Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Trilogy - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Trilogy

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


WARNING: THE SCORES ABOVE ARE A COMBINED SCORE FROM ALL 3 FILMS, THE INDIVIDUAL SCORES ARE CONTAINED BELOW IN THE INDIVIDUAL SECTIONS OF THE REVIEW

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Movie
Ahhh, yes, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. While they’re still relevant today as a gigantic cash cow, with multiple cartoons recently, and a myriad of toys, there is NOTHING like the heyday of the late 80s and early 90s. This was the time of the turtles, with lunchboxes, toys, the iconic Saturday morning cartoon, action figures, crayon boxes with different shades of turtle green, and, of course, the live-action films. If you weren’t alive back in 1990, you would not realize how BIG an event the first Ninja Turtles movie was. It was much like Mortal Kombat, where kids and adults of all ages came out in droves to see it. The theater was packed to the gills, and kids were screaming the entire time. I still remember being 8 years old and my uncle taking me to go see it, and I will never forget just how insane that night was. So when I saw that Arrow was releasing a nice 4K box set to complement the aging Warner Brothers Blu-ray Pizza box set, I was all in.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
When a crime wave sweeps the city of New York, four unexpected heroes rise to the challenge of stopping the villains. These spin-kicking heroes aren’t your regular vigilantes. While they’re your average high testosterone, pizza-eating, fun-loving teenagers…….they’re also turtles. Mutant turtles to be precise, named after the famous Renaissance painters, Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo, and Raphael. Trained by a mutant rat named Splinter, the 4 wage a 4-man war against the underworld that seeks to destroy New York.

After being uncovered and exposed by crack reporter, April O’Neil (Judith Hoag), the turtles team up with hockey mask-wearing vigilante Casey Jones (Elias Koteas) to take down the Foot Gang that is leading this crime wave. The only thing is, the foot clan is nothing but a tool for a more sinister villain. A masked Ninja from Japan, who has manipulated the city to serve him, acts as the only person who could wipe out the turtles themselves.

I don’t care what anyone says. The original film in the trilogy is just about perfect. Maybe not 100% perfect, but close enough. It was a glorious bit of 80s and 90s excesses, with over-the-top costumes, hilariously spinning the turtles as hyperactive California surfers, and plenty of 1990s hip hop beats while the turtles kick butt and eat pizza. Personally, I don’t think we’ll ever see the glory of the late 80s and early 90s again. We were in an era where people wanted comic book movies on the big screen, but budgets and CGI weren’t there just yet to really make it happen. So the 1990s were a weird amalgamation of rubber suits and love, mixed with low budgets and cheesy gimmicks. But what makes the film (and many of the '90s superhero hits) work so well is the obvious passion and love that everyone put into it. We all knew that it was just guys in rugger suits, but we wiped that from our minds whenever we watched the film. To us 90s kids, this IS Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And 35 years after it was released, it still is a blast to watch.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze
Shot and released barely a year after the massively successful original films, Secret of the Ooze dropped into theaters with double the budget and a $78 million domestic run. By all accounts, it was a wild success, except for the fact that the fans of the first movie were kind of let down by the sequel. Picking up directly after the events of the first film, the Foot Clan is in disarray after Shredder (now played by Francois Chau) has been crushed by Casey Jones in a garbage truck. But reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated, as Shredder pulls his mangled body from the back of the truck and sets out to enact revenge on the turtles. Co-opting some radioactive “ooze” with similar mutagenic properties as the ooze that created the turtles originally, Shredder makes his own mutants in the form of Tokka, the snapping turtle, and Rahzar, the wolf. Chaos ensues, leaving April O’Neil (now played by Paige Turco) and the Turtles to shred Shredder’s butt once and for all.

