CINEMISSES! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990

This week, Tug and Matt delve into the 1990 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, exploring its origins, cultural impact, and the evolution of the characters from comics to TV to silver screen. They examine the blend of humor, action, and nostalgia that defines the film, while also critiquing some of its dated references that seemed less 1990 and more 1970. They also accidentally zag into an examination of the special effects used in this movie and digital animation's  influence on modern cinema. Tug still has something effed up with his voice but Matt’s the Leonardo of this podcast anyway. COWABUNGA!

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Transcript

Tug McTighe (00:00)
Let me just start.

Alright, hey Matt!

Matt Loehrer (00:07)
Hey buddy, how's it going?

Tug McTighe (00:08)
I'm good. am basking in the glow of Super Bowl week for the Kansas City Chiefs. I recognize that may be annoying for many of our football loving fans. Chiefs have become the villain.

Matt Loehrer (00:18)
If it helps, yeah,

if it helps, I don't care. Like it's sacrilege, just don't really care.

Tug McTighe (00:21)
Right, I know you don't. Right, but the Chiefs have, you know,

it's that thing, right, where it's be the hero long enough and you end up the villain. But the Chiefs are in no way as bad as the evil villain Shredder from the movie we're going to talk about today, which is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990. There have been.

Matt Loehrer (00:32)
Yeah.

Tug McTighe (00:51)
163,521 different iterations of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles since they were created in, I believe, 1984-ish by Eastman and Laird. And what we learned, I think, you and I are both comics guys, you're really a comics guy. But what we both learned was

Matt Loehrer (00:59)
Correct? Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Tug McTighe (01:10)
When you do a little dig in and you remember the comics and then you go look at the cartoon and then you look at the movie This was not exactly the comic book vision that I think they had And they and I watched the documentary a couple years ago on on how it all started And it was kind of nuts. It was a it was one of those things right? That's like they were two artists that accidentally met each other and then they made a comic book they made a zine

Matt Loehrer (01:26)
Mm-hmm.

Tug McTighe (01:36)
Like in the days when you used a copier to make a write a magazine a zine And then people loved it and then like three years later. They've got a TV show. That's literally Blown the doors off Saturday morning

Matt Loehrer (01:36)
Right. It was an oversized comic.

Right. So interesting for me. This was really interesting for me. I think Eastman and Laird have very much kind of like a Stanley Steve Ditko relationship and I could be wrong, but this was

Tug McTighe (01:59)
Could you

explain, just give us the, give the crowd the Twitter length version of what that means.

Matt Loehrer (02:02)
For sure.

My impression is that Peter Laird was a little more easygoing and a little more of a showman and liked the commercial aspect of this. Both of these guys just lucked into this. Yeah, it was the first idea and only idea I think they ever had. And it was Gonzo Bonkers popular. Whereas Eastman was more like the Steve Ditko type where he took it very seriously and this was art to him.

Tug McTighe (02:19)
100%.

Right, right.

This

was a- yeah, there was an artistry to it.

Matt Loehrer (02:36)
I think he was a little turned off by the idea of kind of crass commercialism, though I think he probably liked millions and millions of dollars.

Tug McTighe (02:43)
so I think what you're saying, it sort of ferrets itself out like, Laird bought Eastman out. to your point about this was the only thing 10 years in, was the, they said this in the documentary. This was the only thing that they, it was so popular and busy. was the only thing they could do was, manage.

manage this property, which if you're not into it, if you don't love it, it's got to be daunting, It happened a lot like Bill Watterson from Calvin and Hobbes, like I'm done. I've had enough. Gary Larson from the far side. I'm done. I've had enough. So it can be daunting.

Matt Loehrer (03:19)
And

said the same thing. He said, I got to the point where I just didn't want to draw it. didn't bring me any joy anymore. And I imagine that's true of a lot of people that have businesses that get really popular. But yes, he bought it out. He bought it from Eastman. And then he ended up in 2003 selling the whole thing to Viacom for probably a tidy penny. Right.

Tug McTighe (03:26)
Right.

Right, just literally get it out of here. So,

okay, so, here's the log line. Through contact with the mysterious ooze, four turtles in the sewers of New York mutate into intelligent pizza-loving humanoids and are mentored in the art of ninja combat by the wise rat Splinter. When the evil shredder attempts to take over the world, the turtles set out to stop him. We're all aware of the lovely

pop culture, certainly popular in culture, taglines heroes on the half shell, turtle power, and lean green. The tagline for the movie was lean green and on the screen. So Matt, you have never seen this movie. You are well aware of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. What did you think you thought you knew about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

Matt Loehrer (04:05)
Mm-hmm.

Pretty much everything. It's a it that's what a cultural, I think, blockbuster this thing was and I had no real reason not to have seen it. I just I think it came out in 90. I was graduating high school getting into college. I think I saw four movies in the four years, five years I was at school. So.

Tug McTighe (04:19)
Okay.

Yep, I saw this at

my freshman year in Des Moines at Merle Hay Mall. No, not my freshman year, it was in my 90s, sophomore or junior year depending on when it came out.

Matt Loehrer (04:44)
okay.

Mm hmm.

Right. So I just wasn't really seeing movies and to younger, younger people who may not know.

Tug McTighe (04:52)
Sure. There were bars

to sneak into and beers to drink.

Matt Loehrer (04:56)
Yes, not me, of course, but younger to the to our younger listeners, you didn't really have options. It wasn't going to be at the blockbuster video rental store for several months after it was completely out of theaters. Streaming did not exist. So I just didn't see it. But culturally, it's like it's like saying, what do know about Batman? Even if you've never seen Batman, you know everything about Batman. So I knew quite a bit about this.

Tug McTighe (04:58)
No, no, no, people you knew.

That's correct. That's correct.

Exactly.

Matt Loehrer (05:22)
There were some details that I didn't know, but pretty much everything.

Tug McTighe (05:27)
Yeah. All right, so really quickly, the tomato meter, that's the critics, 43%. Not great. That's our largest failure yet. But the popcorn meter, the fans, 81%. A little bit lower of a B for your sixth grade math test, you know, right in there. Directed by Steve Barron, screenplay by Todd W. Langen and Bobby Herbeck, and story by Bobby Herbeck.

Matt Loehrer (05:35)
Not surprising, right?

Tug McTighe (05:53)
based on characters of course created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. So I think it's important that this, like I said, this film adapts, I'm gonna air quote, early comics, the origin, I would say, and the turtles, and Splinter, a lot of the elements were taken from the animated series that was just

You know a juggernaut at the time Again, like you said matt this was kind of a roller coaster for these guys, right? They wrote the comic in 84 the animated series was three years later and the movie came out in 1990 and in that in that six years between 84 90 This got out of control They they were not to your point drawing it or writing it. It wasn't the thing that they thought it was going to be

Which again, sometimes is a blessing and sometimes is a curse And I think that's sort of what this was.

Matt Loehrer (06:45)
Yeah. Well, you

and I had revisited the comics before we are taping this episode, just to remind ourselves what they look like. They didn't look anything like the cartoon. They were not not kid facing, not in color, very gritty.

Tug McTighe (06:52)
That's right No, no was Grittier Right, right,

right. And then even after they become popular and they colored the comics they were all each of them had a redhead headband Right, the cop the cartoon is like we've got to separate these different colors. So we know who these people are but again, I think

Matt Loehrer (07:11)
yeah, they were the same colors.

Yeah,

and we need to make this something for eight year olds, not something for 15 year olds.

Tug McTighe (07:18)
Yeah, that's where Calabanga

came in, that's where the pizza came in, the pizza leaven came in, etc. So, okay, so it was the first film adaptation of these characters. Starring Judith Hoag and Elias Koteas, with the voices of Brian Tochey, Josh Paiz, Corey Feldman, Robbie Rist. It follows the turtles on their... and who never gets mentioned in this? Splinter is voiced by Kevin Clash.

Matt Loehrer (07:23)
Absolutely.

Right?

And what did Kevin Class do?

