than reality show hosts (sorry). Maybe it’s all part of the muscle memory that allows you to be passionate. Maybe pizza addicted wise-cracking mutants can somehow inform your values.

I’m a goof partly because Michelangelo was and is my favorite (and he was probably my favorite because I was a bit of a goof), part of the reason I wanted to work in the industry was because it’s the dream factory — and I probably wanted to work in a dream factory because of a hungry imagination. Made families, unbreakable friendships, doing the right thing with a quip along the way and a healthy dose of spirit at the center — these are all things a silly cartoon can illicit when you’re under ten, and that a movie can make real.

The things we love are a conduit to the people we are at our core, and a reminder of the people we want to be and the world we want to live in at their best.

So TMNT came out on March 30th 1990 and exceeded all financial expectations of success. For a long time it was the highest grossing independent movie of all time. It spent a month at the top of the box office. But it also exceeded artistic expectations. The tactile production design and camera work extended from the streets of New York to the sewers below and most importantly of all, to Jim Henson’s still stunning accomplishment on the TMNT suits.

And at the core of a movie that could have been thoughtlessly silly and carelessly constructed to sell toys (it still sold — and is still selling A LOT of toys) — there was a genuine attention to theme, a care for a story, and an effort to make the ridiculous something you could buy into. With a few “DAMNS!”, some unexpected peril, and at times noir-ish palette, something very unlike a cartoon bonanza made that very thing a very real blockbuster.

Revisiting it as an adult I see art sewn into its seems even as I see limitations of the concept and audience at its edges. I also see how, unbeknownst to me as a kid, it got me unconsciously paying attention to the craft of filmmaking — even if I’m sure no professor would put it ahead of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or The Bicycle Thief in film school. We all start somewhere. How do you make a movie about mutant ninja turtles any good? Like this. Exactly like this.

Just a year later a lot of color would come, and a Vanilla Ice rap too in a sequel. And I loved it and still do for how silly it is. And for decades since more movies, more media, more plastic, more reboots — including a particularly inspired one on Nickelodeon right now.

We will keep finding ways to tell our dreams over and over, in different mediums, concepts and interpretations, but on March 30th 1990 they were made real. And I’ll never forget what that meant to me then, or what it does today when I’ll sit down to safely, socially distanced, Netflix Watch Party it again at the invitation of good friends, for the millionth time.

No matter what the world throws at you keep your bros (and sis-es) close, keep your shell up, keep your anger in check, your faith unshakeable, your leadership ready, smarts sharp, and always be unashamed to throw a cowabunga back at the world in the midst of a fight.

We are all mutants of different mutagens, influences. Hold onto the ones that give you your superpowers.

Oh — more than anything? Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for a late pizza. (JK tip your drivers extra in this time of need — see, it is possible to grow!)

If you know, you know…