On the surface, Secret of the Ooze is the perfect follow-up to the hit 1990 film. It brings back Shredder, turns him into the Super Shredder, and delves deeper into the history of how the turtles were actually created. But the reality is, Secret of the Ooze takes camp to a whole other level, and not in a good way. Half the cast have been redone, Casey Jones is cut out of the story, and the hammy acting is amplified to 11. They even got Vanilla Ice (who was at the height of his career) to record and perform a brand new song for the film itself. Which landed about as well as you might have expected. And while not the end of the world, it whiffed big time by using Tokka and Rahzar as the main mutant villains instead of Bebop and Rocksteady. But I digress, part of this was due to budgetary concerns, but it all just feels like such a letdown compared to the original.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III:
Continuing to churn out films in rapid succession, the 3rd film dropped a year after Secret of the Ooze (and only 2 years after the original), with a lower budget and a low box office draw. But I’m weird, I actually kind of like Turtles III. A good time travel adventure can be fun, and it brought the turtles back to ancient Japan using a giant magical scepter. As usual, it’s your classic fish out of water tale, complete with unrequited love and a lesson on teamwork/family above all else. It starts with the turtles accidentally pulling a young man from 17th-century Japan forward in time via the Scepter, only to catapult the turtles BACK in time, leaving Casey Jones (Elias Koteas reprising his role once more) to watch over Master Splinter.

Everything about Turtles in Time is just “cheap”. The costumes are hilariously bad, looking like green plastic suits that were bought at the dollar store, down to the set pieces, trying to imitate 17th-century Japan. The turtles themselves have been reduced to pale imitations of the high-flying and high-energy turtles (although Corey Feldman reprises his role as Donatello for a bit). At this point, audiences were having a hard time accepting the cheesiness and hammy nature of the films, with 3 films in a 2-year period, and the box office results showed it. But here’s where things get weird. I actually LIKE Turtles in Time. It’s over the top, silly, and kind of like watching a Saturday morning cartoon instead of a feature film. But maybe that’s why I like it. It feels cheap and cartoony, which fits more in the vein of what the films SHOULD have been to begin with. But I fully admit that this is a terrible film, and that I’m simply loving a bad movie. Which is perfectly fine.




Rated R by the MPAA (all 3 films)




Video:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
As usual, Arrow does a great job getting good restorations/remasters, and this is no different. According to the information I could pull, the original camera negative was rescanned at 4K 16-bit at Fotokem, and a 35mm IP was used for reel 3, which wasn’t present from the original negative. Color grading and restoration was done at R3Store Studios in London, and all source material was done via Fortune Star, WB and the Academy Film Archive, and the British Film Institute.

The opening few minutes of the film look a bit wonky, with blurry lines and the New Line Cinema text being a tad soft, but after the opening credits comes through the film sharpens up nicely. Right off the bat, this is a grainy film and always has been. It was the grainiest of the trilogy by a good margin, but it’s a nice, healthy grain layer that looks very natural. No signs of crushing or DNR being overused, and the fine details look great. Skin tones really pop, and the dark New York subways showcase some impressive shadow detail. The HDR and Dolby Vision color grading really work for the film’s dark highlights, accentuating some really nice black levels and making the bright colored markings on the turtles really rich and saturated. And honestly, I don’t think the film has EVER looked this good. The aging Warner Blu-ray is solid, but this 4K release is the belle of the ball here, and a handy upgrade.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze:
Secret of the Ooze was supposedly taken from a 35 mm IP to to 4K 16 bit, and overseen at Warner’s MPI, then restored and color graded at R3Store Studios like the first film. The results for this one are a bit less than I would have hoped for, and I genuinely wonder if it is something to do with how the film was shot, as both the Blu-ray and this 4K UHD restoration suffer the same issue. And that issue is chunky, near-impenetrable grain. For some reason, the grain looks a bit thick and heavy, almost like you have to see THROUGH it to see the main film. Objects in the background get hidden as a result, and fine details suffer. That being said, this is still a decent enough improvement over the Blu-ray, showing less crush and more detail. The Dolby Vision upgrades are nice, adding some pop to the Super Shredder outfit, and a bit TOO much detail to the cheesy costume designs chosen for the mutants. But all in all, this is the one middling transfer out of all three films, and it’s something that has been the case going back to even the DVD era.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III:
Just like Secret of the Ooze, the 3rd film is taken from a 35mm IP to a 4K 16-bit, all done at Warner’s MPI production house. Then restored and color graded at R3store Studio in London. Luckily, it doesn’t suffer the same heavy, impenetrable layer of grain that makes things hard to see through. This is actually the nicest and cleanest looking film with the least amount of grain. Which makes the entire thing just look “nicer” in many ways. There are some splotchy moments with the yellows that crop up in the darker shots, but otherwise this looks really nice, with moderate grain and plenty of fine details. Yellows and greens get the brunt of the enhancements from Dolby Vision, but blacks also look really impressive as a result. Details are marginal upticks over the 1080p Blu-ray, still enough that make this a worthy purchase.