Tug McTighe (07:43)
who is a... he is the

voice of Elmo. He is a long time Muppet performer. And that's why he was involved in this, because as we know, my idol and personal savior Jim Henson, the Henson Creature Shop, created these puppets. Henson was the last thing that Henson worked on. He died a few months before it premiered. And he is on record saying this was the most advanced...

puppetry they'd ever done with the suits and the electronics and the controls and all that stuff. So he was quite proud of these full-size turtle Muppet suits. I'm gonna call them Muppets because Jim Henson made them.

Matt Loehrer (08:17)
sure.

Right in his fingerprints, especially splinter. His fingerprints are all over this. Yeah. But about the voice actors, I thought this was really interesting. First, they all appear at some point in the show. In a cameo. Yeah, Josh Pais is the guy in the in the cab who says what was that in the cab driver said, it's looked like a giant turtle in a trench coat. You know, what are you gonna do?

Tug McTighe (08:22)
Oh, 100%. Oh my gosh, 100%.

They're all in a cameo, right?

New York.

Yeah, like a giant turtle thing. Right.

What are you gonna do? It's New York.

Matt Loehrer (08:49)
So he was, I just watched a movie from the, makers of Napoleon Dynamite called a gentlemen Broncos.

Tug McTighe (08:55)
I have seen gentlemen broncos that I would love to discuss it.

Matt Loehrer (08:58)
I would do that movies awesome and I did not expect it but Josh Pais is the guy who's the teacher when he's putting him on the bus to go to the creative writing thing. That's yeah so pretty great the voice of. I'm not even going to try to remember who it is Brian Tochi. Actually was in. Revenge of the nerds he was to Shiro Takashi.

Tug McTighe (09:00)
Yeah.

fantastic, I didn't know that.

Yeah, right.

He was he was yeah, yeah,

Takashi

Matt Loehrer (09:24)
So he was Takashi in Revenge of the Nerds. I'm gonna see how deep this rabbit hole goes. Corey Feldman, everybody knows Corey Feldman. This was, he had just done Dream a Little Dream, I think. He did another movie with Corey Haim.

Tug McTighe (09:26)
There you go.

Yeah, 87, 89, he and Haim were banging them out, weren't they? Lost Boys wasn't too far before this.

Matt Loehrer (09:41)
Yeah.

Right, but he was a child actor and had been done all sorts of great stuff. And then Robbie Wriste, two things about him. So he was on a show, a cartoon on Saturday mornings called Kid Video. Do you remember this at all? Yeah, where they had videos, live action videos, and they were in the band, but then they got zapped into this other world and it was really weird. So he was the drummer in that, but before that,

Tug McTighe (09:46)
Yeah, he was a household name.

I do remember this vaguely.

Yes, with like sort of a frame around them, yeah.

That's right, yeah, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (10:11)
He was cousin Oliver on the Brady Bunch.

Tug McTighe (10:14)
He what Robbie Wriste? Yes he was. There we go.

Matt Loehrer (10:16)
is. He had the

very last line of dialogue on the very final episode of the Brady Bunch. And it was something like, hey, it's me, Cousin Oliver. Yeah, exactly. He was the jinx. So pretty cool.

Tug McTighe (10:22)
He was jinxed!

And then whoop.

Yeah, so I think, you know, this was a massive hit at 202 million on a 13 million dollar budget, which by anybody's reckoning is well done. It was followed by Turtles 2, Secret of the Ooze, and then Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3, neither one, which I have seen and nor do I plan on it. Again, we mentioned the puppets were created by Jim, sorry, the Muppets were created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

Matt Loehrer (10:35)
That's crazy.

Tug McTighe (10:52)
Really cool. And again, film was released less than two months before Henson's death. Smiley, sad face. So let's talk about what happens in this movie. And I think there's a lot to discuss here. But that's sort of the point of cinemas, as I would say. So here we go. So in New York City.

Matt Loehrer (10:58)
Yeah, that is sad.

Yeah, it did make me think.

Tug McTighe (11:13)
April O'Neill, television reporter, reports on a silent crime wave enveloping the city. She's doing a newscast that basically sets up the plot They show her on a couple of TVs. And man, a 1990 TV is not.

a goddamn 2005 TV, but certainly not a 2000. God. in this opening sequence, we cut around in New York. And it's important to know they shot most of this in North Carolina on sound stages and then went up to New York and banged out a lot of exteriors and that sort of New York stuff they needed. But I'm going to get to this, you know,

Matt Loehrer (11:32)
Nope. it had 12. No, it had 12 channels and the knob and.

Tug McTighe (11:55)
Why does 1990 New York, why does all of this look like 1978? To my eye, like I was 20 years of age in 1990 and I don't remember it looking like the seventies, but man, this cars and the people and the grit, was, it was weird. We'll keep getting to this here in a second.

Matt Loehrer (12:01)
Right.

I don't like to think about

it. I actually thought the way they communicated all the exposition they needed to was great. It made sense. She's a newscaster. It's a good way to do it. So I'm always, you know, it's not amazing or groundbreaking, but it makes sense in the context of the story. I thought that was

Tug McTighe (12:21)
Yeah. She's a reporter. Yeah.

yeah, we'll

get there, but this is like the save the caddiest movie we've done where it it knows the formula Get in exciting incident hit the point get it right. It knows what it's so she's communicated that there's this crime wave happening and and she gets mugged by a gang of toughs and an unseen group of vigilante save her

Matt Loehrer (12:38)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Tug McTighe (12:55)
course we know it's the turtles Leonardo Donatello Michelangelo and Raphael they return to their hidden lair in the sewer where they tell master sewer we've had our first victory they were many and we took care of them right splinter and he's very very proud of them and says you need to continue to practice the art of ninja and again i some funny stuff here to make sure you know

Matt Loehrer (13:05)
Esther Sewer. Esther's winter. Right.

Tug McTighe (13:18)
their teenagers, right? There's the pizza, that's right, there's the skateboarding, and there's a lot of catchphrases that, again, are fucking dated. Like, it's not...

Matt Loehrer (13:20)
Yes, they say things that teenagers say.

If

they were catchphrases at all.

Tug McTighe (13:34)
I

don't write, this is a great point. Some of the stuff they're saying, I'm like, is this, was this a focus group's idea of what a teenager would say in 90? Were the writers, I didn't look them up, were they just old white dudes? Were they 64 year old white dudes who like got a terrible assignment to adapt this admittedly strange concept?

Matt Loehrer (13:54)
I actually did look it up. Bobby Herbeck, who was born in 1945, so he would have been 45 in 1990, had this idea in 1988. He said, somebody ought to write a Ninja Turtles movie and I should be that guy. So he did. And then they did a page one rewrite, which if anybody doesn't know, it means that the screenplay is not usable. And we need to rewrite the entire time.

Tug McTighe (14:01)
K?

God.

He turned something in and they're like, thank

you. We're going to rewrite the whole thing.

Matt Loehrer (14:24)
Thanks, we're gonna. So they brought a

guy named, they learned their lesson, they brought a guy named Todd Langan and he was only 35 or 33.

Tug McTighe (14:32)
So

still just not young.

Matt Loehrer (14:34)
Right and his idea and he had actually no no familiarity with the Property at all so he went around to a lot of comic stores and want to you know department stores and toy stores and figured out that and this was not groundbreaking either. Well this needs to be cool for kids but also funny for adults so I'm not sure how well they delivered on the second one. I think kids loved it.

Tug McTighe (14:42)
Pardon me, sorry about that.

Okay.

There are many things

that have done that in my life and this is not one of them. Right? So, they're in their sewer layer, you get a moment where Donatello is trying to flex on what Splinter said, hey, I won't always be here, but Michelangelo only wants to clock the pizza guy who's going to be late. And by the way, nice early product placement all over this from Domino's and Pepsi. They are all over this product placement wise. So,

Matt Loehrer (15:00)
Right. Right. Exactly.

Yeah, Pepsi's all over the place.

Tug McTighe (15:22)
So then we we we know from the comic that Raphael is a little bit of a hothead so he's mad he goes to the because he lost a sigh He lost his one of his weapons. He dropped it at the scene April picked it up. We see her so he leaves to go see a movie

Matt Loehrer (15:33)
He did.

in disguise.

