Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993): One of the Worst Superhero Movies Ever Made
The Ninja Turtles went back in time? Well, I need my time back.
Disclaimer: This article is the final third of my written script for my recently released video, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Trilogy: A Complete And Utter Disaster, where I reviewed the entire TMNT trilogy. For the sake of readability, I decided to split up my review for each movie in this trilogy. Enjoy!
Introduction
Yeah, I’m just gonna get straight to the point here, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III is awful. This movie sucks, there is not a single good thing about this movie. The plot sucks, the villains are uninspiring as hell, the turtles look legitimately terrifying, and this movie feels like an absolute eternity. No lie, this movie feels like forever because absolutely nothing of any substance was happening on screen throughout this movie. This movie is the most boring movie I’ve watched in such a long time. Just to put it into perspective, Secret of the Ooze is only one hour and twenty-eight minutes long, and the movie flies by. Don’t get me wrong, the plot feels unfinished, unimportant, and ultimately doesn’t stick the landing as I said, but there are at least some interesting things that happen. Some moments will make you laugh, there are one-liners you will remember in this movie and there’s at least the entire last section of the movie, which is still ridiculously entertaining to this day. There is absolutely none of that in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, that’s how bad this movie is.
What frustrates me the most about this movie is that this entire plot was avoidable within the first ten or fifteen minutes of the movie. To simplify the story, April goes on a trip and comes back with gifts. One of those gifts is an ancient scepter. Now, it’s never really explained, but for some reason, we’re being shown the scepter getting used in the past by this dude named Kenshin, which, somehow, triggers the scepter to go off in the present. Trust me, it doesn’t make sense and I don’t even understand how that logically works. Anyway, the scepter goes off while April’s holding it and it teleports her to the past which is Japan 1603, and teleports Kenshin into the present time. The Ninja Turtles get confused, realize they have to go back in time to save April, save a war that looks more like a small battle, and then teleport back home with April, which rightfully sends Kenshin back into the past. Yes, that’s the actual story in this movie and yes, it sounds as bad as you think. Now, you might be wondering how this plot was avoidable, and boy do I have an answer. April could’ve just dropped the scepter. It’s that simple. Like any other sane person would’ve done, all she had to do was immediately drop it when it went off in her hands, problem solved. It’s not like the scepter went off and froze her in place, she was moving around and everything. All she had to do was drop the scepter. That’s it. If April decided to just drop the scepter when it started going off, she would’ve never been teleported to Japan in 1603. That means the turtles would’ve never had to go back in time, Kenshin would’ve never been teleported to New York City, and this entire story would’ve never existed. If I can solve a movie’s problem with an explanation that is that simple, that’s how you know they didn’t try to make a well-thought-out story for this movie. That’s how you know this entire movie is even more pointless than Secret of the Ooze, which is a feat on its own.
The most disappointing factor, though, is the fact that this movie committed to the idea of removing the turtles from New York City. I can’t help, but ask, “Why?” What was the purpose or thought behind that decision? We didn’t need a complicated uninteresting storyline, we didn’t need this time travel story, and we didn’t need to do the whole “let’s take our main character and place them in an entirely new setting that they’ve never been in and hope it works out for the best.” This exact problem is actually why I was never the biggest fan of Spider-Man: Far From Home. Taking a character or a group of characters out of place they’re specifically associated with rarely works out or rarely leads to a satisfying conclusion. And that’s the problem with TMNT 3. This baffling decision should’ve never happened because all it did was lead to more problems. The problem with both TMNT 1 and TMNT 2 wasn’t New York or the setting in general. In fact, I didn’t really talk about their designs much, but TMNT 1’s design feels a lot more like Gotham than New York, and TMNT 2’s design for New York City is legitimately fantastic. The opening in TMNT 2 is amazing, exciting and so well-designed. So it’s not like TMNT 3 had to switch up the setting. The problem with TMNT 3’s predecessors was the fact that their stories could’ve been better and that’s all TMNT 3 needed to achieve. A simple cohesive story that took place in New York, continued to grow the dynamic between the turtles and continue to flesh out April’s reporter career. Or, at least figure out a way to include April’s reporter stuff as a side plot because that worked for me in TMNT 2. That’s it. You know what, though? It’s a good thing that I complained about Casey not being in TMNT 2 because he’s in TMNT 3! Except it feels like nothing more than a glorified cameo. No, really, Casey’s whole role in this movie is to basically remind people that he still exists. Oh, and he’s also a babysitter. And yes, I’m being serious. He babysits Kenshin, Kenshin’s guards, and Master Splinter. He just watches after them because there was no one else to relegate that role to and they clearly wanted to make it up to the people who clearly complained about the lack of Casey in TMNT 2. Oh, and in case you’re curious, no they don’t mention Keno. No one talks about him, there’s no flashback about him and it’s almost like he never existed. Just like they did to Casey in TMNT 2. I genuinely can’t emphasize this, I wish I had something positive to say about this movie, I truly do, but there’s nothing positive about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III.