Audio:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
While it’s the only one of the batch to receive it, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gets a new fancy upgrade in the form of a Dolby Atmos track, as well as the original Stereo track in LPCM (and an alternate 2.0 LPCM track titled “the Warrior track”). I’m usually a purist, so the 2.0 LPCM is my jam, but the new Atmos track is a solid upgrade over the 5.1 mix that we had in the Blu-rays. It’s not a massive difference, but the Atmos adds some cool directional shifts and intermittent activity in the surrounds. But even so, this is an older, low-budget 2.0 stereo track upmixed to Atmos, and it’s not going to compete with native mixed Atmos tracks. Dialog is good, the surrounds have some moderate activity, and the bass comes through with the hip hop soundtrack and a few crashes along the way. It’s not wild, but it’s very good considering that Turtles has never sounded SUPER awesome over the years.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze:
Featuring the same 2.0 LPCM track as the first movie, but only a 5.1 DTS-HD MA mix for the surround mix. As usual, I always stick with the 2.0 stereo theatrical mix, but the 5.1 mix is more than capable. It has all the goofy music, the crazy audio cues, and a moderate amount of surround activity. It’s not really heavy on the bass, but once we get into the club with the infamous “Go, ninja Go!” song, things pick up a good amount in the LFE. This is a simple audio design, and no matter what the 5.1 track does, it won’t be anything but simple, though effective.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III:
The same 2.0 LPCM/5.1 DTS-HD MA track follows suit with the third film, and it is roughly the same experience. I like the purity of the 2.0 theatrical mix, but the surround mix is very similar, with some moderate usage of the surround channels. LFE is mild to moderate, with some good effects for the samurai battles, and the travel through time via the scepter. Clarity is strong on both mixes, but weirdly, I felt like the 5.1 mix wasn’t as different from the 2.0 mix as I would have thought it would be. Still, a solid sounding mix, but I still prefer the 2.0 one.











Extras:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Commentary with director Steve Barron
• Commentary with comic book expert Dave Baxter
• Rising When We Fall
• Turtle Talk
• O'Neil on the Beat
• Wet Behind the Shells
• Beneath the Shell
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turf
• Alternate UK Version
• Alternate Ending
• Alternate Korean Footage
• Theatrical Trailers
• US Theatrical Trailer
• UK Teaser Trailer
• UK Theatrical Trailer
• UK Re-Release Trailer
• Image Gallery

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze
• Commentary with director Michael Pressman and Gillian Wallace
• John Du Prez to the Rescue
• Hard Cores
• The Secret of the Edit
• Behind the Shells
• Theatrical Trailer
• Image Gallery

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
• Commentary with director Stuart Gillard
• Rebel Rebel
• Daimyos & Demons
• Alternate UK Opening
• Theatrical Trailer
• Image Gallery

Final Score: ​

As a child of the 90s, I will never NOT like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They’re an indelible part of my childhood, and still are relevant today. While there have been MANY different iterations in the cartoons, and the new live-action Turtles movies were actually really fun, I will always have a soft spot for the glorious cheese that was the '90s films. This Arrow set is really impressive, with some nice video upgrades, a new Atmos track for the first film, and some cool extras. Good Buy.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Judith Hoag, Elias Koteas, James Saito, Paige Turco, Davidi Warner, Stuart Wilson, Sab Shimono, Vivian Wu
Directed by: Steve Barron / Michael Pressman / Stuart Gillard
Written by: Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, Bobby Herbeck / Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, Todd W. Langen / Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, Stuard Gillard
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 HEVC (All 3)
Audio:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: English Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core), English LPCM 2.0 (Alternate Warrior Track), English 2.0 LPCM
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze: English DTS-HD MA 5.1, English LPCM 2.0
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: English DTS-HD MA 5.1, English LPCM 2.0
Subtitles: English (1st Movie) English SDH (all 3)
Studio: Arrow
Rated: PG (all 3 movies)
Runtime: 93 Minutes / 88 Minutes / 96 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: January 16th, 2025

Recommendation: Fun Watch