Tug McTighe (15:39)
Disguised and that's when he's wearing the trench coat and the hat No, yeah, no cover. Yeah, he's a turtle green turtle Right Right. So he goes to see a movie says and he is gonna beat up some some Muggers some purse snatchers and he runs into Casey Jones. This is Elias Koteus He's a great that guy. He's been in a lot of stuff including

Matt Loehrer (15:42)
Which is stupid, I mean he's a. He's that's always wearing is a trench coat like that's and I had it's just stupid. Alright.

Tug McTighe (16:05)
He's one of the guys in some kind of wonderful John Hughes directed film. Some kind of wonderful He's one of the guys that befriends Eric Stoltz in detention because Eric Stoltz is in detention that whole movie So and so an enraged Raphael Returns home. He's counseled by splinter. This is my favorite version of splinter in any of these multiple

Matt Loehrer (16:14)
That's right. He kind of saves them later.

Tug McTighe (16:27)
reiterations which I've several of them because it's such a great puppet and to your point it's so muppety. It also reminds me a little bit of the Skeksis from the Dark Crystal because it's got just that face. I love the voice. I just and then I of course I love that he gives a little what I would refer to as Jedi wisdom to Raphael which is of course the Jedi were based on the Samurai so it all sort of comes.

Matt Loehrer (16:30)
Mm-hmm.

Tug McTighe (16:51)
full circle. Side note, Raph goes to see a movie called Critters, which is like a little nod to them, which I have seen. I saw it with my friend Todd Riley at Oak Park Mall 6 in like 1986. Raphael says, man, that movie stunk. He's right. But that is a conversation for another day. So what did you think about all this sort of introduction of the characters, right?

Matt Loehrer (16:52)
Yeah, you love Star Wars.

It was a real movie.

Ha

Tug McTighe (17:15)
We see the lair, we see splinter, we see the boys. He's trying to be quite Japanese, I think quite philosophical in that way. And that's how we get introduced to these guys.

Matt Loehrer (17:25)
I think,

yeah, they did an okay job of making them at least seem young ish. You didn't get the sense that they're adults, they're deferential to Splinter, who is essentially their father. So no, was fine with all this. I didn't think there was a ton to distinguish them. I mean, it's good they have different color outfits, because character wise, I think.

Tug McTighe (17:32)
Right, right.

Yeah, he's the father to them.

Yeah, for sure. I'm for sure. Yeah, for sure. Cause

you've got to learn like

By this time, the only thing that distinguishes them is the color headband and the weapon. And without the headband, you really got to learn what a bow staff is and a samurai sword is, right? And so I think that's difficult.

Matt Loehrer (18:08)
Right. But you know that Raphael's

probably the most developed character. He's angry and has a chip on his shoulder and all

Tug McTighe (18:14)
Yeah, he's an angry.

he doesn't like Leonardo's the leader. He's a little bit Rafael's a little bit jealous might not be the right word, but like hey, man, don't tell me what to do, right? He's trying to do New York accent, which doesn't land very well very often. yeah, so they've got this internal turmoil. So.

Matt Loehrer (18:23)
Right, defiant.

Right. There

was a theme song written by I believe a Canadian rap duo called Partners in Crime, K-R-Y-M-E. Yes. And there's a line that talks about how Raphael is the leader of the group because they hadn't seen the movie, they knew it was about him. They're like, he must be the leader.

Tug McTighe (18:44)
I see what they did there.

Yes, yes, yeah, because they're like, we'll bang one.

We'll bang one out right here. okay. So April's reporting on the silent crime wave. Her supervisor, Charles Pennington visits the apartment with his delinquent son, Danny. saw Danny in the opening, stealing TVs and Walkman and radios and that sort of thing. He's, he's working for the foot, the foot clan.

Matt Loehrer (19:10)
Yeah, wallets. He's pretty weasely.

Tug McTighe (19:14)
He's worried about April, he's worried about Danny, he doesn't want anybody to get in trouble. So again, April continues to investigate this crime, but he says just tone it down. She doesn't tone it down. She correctly theorizes it to be the work of the Ninja Foot Clan and raises the ire of Police Chief Stearns, who does not believe her theory. She, yeah, she, it's classic police chief. Would you get in here? That sort of thing. Right, right. And she says, I've spoken to some immigrants.

Matt Loehrer (19:26)
Right.

Who's really mad.

Get out of my office!

Tug McTighe (19:40)
some Japanese immigrants who say this reminds them of something that happened in Japan a few years ago. So there's this terrible connection to some other thing. It's really loose. But she's got it right. we cut to the Shredders first time we see him in profile. He's watching 20 TVs all with April on them and he says, he sil- sil- silence her. So, the turtle, she's strong in eye of the shredder and the police chief.

Matt Loehrer (19:49)
That's pretty bad.

Yeah, he said, this is house.

She's drawn the ire of the shredder. that's

Tug McTighe (20:06)
And her boss so rachel's really striking out

Matt Loehrer (20:06)
Right. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (20:10)
The turtles are all watching april on tv And again They call her a fox I haven't heard a pretty woman referred to as a fox since 1982's fast times at ridgemont high so again, just like There there were so many of these

Matt Loehrer (20:17)
Yep.

Right

Tug McTighe (20:33)
That they became they were a tone break, you know when it you're watching the movie and then you're like all of a sudden you're out of the movie like man Who wrote that fuck just think about it. Think about it for two minutes. Ask a kid

Matt Loehrer (20:40)
Right. Well, she's...

It's a different

time. She's referred to as a babe later by the turtles and I think Casey Jones calls her a broad or possibly toots or possibly bull.

Tug McTighe (20:52)
Yeah, I think both. I think both.

Matt Loehrer (20:55)
she showed up years later in an X-Files episode, because I'm a nerd that way. That was a really memorable one. And I thought, yeah, that was her. I just didn't buy any of the whole turtles. we really in love with her. Like maybe she could be their mom or something. It was more maternal.

Tug McTighe (21:02)
There you go.

Right, right, right, right, right, right,

right, right. yeah.

Matt Loehrer (21:15)
And maybe I was intentional,

but I didn't any any kind of romance in this or like this is pretty sterile. Don't you agree? Yeah.

Tug McTighe (21:21)
For sure for sure for sure.

It's it's look when you introduce Casey Jones You know, they're gonna kiss at some point You just know they are right and it would have been a better choice Had they not I think but we can talk about when we get there

Matt Loehrer (21:33)
Right.

I got all sorts of issues with that guy.

Tug McTighe (21:42)
Yeah, right. so again,

we see shredder. She has this confrontation with police chief Stearns. We see Danny being arrested. this part really broke my internal logic when she, she goes to a, a deserted subway station at like six o'clock at night in Midtown Manhattan. I don't know if you've been in Midtown Manhattan at

Matt Loehrer (21:52)
Right.

sure, of course.

Tug McTighe (22:05)
Six o'clock in the morning. You can't get through there at six o'clock at night at two o'clock. It's house Also, she was just with her cameraman Who was packing up all his cameras and stuff and i've never known a news cameraman to not have a van Full of camera gear. So I don't know why she's taking the subway

Matt Loehrer (22:07)
Yeah, it's like Vegas.

And

he even got a line, which I thought was kind of weird. Remember, she was like, how like time me and he's like, minute one, a minute 27 or something. Like, so they wanted us they wanted us to know he was there. So yeah, I've never seen an empty New York subway. Right.

Tug McTighe (22:26)
Yeah, she she said Time me how long I'm gonna be before I get thrown out of the office Right a new record, right?

So, no, and I mean deserted. So

it's deserted because who shows up to threaten old April O'Neill? Yeah, all these ninjas show up.

Matt Loehrer (22:47)
the foot all these ninjas show up because if there's anything

I know about ninjas is that you can always find them in broad daylight walking around in crowded places.

Tug McTighe (22:54)
Isn't it I think that they're the broad daylight warriors, right? I think that's their that's their things Yeah, he just walked in downtown. He's got a bagel

Matt Loehrer (22:58)
You're right. Look kids, a ninja. This is New York.