Now, you might be wondering why I haven’t even bothered diving into the Japan plot of this movie. The reason I haven’t bothered discussing the Japan plot is that all of it is just so pointless. I wanted to care for it, but here’s where the Japan plot that focused on Mitsu, Lord Norinaga, and Walker lost me. When this movie decided to expand the turtles’ origin story and make it that the turtles are descendants of four other ninja turtles that fought against Shredder’s ancestor, thus making it a storyline about destiny coming full circle, that’s when it lost. I was just so incredibly baffled because none of it was believable and it goes back on the entirety of TMNT 2. The entire purpose of TMNT 2 is to establish that the turtles’ origin story isn’t that special despite the turtles thinking differently. Their creation is a by-product of an accident. That’s what made them who they are. Not destiny, not a past ancestor, not magic and not a wish. They became teenage mutant ninja turtles because of an ooze they walked into that just happened to be there. They emphasize this multiple times in TMNT 2. In fact, it’s probably the only bit of story that really exists in TMNT 2. So for this third movie to backtrack on these repeated facts and basically say “No, that’s actually not the case despite us stating otherwise multiple times in the previous movie,” it just feels insulting to be honest. Think about it for a second, how can the turtles be descendants of ancient warriors who fought Shredder’s ancestor in Japan when the turtles only became mutant ninja turtles because of an ooze made by the science company TGRI? I understand the logic behind them being descendants, but how can they be the descendants of previous ninja turtles when it’s only been proven to us and told to us that the ninja turtles exist because of the ooze? This movie makes absolutely no logical sense in what it’s trying to do or what it’s trying to explore and, because of that, all of it is a complete and utter waste of time.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III is terrible. It’s uninteresting, uninspiring, unengaging, and ultimately fails on all fronts. It sucks away all of the magic that made TMNT 1 and TMNT 2 enjoyable despite their obvious flaws. This movie is so bad that I would almost prefer to pretend like I never watched this movie. It doesn’t respect your time, and truthfully, it just doesn’t feel like a movie that had love and care put into it. By the way, the number-one reason this movie is an incredibly hard watch is because of the turtles’ designs. When I tell you that these turtles are legitimately terrifying to look at, I’m not exaggerating. They’re terribly controlled, not even in sync with their voice-over lines, and you can tell they’re not proud of their designs. How do I know that? It’s because there are several times in this movie where the turtles are talking, but you don’t see their mouths moving because they have mouthguards in front of them. That’s how poorly designed they are. And man, the eyes of these turtles, I can’t even explain how off-putting they are. It’s like all aspects of this movie are just terrible. I don’t know what more to say about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, I truly don’t.
Cowabunga, dudes!
As for my experience rewatching movies that meant so much to my childhood, it was such a bad time. I genuinely don’t think I’ve been disappointed on my channel in a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast making this video. It’s just that I love the Ninja Turtles and I love the first movie enough to say that I will revisit it from time to time. However, I never feel the need to revisit TMNT 2 outside of the “Go Ninja Go Ninja Go” scene and I know that I will never have it in me to watch TMNT 3 because it’s such a bland movie from start to finish. This trilogy isn’t good. It’s worse than you remember, and I promise you, no amount of nostalgia will stop you from realizing this even if this video inspires you to revisit these movies on your own time. I genuinely hope you guys had a good time watching this video because I’ll be real, despite the rapid downfall that this video became from the heights of TMNT 1 to the incredible lows that were TMNT 2 and TMNT 3, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a good time making this video. With that being said, it’s only right to end this video on a high note.
