Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) on Netflix
PG19901h 33mActionAdventureComedyFamilySci-Fi
Four mutant turtles, trained in ninjutsu by their mentor Splinter, hide in a New York sewer. They rescue reporter April O'Neil from thieves and face the Shredder's Foot Clan.
- Netflix2.8/5
- IMDb6.8/10113,663 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes43%
Trailer
Plot summary
In New York City, a crime wave has Channel 3 reporter April O'Neil looking into a gang of thieves. Thieves corner her one night, and four masked vigilantes rescue her: Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael, mutant turtles who train in ninjutsu under Splinter, the rat who raised them. In the fight one of them loses a sai, which April picks up. The thieves answer to the Foot Clan, led by the Shredder, who draws troubled teenagers into his ranks, among them Danny Pennington, the son of April's supervisor at the station. Casey Jones, a vigilante and former ice hockey player, works the same streets. The turtles bring April to their sewer lair, where Splinter tells her that a mysterious chemical turned him and the turtles into intelligent creatures.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The turtle costumes were built by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and the job was one of Jim Henson's last projects: he died shortly after the film's premiere.
- Walt Disney Pictures, Columbia, Universal, MGM/UA, Orion, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Warner Bros. all turned the film down, fearing a box-office flop like Masters of the Universe; New Line Cinema, then a small independent known for B movies, picked it up midway through production.
- In the mid-1980s, Roger Corman pitched a live-action adaptation for his studio New World Pictures that would have starred comedians Sam Kinison, Gallagher, Bobcat Goldthwait and Billy Crystal in green make-up as the turtles.
- Its opening weekend took in more than $25 million, the biggest opening weekend an independent film had ever had up to that time.
- The UK version removed Eastern fighting weapons such as Michelangelo's nunchaku and edited the "Turtle Power" song to change the word "ninja" to "hero", following standards imposed on the animated series in the UK.
- Editor Sally Menke, who later cut many Quentin Tarantino films, was removed from the movie because production company Golden Harvest did not like her work.
- Production designer Roy Forge Smith and art director Gary Wissner were allowed to explore an abandoned Brooklyn subway line because they could not get access to a city sewer; its structure matched a sewer's.
- The face masks' animatronic mouths, eyes and eyebrows were run by a technician; a computer codified expressions such as anger or awe onto the keys of a joystick, and lip movement was captured with a helmet of cameras.
Stills
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