Right.

Tug McTighe (23:04)
Yo, yeah, so the ninjas in the subway station in the daytime is something you wouldn't expect. But I guess what you would expect is two sort of racist jokes. One's not, doesn't seem like a joke, the foot clan warrior that talks to her says, listen, Mr. O'Neil, sort of like a terrible Japanese.

Matt Loehrer (23:15)
Right.

Tug McTighe (23:26)
approximation of a Japanese accent and that Yeah, miss so near so then she says what am I behind on my Sony payments again and I'm like one You don't make payments directly to Sony They're just the manufacturer Then again, it's just Japanese. It's just it's a Japanese company. So

Matt Loehrer (23:27)
Yeah, he absolutely says he calls her Miss O'Near.

Ugh.

That's

Maybe.

Tug McTighe (23:48)
Again, I think the struggle for jokes at this point is real. But she fights back. So this scene tells you April's got pluck. She's not going to just lay down to the foot.

Matt Loehrer (23:58)
Right, because it turns out that the Foot Clan are susceptible to being hit by a purse. Because she takes out like three of them with her bag. Right.

Tug McTighe (24:04)
Yes, she did beat, she knocked a couple down with her big bag. So Raphael

is there, he jumps out, he takes care of them, she gets knocked out. He brings her back to the turtle lair to protect her. And they bring her in and Michelangelo says again, Matt, he says, far out. And I'm like, hold on.

Matt Loehrer (24:28)
Groovy.

No, no.

Tug McTighe (24:28)
Are they sweat hogs? Is this the codders? I'm

just like fuck it's 1990 no one's was saying far out so again it's just a little bit out of time. Splinter introduces himself in the turtles explaining they were once normal animals before being mutated into intelligent anthropomorphic creatures by a mysterious chemical that was dumped in the sewer. The ooze from Secret of the Ooze and they were of course trained by Splinter in Ninjitsu.

Matt Loehrer (24:53)
Mm-hmm.

Tug McTighe (24:58)
But there's I've always had a question and you have the same question. What is that question?

Matt Loehrer (25:04)
Why is he a sentient rat? I mean, even if he had been exposed to the same goo that these guys were, and that's why he grew to be a very large rat and can talk and all that, that's fine. But before that, he was a rat in a cage learning ninjutsu. Like, I'm pretty sure if I'm doing yoga, my dog's not looking at me and being like, I could do that. That's the only one they can do.

Tug McTighe (25:19)
He just a rat triat copy

Well, the only one they're good at is Down Dog. Right.

Matt Loehrer (25:33)
But I just thought that was weird because there's a part later where he's a puppet in his cage and he's doing the moves.

Tug McTighe (25:35)
Yeah. And. it's so great. It's one of my favorites. We'll get to it. That's one of the hensiest moments of this whole thing. But yeah, and then when I back and when it seemed like he was before, and then when I went back in the comics, they don't really answer it very well in the comics either. So we'll just let we'll just let that one go out into the ether.

Matt Loehrer (25:44)
So yeah, he was apparently a sentient, intelligent creature before... Right.

Tug McTighe (25:56)
 I do love they did a couple of flashbacks that I really did like where they Splinter starts talking and then everything fades to black Behind them. It's a nice trick. And then there's they show some scenes of of of splinter finding the turtles They're growing radical radical radical right there Yeah, they're the baby turtles the baby splinter he introduces their names and again That was just a really quick way to tie back to the comic

Matt Loehrer (26:16)
That was pretty funny.

Tug McTighe (26:25)
Now all of that was, in fact, directly out of the thing. The ooze fell in the sewer. The turtles fell in the sewer. And they turned into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So that's the real origin story. April wakes up, freaks out. They calm her down. They escort her back home. She invites them in for pizza. Now again.

I may be a broken record here. They do some impressions for her and they start to become friends. Mikey does Rocky.

Matt Loehrer (26:55)
That's not even the worst one.

Tug McTighe (26:56)
Nope, James Cagney you dirty rat you dirty rat. She makes a joke splinter might like that one. Uh-huh Casey Jones called him. What are you bogey? earlier, so it's just like I At 20 Maybe I had an idea who've of you dirty rat you dirty rat. I don't know. I don't know that I did in 1990 That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right

Matt Loehrer (27:08)
Yeah.

Just date old man stuff, it's dated stuff.

If I did, it was from like Looney Tunes from the 70s.

So

maybe they were banking on them.

Tug McTighe (27:27)
maybe. these more dated references happen. Okay, so as they're leaving her apartment, they're like crammed into this hallway and you see Leonardo turn and his sword gets caught on a doorframe and just goes around and then he walks off and they're like, you know what? Fuck it. Just fucking leave it. Hey, if they're gonna worry about that in this fucking shit show, then we're already lost.

Matt Loehrer (27:30)
what's the rubber sword moment?

right.

It's like an Ed Wood movie. It's like, cut, print, perfect. Do it.

Tug McTighe (27:56)
yeah, just, just leave it.

so they get home, they find their lair ransacked and Splinger kidnapped. so then they returned to April's apartment looking for Lauren and spend the night there.

Matt Loehrer (28:05)
Mm-hmm.

yeah, cause

a foot guy had tracked them. He followed Raphael. He followed Raphael home. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (28:13)
Yeah, yeah, foot guy followed them. He followed them. He followed Raph. That's exactly right. Yeah,

he followed Raph when he was bringing April home. So then we cut to Chief Stearns, who's smoking a cigar in his office. And he looks at Danny's mugshot, Danny April's boss's, Charles' son. And he gives Charles a call and says, you don't see this, but he's clearly telling this guy, hey, I'll get your kid off if you

Matt Loehrer (28:26)
Of

Tug McTighe (28:39)
tell April to back off this investigation. And again, nothing like a little corrupt cop action. I'm pretty happy to see that there.

Matt Loehrer (28:46)
They didn't feel like he was super corrupt. He was kind of corrupt. And on the subject of cigars, my first boss and the first job I ever had out of college was a cigar smoker. So everybody smoked at work all the time. Well, because he wanted to so he's like, well, I guess I let everybody do it. So yeah, there were people smoking like crazy. It was a different time.

Tug McTighe (28:48)
Just a little.

Just smoking, right.

That means we're open, right? I like it. It's not that long ago.

Chief Sterns has looked at Danny's mugshot. He calls Charles to make a deal to get Apple to drop the investigation. And then now we're starting to really get into the meat of story, but we wanna take a quick break and give a shout out to our title sponsor, Little Bear Graphics. Do you love pizza? Do you love martial arts? Are you a radioactive ooze mutated amphibian?

that knows the ways of the ninja. If any of these things are true, and even if none of them are, you still need to check out Little Bear Graphics for any and all of your marketing, design, illustration, and branded apparel needs. You'd have to live in a sewer, not like what Matt Lohr and his team can do with the keyboard, mouse, and heat pressing machine. Check out Matt's work at LittleBear.Graphics today and tell him Shredder sent you.

Matt Loehrer (29:48)
I

feel like you're you're getting better this week after week. You should do this for a living.

Tug McTighe (29:50)
Ha

I to write a lot of radio spots in the old days, my So Chief Sterns is trying to make a deal to get able to back off. Charles and Danny visit April. Charles tells her to back off. Okay, so I got one thing and then I'll let you go. She says, hey, my boss, you gotta hop. And before she can get hide out of her mouth, you hear whoosh, whoosh.

Matt Loehrer (29:55)
I can tell those are so good. Awesome.

I have a lot, there's a lot of stuff I want to talk about in this part.

Tug McTighe (30:18)
Because they're ninjas, see? Right. So.

Matt Loehrer (30:20)
Right, which is actually

pretty cool because they don't, I don't think that we see that any other time.

Tug McTighe (30:26)
We don't, we don't get a lot of them actually being ninjas other than they're fighting. Right.

Matt Loehrer (30:29)
Yeah,

like they can fight, but you don't have to be a ninja to, you know, throw a nunchuck at somebody. But so it is kind of cool to see that. Her apartment was disgusting. And I wonder, like you think if you're selling a house, you stage it. If you're making a movie, you stage this room. I don't feel like anybody did that. Like they just said, you know what, like it was just a back room and they said, we can use this. Don't even clean it up.

