I remember the exact day I found out about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was sitting in kindergarten about to play Batman with my friend as we always did when he says to me “you ever heard of Ninja Turtles?”. I immediately got it. I knew nothing about the show or the comics, all I knew was:

1. They were Ninjas.  I knew what a ninja was.
2. They were Turtles.  I knew what a turtle was.

GOD I LOVE BEING A TURTLE!

And you know what?  It was really fun.  Those two things are all  you NEED to know about  TMNT.  From that day forward I was a die hard Turtle Fan.  I had all the toys, I doodled turtles on my homework, I watched the show, I saw the movies, I played the video games, I had the cardboard cutouts on my wall, and all I wanted to eat was pizza.  I remember seeing Turtles 2 on opening day with my best friend and coming out of the theater thinking I was a ninja!  Hell I loved the turtles so much I even watched that god awful ‘coming out of their shells’ musical they did… and liked it.  I even had the soundtrack cassette to all the movies.  I was a flat out turtle geek and now that I’am 27 with a movie website, I can finally share the love with my tens of fans!

The first two movies rocked my world when I was a kid, and after watching them again recently they still hold up as decent flicks.  They have a fun feel to them and I can easily turn right back in that excited little kid I used to be when it shows up on TV as I surf through the channels.  Now AFTER the first two movies was a little film called ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3′.  That movie was effing terrible!  James Rolfe, the man made famous for being ‘The Angry Video Game Nerd’ totally flamed the crap fest that is ‘Turtles 3′ on his website, and it was well deserved and hilarious.  Turtles 4 was a little different, it was made with CGI instead of being live action but it actually turned out pretty good.   TMNT (turtles 4) came out the day after my Birthday on March 23rd 2007.  I was actually pretty impressed, anything would’ve been better than Turtles 3.

Well enough nerding out, lets explain some turtle flicks!

The Explanations

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990): A biological mistake turns 4 turtles into 6ft tall ninjas. Trained by a rat they fight crime and throw a man off a roof.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze (1991): 4 turtles battle a crazy man for the last bottle of “ooze” that mutates whatever it touches.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 (1993): Mutated turtles travel in time by holding a lamp and help in a town uprising.

TMNT (2007): Some turtles fight random monsters needed for a ritual that makes things immortal.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Coming Out of Their Shells (1990): 4 turtles stop their arch nemesis and a fly man from destroying the worlds music.

James Rolfe’s Hilarious Review of Turtles 3

Watch Part 1: http://screwattack.com/videos/AVGN-TMNT-3-Part-1

Watch Part 2: http://screwattack.com/videos/AVGN-TMNT-3-Part-2

Fun Facts

• Brian Tochi (The voice of Leonardo) and Robbie Rist (The voice of Michaelangelo) are the only actors who appeared in all three live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies.
• Several famous actors were voice talent in the Turtles films.  Corey Feldman voiced Donatello in turtles 1 and 3.  Sarah Michelle Gellar voiced April O’Neil, Chris Evans voiced Casey Jones, Patrick Stewart voiced Winters, Laurence Fishburne was the narrator, and Kevin Smith even voiced the diner cook in TMNT the CGI film.
• All three newswomen seen or mentioned in Turtles 1 have the name of a month: April, May, and June.
• In the film, April is a reporter for Channel 3. In the cartoon, she was a reporter for Channel 6, and in the comics (in her first appearance), she worked for a scientist named Baxter Stockman, who was a recurring enemy of the Turtles’. She escaped from him when he tried to kill her for threatening to expose a criminal scheme he was plotting using his mass-produced “Mouser” robots.
• Turtles 1 was once the highest-grossing independent film of all time, having made over $133 million in domestic box office.
• All of the shirts that Danny wears in Turtles 1 have a picture of The Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious on them.
• In the script and novelization, the young boy that Tatsu attacks was to die from the beating. The sounds of the boy breathing and others saying he would be all right were added at the last minute after the movie ratings board objected to the scene.
• Josh Pais, who plays Raphael, also plays a passenger in the back of a taxicab who says, “What the heck was that?” right after Raphael hops on the cab’s hood.
• Michelan Sisti, the performer inside the Michaelangelo costume, also plays the pizza delivery man who delivers the pizza to the Turtles’ sewer.
• Leif Tilden, the performer inside the Donatello costume, also plays the Foot Messenger that meets April in the subway station. He says, “We’ve been looking for you, Miss O’Neill,” then he slaps her.
• In the original script of Turtles 2, the film was to end on a cliffhanger, with Prof. Perry being revealed to be a robotic shell for an utrom, aliens from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics who created the ooze to power their technology. This was dropped due to the fear of kids mistaking it for Krang, a villain of the cartoon series who was based on the utroms.
• There was a live action tv series titled ‘Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation’.  It was on the air in 97-98 and had a 5th female turtle by the name of ‘Venus De Milo’.