Tug McTighe (30:33)
That's exactly right. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Really terrible

Well, and yeah, here's.

Well, and here's the other part.

You stage it, right? The staging delivers plot. The staging delivers character development. If you stage it a certain way, it tells us something about the person who lives there, the character. So if you're staging it down like that, you're like, what does she have? Hoarder? What is she? That filthy? Yeah, Charles also, she sees one of the turtles hiding, I think, in the shower.

Matt Loehrer (31:13)
Right.

Tug McTighe (31:18)
And she's washing her face and she goes, me a towel. He looks in the shower for the towel because that's where everybody keeps their towels.

Matt Loehrer (31:22)
to get it down? Well, so,

okay, you talked about this earlier, like a joke searching for a place to land, right? This is the second time they've done this where they're like, this will be funny to have this happen. And so they kind of create a joke that doesn't work just so they can make this happen. I feel like it's lazy or stupid.

Tug McTighe (31:30)
Yeah, for sure!

Yeah, yeah.

not good at joking, joke writing, right? Right. That's part of it,

Matt Loehrer (31:47)
Yeah, or they're not funny. Maybe that's it. But that drove me nuts.

He's like, where do you keep them? And he looks in the shower. I don't keep towels, dry towels in the shower. Dummy. That's where the water is. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (31:56)
Right Charles she had she admonishes him, right?

So Charles is trying to convince her to drop the investigation Danny even so they're not very good ninjas because Danny sees him Right and and then they cut to Danny Charles in the car. He's yelling at him He's like, what were you doing with the car stereo? We don't talk about car stereos very much anymore But it was I promise you kids it was the thing you bought it wanted a neat stereo in your car

Matt Loehrer (32:08)
In a mirror.

Right.

Tug McTighe (32:24)
I had the yeah, they were stolen so much. I had one of the ones that you pulled that came out

Matt Loehrer (32:24)
I had one stolen when I when I, I moved to KC.

I had the detachable face, but I just left it on and then somebody stole the whole thing. It was a $99 stereo. I was like, come on guys. Anyway. So that's interesting. I think he might be a terrible dad, because earlier in the movie he says Danny's got those headphones on. I don't know where he got him. Like come on.

Tug McTighe (32:33)
see and then they took it anyway right so he mentions yeah well i think he

Right, exactly.

I also wonder if he divorced?

Matt Loehrer (32:55)
I don't know. Did mom die? No, did she leave because her husband and son are terrible?

Tug McTighe (32:56)
They never once mentioned a mom so Yeah, cuz here's he

yeah, right cuz they're She's work. They work for the foot right? He knows she knows he's working for the foot clan So Danny at a stoplight Danny runs out of the car And Now he just he's into Wendy's in traffic. What are you gonna do? I? Gotta get to work. He'll come home when he gets hungry So so this is the end of act two

Matt Loehrer (33:05)
Maybe.

go after him. He just lets him. No come home when he's hungry.

Right.

Tug McTighe (33:22)
Sorry, this is the of Act One. We introduced the B story. Now we get to learn about who Shredder and the Foot Clan are. And it's really important for us to keep our streak alive of talking about Galaxy Quest. Because early in the movie, of all the thugs, we saw a lead thug when April was getting mugged. And Matt, who was that lead thug that we end up seeing again at the lair of the Foot Clan?

Matt Loehrer (33:34)
Right.

I almost fell out of my chair to see Sam Rockwell, the great Sam Rockwell as Young Thug.

Tug McTighe (33:51)
I've, the great Sam Rockwell

as Young Thug, Young Sam Rockwell playing Young Thug.

Matt Loehrer (33:57)
yeah.

For

what it's worth though, I thought he was great. Like he did a better acting job in three lines of dialogue than anybody else in the movie.

Tug McTighe (34:03)
Yeah, he's the best part of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. So we're at the Foots Hideout, which is in some warehouse, and there's music, smoking. I had to write this down. Music, smoking, skateboarding, billiards, video games, punk rock music, graffiti, a hip hop backing track. Again, it's like what the adults thought teenagers were all about.

1990. Again the dichotomy of eras continues to confound me here. I just couldn't figure out what they were going for or if it was just lazy.

Matt Loehrer (34:41)
Right

well you and I had the same the same thought and I had I saw Pinocchio in the theater as a little kid. But the pleasure pleasure Island where. Boys go and they do all the stuff that the old folks don't want to do like gamble and drink and smoke right.

Tug McTighe (34:48)
Yeah, right. Pleasure Island on Pinocchio, for sure.

Right the Lost Boys, that's right. They're they're doing all their stuff, right?

So So they're at this layer. This is when we meet Tatsu Shredder's monosyllabic right hand man He just beats the shit out of a kid I don't know for no real reason the kids are training because they're teaching him how to beat ninjas also and he's and he just he just goes And then he just smashes the kid

Matt Loehrer (35:01)
Interesting.

Right.

Tug McTighe (35:22)
And then when they bow at the end he just kicks his sh- he just completely dishonorably kicks the shit out of the kid anyway. Right? At the end of the fight.

Matt Loehrer (35:28)
Well, then he

says, yeah, but as he says, you should never lower your eyes to an opponent, especially if you're especially if he's your opponent, because he'll kick you in the face.

Tug McTighe (35:32)
That's right. Oh, he gives him a lesson. And then he

chops him. We also see a skeet Ulrich, if you know that name. He's just hanging around. OK.

Matt Loehrer (35:42)
No way! I looked multiple times!

So for

the kids that don't know, Skeet Ulrich was in the movie Scream, the first one, around this time, 1995, probably 96.

Tug McTighe (35:52)
Yep.

95 or 96.

Yeah, not too far. Not I mean not that far but he's

Matt Loehrer (36:00)
Yeah, so he,

so the only people that really made it big out of this movie were Young Thug and other Young Thugs.

Tug McTighe (36:06)
were two

of the not yet good enough a ninja to be in the Foot Clan. They're just hanging around the lair, hanging around Pleasure Island.

Matt Loehrer (36:16)
Yeah.

And I don't want to insult the other actors in this because, I have a soft spot for journeyman career character act. And pretty much everybody in this, not everybody, but a lot of the people in this went on to have careers acting. Like they made a whole career out of it. They never became Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt or whoever, but.

Tug McTighe (36:26)
so do I.

Yeah, yeah!

Matt Loehrer (36:41)
They kept working.

Tug McTighe (36:43)
listen to lot of podcasts about a lot of things, but a lot, I love movies and I listen to lot of podcasts about movies and I watch a lot of shows where actors are being interviewed. And one of the things that really stuck with me about character actors, both male and female, if they stick around for decades as some of them do, what I've learned from just listening to all this is they're really fucking good actors and actresses. They're just not pretty enough.

That's the way I've heard it described. just not, they're missing that beauty, that prettiness, just, men and women that just like, like, Vincent Schiavelli who was in Fast Times Original on High, who was in Batman Returns, who's the big tall gangly guy with the beard. You wouldn't know who Vincent Schiavelli is if you saw him. Just not pretty, but just a terrific actor. Right? So yeah.

Matt Loehrer (37:13)
Yeah.

And I think they accept that they understand that I'm

I'm not beautiful, but I'm good at what I do.

Tug McTighe (37:35)
I can

keep working for 20 years and be quite happy.

Matt Loehrer (37:38)
Yeah,

favorite actors, like Paul Giamatti. Love that guy. He's amazing. And he is not...

Tug McTighe (37:44)
Great, yep, yep.

Never gonna be now. He not Brad Pitt never gonna be leading man, but man Paul G. Miley's unbelievable There you go, so a potential racism alert we hear a series of gong sounds I'm not kidding gong sounds To let us introduce shredder for the full top for the really the first time

Matt Loehrer (37:50)
Nope. I'll watch him in anything. So there you go.

Right. That's how you know.

Mm-hmm.

Tug McTighe (38:09)
He appears to inform his followers

of the turtle threat. We see splinters being held captive here. And there's a really cool shot of Shredder from above. And he's got a big long shadow. And he's talking to the boys about the turtles are a threat to our way of life. I didn't know they had a way of life in the Foot Clan. But you, yeah, that's great.

Matt Loehrer (38:29)
Smokin' video games? mean,

light burglary here and there?

Tug McTighe (38:33)
Well, you know, it's just a little

bit of larceny. But yeah, he has a lot to offer these guys. Shredder does.

Matt Loehrer (38:42)
He gives a pretty great speech. Like if I were a kid that, you know, had nowhere to go and liked free cigarettes and listening to rap music and didn't have a father figure, he was pretty good.

Tug McTighe (38:50)
Right.

and skateboarding,

right? My dad doesn't even chase me when I run out of the car. This guy's at least here for me.

Matt Loehrer (38:57)
Yeah, exactly. No, Shredder

is like, you know, if you will have honor and you will be great and we expect great things. And if I were that kid, I'd be like, hey, this guy's talking some sense. For sure.

Tug McTighe (39:03)
That's right.

All right, let's go. It's better than he's like this is better than high school

So danny you see he's talking about the turtles and danny raises his hand because right danny's seen the turtles. He's got some idea That that they're out there. So you see danny sort of sort of raising his hand son of a bitch cut back to the turtles at april's april's trying to help them find shredder Raphael argues with leo

Matt Loehrer (39:21)
I hate that kid.

Yeah, I know.

Tug McTighe (39:32)
over the leadership, he goes to the roof, he's all pissed off, and then 700 foot clan members, again broad daylight, because Casey Jones is on the other roof with his binoculars.

Matt Loehrer (39:42)
Yeah, he's like...

I

think he's got a like a police band radio too. So he's just listening for crime.

Tug McTighe (39:50)
yes he does, he's got the one ear in.

He should go over to the Lost Boys Island and get a better radio. Get a better radio.

Matt Loehrer (39:57)
He's good. He doesn't know where it is. But I love this.

Yeah, Raphael goes up to the top of the roof where any obviously at least one person can see you. They're just terrible ninjas. It's just not good.

Tug McTighe (40:07)
Terrible ditches, he

doesn't bother to put his trench coat on So Right so they beat I don't either we don't get that so they beat the shit out of him knock him unconscious Casey sees this transpire from another rooftop dragging him back into the story I loved it now great joke great joke alert We're an hour into the movie

Matt Loehrer (40:13)
he doesn't. So yes, you're right. 100 foot guys come. I don't know how they found him.

It's the first good one.

Tug McTighe (40:36)
Donnie and Mikey are watching a cartoon of the story of the tortoise and the hare and they are pissed that the turtles getting his ass kicked and they're like, they're like, Hey, come on, hurry up, man. You're making us look bad. Ninja kick him or something, but don't lose this race. I, I, that made me laugh. That was the best, that joke landed. best joke we had.

Matt Loehrer (40:42)
They're so mad.

It's just a cartoon.

Because

it was kind of absurd, but also not ham handed like every other joke in this. Like it was just kind of funny.

Tug McTighe (41:04)
No, and relevant

and had context, and they would know tortoise in the air. Right? So.

Matt Loehrer (41:10)
Yeah, I feel like

you could take the best parts of this movie and show it to somebody and say, okay, do the rest of this movie like this. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (41:16)
Do it like this.

Yeah So Casey comes No, so there's a huge fight between the turtles in the foot at April's house. She also owns an antique store below We're gonna talk about this. Yeah And they're showing her it was her father's store He ran it and she keeps she's like I can't get rid of it and she says I guess losing money in a business Just so it reminds me of your father It's kind of stupid and and

Matt Loehrer (41:29)
It's a lot of property.

Tug McTighe (41:45)
And Donatello says no it isn't because right there lost their father. So there was a nice moment there This fight scene goes on for at least 10 minutes It's a lot of turtle fighting action and her a place gets destroyed. It's just a long Again, I could have cut cut a little bit about out of this fight Casey Jones jumps in Hey fellas and everybody Stops to look at him

Matt Loehrer (41:51)
That's nice. I know my dad's around and I know.

I

think that's hilarious when somebody does that. You're having a fight and the guy you're fighting, you know, somebody interrupts you and you just stop and I don't know, wait until, I don't know what you're waiting for.

Tug McTighe (42:21)
He kicked heat. Yeah.

Yeah, he fights and so we all fight again So the apartment catches fire the buildings burning down the turtles in April escape with hell from Casey before he also kids answering machine Charles leaves a message that says April you're fired and then he escapes We finally see April's Volkswagen van very famous van from the cartoon

Matt Loehrer (42:35)
Right.

Tug McTighe (42:45)
They all get out of the city. She looks back at the burning building and we know now that the stakes have been raised. She's lost everything. She's lost everything. Raffaella severely injured in the foot. Clan is running wild. This is the midpoint, right? Save the cat would say this is either a false victory or a false defeat. You know the Turtles are going to win in the end, but this is the false defeat that makes you think like, wow, maybe they won't win. Um, and then save the cat also tells us midpoint is where stakes are raised. Time clocks appear. A and B stories cross the pace accelerates. So we cut to

Matt Loehrer (43:14)
So what do mean by time

clocks appear? Like, what does that mean?

Tug McTighe (43:15)
Usually there's

like like you've got to get something done by X so like

Matt Loehrer (43:19)
okay. We've got,

we've got to build this invention in an hour.

Tug McTighe (43:23)
Yeah, like

in the age of Ultron, there's a literal clock where they've raised the city and they're like, it's gonna fall, it's gonna crash back to earth in 20 minutes. So we have, it creates tension, that's right.

Matt Loehrer (43:36)
Oh, so it gives you, yeah, so we create some urgency. Yeah, attention. Hang on a second.

Tug McTighe (43:42)
so This is the midpoint He's really hurt. Yeah, he's really hurt and and they're escaping so We cut back to shredder torturing splinter. He's asking where the turtles came from and how they got to fight so well Tatsu also super mad beats up more beats up more foot soldier kids

Matt Loehrer (43:43)
yeah, Raphael's like unconscious. Raphael is... Yeah, he's a bad guy.

He's always mad.

Tug McTighe (44:04)
and he tears up the workout room. and then Danny is like, maybe this isn't all it's cracked up to be. This kind of sucks. Our mentors are beating the shit out of us. so he goes and talks to Splinter. Splinter again, tries to give him some vaguely Japanese philosophy, tells him that all fathers care for their sons. again.

Matt Loehrer (44:14)
Right.

Right.

I love that he's like chained to the wall. He's like, let's don't worry about me. Let's talk about your problem. I'll be fine.

Tug McTighe (44:26)
I'm fine. Let's talk about you your problems So

April's other property they go to an abandoned farm outside the city Casey lets her know she was fired they have a sexual tension argument and each slams a door and Donatello makes a moonlighting joke Which was the landmark 80s show with Bruce Willis and Sybil Shepherd again, I

Matt Loehrer (44:34)
is she own.

Ugh.

I was gonna look up when that

was on, I can't remember.

Tug McTighe (44:52)
It was on, I

looked it up, 85 to 89, so it was really timely. But man, even if was timely, I'm just like, ugh, God.

Matt Loehrer (44:56)
Wow.

I'll tell you what though, in a pre-internet, pre-social media era, I think things just linger longer, right?

Tug McTighe (45:07)
This is a fine point. This is a fine point. This

is a fine point.

Matt Loehrer (45:12)
Like today, things, in the next news cycle, it's gone. Or a show that was on last year, you forget about.

Tug McTighe (45:16)
It disappears. you're no, you are.

Well, that's the first sensible thing I've heard you say all day, Matt, but well done. no, you're right. So, so there, there, there, there were maybe James Cagney movies on there, there, there, there were, mean, or like you said, at least it was, was a piece of popular culture that had staying power. I think that's fair.

Matt Loehrer (45:25)
That's all you get. One's all you get.

Yeah, I think there's

like you can make a Gilligan's Island joke and people would be like, yeah, OK, even though it's been off the air for 20 years, I still know about that. I think there's just more stuff. There's more clutter and more static.

Tug McTighe (45:42)
Right, right There's just more there's more stuff

being fed to us like this stupid podcast That's right about movies especially So Casey there there they're at the farm. It's ramshackle the swing falls There's a great bit where Casey is chopping He's making soup or something and he's chopping vegetables with Leonardo sword, which I thought was like was was a fun bit

Matt Loehrer (45:50)
Right, we made this because there weren't enough podcasts out there. That's why we decided to do it.

Right?

That was pretty funny.

Tug McTighe (46:09)
April does some voiceover. She's illustrating. She's a talented illustrator. She's reading from her diary. She's keeping a journal She talks at the turtles have faced their first defeat wraps injured splinters in prison some time passes Donnie in case you're fixing up an old truck there They're getting to know each other. They're like calling each other laser brain and gack face. I thought that part was okay

Matt Loehrer (46:29)
I actually thought it was funny because when I realized they were just alternating alphabet like letters. H. Ho's brain. I did too.

Tug McTighe (46:33)
Alphabet right and he goes what letter we on? G H I guess What about Ho's brain right? So I thought that was kind of

April and Casey start to bond as well. They got a squeeze in the romance

Matt Loehrer (46:49)
Yeah, he's like massaging her shoulders. I was just like, yeah, I don't buy it, but that's okay.

Tug McTighe (46:52)
Right.

Raphael wakes up leo, right they've had their most drama between them leo has never left his side They reconcile and donatello makes a it's a kodak moment, which again to your point feels flat to me now, but It might have been on the air the kodak moment Campaign might have been on the air then so And you know, this is the same problem a lot of people have talked about people smarter than I about movies

Matt Loehrer (47:11)
Yeah, sure.

Tug McTighe (47:18)
have talked about Aladdin. Part of the problem with the animated Aladdin is all the Robin Williams topical stuff that just rapid fire and dated and, you know, there's just lots of... Right, exactly. Right. So...

Matt Loehrer (47:21)
Mm-hmm.

Sure, but they did. They did a William F. Buckley impression. Give me a break. But

that was more service to Robin Williams, like let Robin Williams do whatever he wants to do. that's a little bit. OK.

Tug McTighe (47:39)
Let Robin cook, yeah let him cook.

So as the Turtles train vigorously we learn that Danny's left the Foot Clan and Shredder's obsessed with the Turtles because something about their fighting style is familiar to him. First part of this that I really didn't like upon this viewing is Leo, now their magic.

Matt Loehrer (47:52)
and figured it out.

Yeah. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (48:02)
Splinter,

you know, through astral projection, talks to Leo like Obi-Wan might talk through the Force. That's frustrating to me because we never had that rule in this universe. They were just good warriors.

Matt Loehrer (48:12)
Right.

agree.

So they're like break, they're making rules or breaking them or not explaining them.

Tug McTighe (48:23)
That's correct. That's correct. Which

is not you got to set the rules of the world then you got to live by them splinter No, you go I know what you're gonna say I was about say it

Matt Loehrer (48:27)
I was also annoyed that... Sorry, go ahead.

I was

also I was annoyed that he made it sound like this was his final lesson. I think even said this my final lesson. Right, like he's going to die, but then he doesn't die. we raised the stakes, but they don't really raise it all because he's fine.

Tug McTighe (48:36)
I won't be here forever. Except I'm not gonna die.

No, so spoiler alert, he doesn't die.

So they they go we got to go back. It's time. So now this is the end of act 2 we're in act 3 It's gonna rapid fire from here. The turtles find Danny hiding in their lair. He reveals he ran away from home Casey doesn't like the sewer He's claustrophobic and Donnie says you're claustrophobic Casey thinks he means gay I'm not no, I'm not claw that again 1990

Matt Loehrer (49:10)
Yeah.

I've never

I've never even looked at a guy

Tug McTighe (49:16)
I've never even looked at a guy.

Okay. All right Casey might be, yeah, but did he live on his roof? We only ever seen him in the park. We've only ever seen Casey in the park on the roof and with the turtles So we don't even know where he lives. So So Danny when the turtles are sleeping he sneaks out meets with Splinter Casey follows him Splinter tells Danny the story of how when he was still an ordinary rat he learned it. Okay again

Matt Loehrer (49:19)
So maybe that was funny and I.

I don't know.

I assume he's homeless. I think he's a homeless guy.

Tug McTighe (49:44)
He learned ninja from his former master Hamato Yoshi, a fellow ninja Oroku Saki rivaled with Yoshi over the love of Tang Shen who fled with Yoshi to New York. However, Oroku Saki pursued and killed them. Splinter managed to scar Kaki's face before getting his ear sliced by Saki's katana. Remember, this is pre-oos. He's just a regular rat.

Matt Loehrer (49:55)
every time.

Right.

Tug McTighe (50:12)
Obviously he's not!

Matt Loehrer (50:12)
Right, he just attacked him

like Rocket Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy 3. just went on his...

Tug McTighe (50:16)
Right, and Danny says,

what happened to Saki? And Splinter says, you're wearing his symbol on your headband. So we now realize that Saki is Shredder. Right, of course. But this is my second favorite flashback, where it goes to black. This is what you were talking about, where we get the clearly the rat puppet, Muppet, doing, ya, ya, ya. And then he jumps on the guy's face. And it's great. It's really, really.

Matt Loehrer (50:22)
yeah, we knew that. Well, jeez, come on.

Okay.

Yeah.

Tug McTighe (50:42)
Awesomely, kind of awful, but kind of awesome.

Matt Loehrer (50:42)
Yeah, it was.

But fun to see more muppet stuff too.

Tug McTighe (50:46)
Yeah. So Shredder discovers Danny talking to Splinter, realizes the turtles have returned, orders Splinter to be killed, KC and Danny free Splinter and defeat Tatsu before convincing the remaining foot members of Shredder being a bad guy. Who do they talk to here? Old Sam Rockwell. And he says one of my favorite put downs.

Matt Loehrer (51:07)
Sam Rockwell.

Tug McTighe (51:12)
They're like we got it. Sam Rockwell goes we got to get him because you want to be first junior I love when someone calls a calls a guy junior or ace or buddy or pal. I'm not your friend pal Not your pal buddy that sort of thing And it's one of my favorite non swearing kind of put downs So the turtles are fighting the the the the foot storms the lair the sewer There's a big huge fight the turtles repel

Matt Loehrer (51:19)
Right.

Yeah, okay.

Tug McTighe (51:37)
They're out in the streets fighting, ba-ba-ba-ba. And this is, Mikey screams to the universe, God, I love being a turtle, which I remember being a thing that everybody loved in that moment.

Matt Loehrer (51:49)
It was the high point of the trailer.

Tug McTighe (51:51)
Yeah, for

sure. So now we cut to the rooftop. It's a huge battle. It gets onto the roof. They're climbing the climbing the roof or climbing the building getting on the roof after a fierce battle shredder shows up. They make a joke about he cuts coleslaw with his armor. Again, not a great joke. But there's a fierce battle and

Matt Loehrer (52:06)
Nope.

He beats them all up, right?

Tug McTighe (52:12)
Yeah,

shredder overpowers everybody he's just super good at this right? He claims that splinter is dead Making leo super mad the usually calm leo he attacks. He's disarmed. He's shredder's got a spear to his throat And who should show up but our old buddy splinter who casey and danny freed? He identifies shredder as oro kusaki who in turn Recognizes splinter as yosi's magical pet rat

pre-oos. He couldn't figure out, I'm just going to say something about the turtles. OK, there's human-sized anthropomorphic turtles. Something about their fighting reminds him of something. And he's got in his possession, in his jail, a human-sized talking rat who knows ninja. Shredder's like, I don't know who this could be.

Matt Loehrer (52:37)
You look familiar but like human size and wearing clothes.

Right?

Right.

Yeah.

could be anybody.

Tug McTighe (53:03)
I- it surely- he just doesn't have any clue, right? But finally,

Matt Loehrer (53:07)
I don't know

that I would have figured it out. It's like, hey, wait, you're that rat, except you're six feet tall and have clothes on and are talking. But otherwise, you're the same rat.

Tug McTighe (53:13)
Yeah, right

so he finally figures this shit out he charges splinter splinter snares the spear with Mikey's nunchucks and Then he's dangling over the roof said shredder makes a final attempt to kill him He throws a knife at him or something and splinter catches it. Let's go the nunchucks Drop shredder into a garbage truck where he is then summarily murdered by Casey Jones

Matt Loehrer (53:37)
Casey

just murders him. Like he turned, he pushes the button that crushes the garbage.

Tug McTighe (53:39)
He goes, oops. He just, yeah, he, he pushes the crusher

level. Oops. Murder. Right. So, so, then, and then, what are your top 10 ways you don't want to die as a being crushed by a, by a hockey mask wearing vigilante in a garbage truck. so then all the, then finally Stearns has got the clue. So the cops show up, right. Because there's been a hundred.

Matt Loehrer (53:47)
That's a fear of mine. That's one of my top 10 fears.

Yeah, crushed by garbage truck.

Exactly.

Right.

Tug McTighe (54:08)
ninja fight in the city so finally they come to arrest the foot soldiers Sam Rockwell confesses go check out the warehouse on the east blah blah blah the channel 3 news crew arrives to cover the story Charles hires April back

Matt Loehrer (54:12)
So let it in.

He really kind of humiliates himself there too. Whatever you want, you can have it. Here, take my car. Right, come on, man.

Tug McTighe (54:28)
Yeah, he prostrates himself on the you gonna have my office right

April and Casey share a kiss Which I start finally maybe I bought it a little bit here They celebrate their victory with splinter and I just I just Don't know that anybody has had a shower in there like a week

Matt Loehrer (54:36)
I didn't lie about it.

Or brush their teeth or. And they've been like exercising and getting beat up.

Tug McTighe (54:49)
And they've been, They've been,

They've been fighting,

training, escaping. They've also been in sewers. Then on a rusty old ramshackle farm. I hope everybody has their tetanus shot.

Matt Loehrer (55:01)
true.

And she doesn't know anything about that guy like. She knows she knows no backstory on Casey Jones, so you could be mentally ill and almost definitely is. Right? Yeah.

Tug McTighe (55:08)
No, God, no.

No, no, no.

Almost definitely is right if Batman's mentally ill Casey Jones is mentally ill

so splinter is the first in the movie the boys are trying to come up with a Man that was they don't want to say awesome. That was and splinter goes I have always liked cowabunga So that's when we get cowabunga There's a hugging

Matt Loehrer (55:28)
Catch frame. Epic.

That was fine.

Tug McTighe (55:39)
And then credits roll to your what was the band's name again the rap band's name?

Matt Loehrer (55:42)
Mm-hmm.

Partners in Crime.

Tug McTighe (55:47)
Partners in cry-um-um

Matt Loehrer (55:49)
If

you Google partners in crime and what they're up to lately, they're still talking about Ninja Turtles, because that's what they did. So everybody involved in this did this movie and they're like, done, creatively done for the rest of my life.

Tug McTighe (55:55)
Yeah, right, okay.

Done. I'm gonna do it, right?

So again, I think... Look, I love this movie because of all the nostalgia. But I'd compartmentalized all the sh... just terrible stuff. Just not great. Not great.

Matt Loehrer (56:14)
Mm-hmm.

I'm not laughing. I'm not laughing at you.

Tug McTighe (56:22)
But a great watch I watched this on a plane I was traveling last week for work and I was watching it going I keep pausing and I keep typing in a note and pause again and just again what really what really stuck out to me this time was You know when people say like well, they don't say it they say it because it's true if if When Marty when Marty McFly went back in time from 85 to 55 That would be like today going back to 1997 Right

So we have a mindfuck on time. 1990 was a long time ago. And 1990 was closer to 1970 than it felt like. It was only 20 years away from 1970. And it's 35 years from now. Which is hard to understand. But still, no one said far out. No one called anybody a fox in 90.

Matt Loehrer (57:08)
Right.

Tug McTighe (57:22)
I just wish they'd have had some, you know, hot shit. Hey man, let that young writer over at MGM, let him just, let him take a pass on this, right? On the turtle commentary, which, know, like let Tarantino plus up the dialogue. Let somebody plus up this dialogue.

Matt Loehrer (57:42)
would say this. 1990 was not far from.

95 when Toy Story came out and Toy Story has its problems in terms of how it was done and some like I don't know if you know this if you've watched Toy Story lately. I'm kind of a connoisseur of children's movies because my kids grew up and I like that stuff anyway. Yeah, so if you look at Toy Story, the first one you'll realize that all the kids at the birthday party are the same kid.

Tug McTighe (58:01)
Yeah, we both love animation and illustration design.

Okay.

Matt Loehrer (58:12)
because they designed it once and they didn't have the time or budget or know how to do it again. So they all look like Billy or Tommy or whatever the kid's name is. That said, this was probably the last year that this movie could have been made.

Tug McTighe (58:16)
Yeah, they just couldn't.

Mmm, I guess great point. Yeah, well night. Well, no Well, Jura was Jurassic 93

Matt Loehrer (58:29)
because I don't think people would have but accept it anymore.

Um, giraffe, it might've been, I should know this. It might've been earlier than that, but, um, anyway, it was coming here,

Tug McTighe (58:42)
I

Yeah, so I think you're I think your point is dead on though man, like we were not very far away from It's all digital guys. It's all digital So yeah, so like this got made 89 to 90 got released in 90, of course, they said get Henson We want how there was no other way to do this, correct? You were getting you were getting martial arts performers

Matt Loehrer (58:54)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep, right.

Tug McTighe (59:10)
in suits to perform this this action with the most advanced puppets we could we could make.

Matt Loehrer (59:18)
Yeah, to the point that the facial contortions and the facial movements were controlled by computer and by a joystick, and they had a separate puppeteer to do their faces. So to know that a year later, they'd be like, well, we're never using this technology again. So let's just throw it in the garbage. We're done.

Tug McTighe (59:26)
Correct!

That's correct. That's correct.

I know right? Jesus, like right. And then, you know, and then it

wasn't that long. It wasn't that long after this. Like Sean was born in 01. And I remember he was a little guy and we saw the digitally animated TMNT. I took him to see it in the theater. So that's probably 2007. you know, 15 years later, something like that, 17 years later, it was just it, but it exploded after Jurassic park where this is what you do. This digital animation is what you do.

Matt Loehrer (59:43)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Sure. remember. Okay. So that iconic scene where Sam Neill and Laura Dern first see the Brachiosauruses or whatever they are. What did you think of that when you saw that?

Tug McTighe (1:00:14)
Ah, I was blown away.

Matt Loehrer (1:00:16)
As was I when my kids saw it they're like that looks fake. Shut up you're not. Get out of my house. It's 100 % real, but I do think.

Tug McTighe (1:00:19)
Stupid fake right through the fake. You're like you look fuckers. You're like you fuck you guys get out of here You don't know anything about anything So so before

before we let's before we so Matt before we get your take on this If see if you're asked if you're happy you saw it or maybe didn't wish you'd spent the time I want to go back and talk about our sponsor a little bear graphics

Matt Loehrer (1:00:37)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tug McTighe (1:00:48)
Every time someone says, cowabunga, or radical, or righteous, someone either gets karate chopped in the face by human-sized anthropomorphic turtles, or Matt Lauren Little Bear Graphics deliver yet another amazing project. If you need an illustration or a t-shirt or logo to peril, such as ninja masks, you can totally get it from Matt at Little Bear. Check out Little Bear Graphics today at littlebear.graphics. Man, he loves being a designer.

Matt Loehrer (1:01:15)
I love these. I want to do one next time. Hey, the only last thing I would say too is that after this movie, not like because of this movie, but after this movie, think storytelling for kids and families and this kind of movie just got better. People decided we're going to put more into this. We can be more sophisticated. We can speak more intelligently.

Tug McTighe (1:01:17)
So, so.

Yeah, I agree.

Matt Loehrer (1:01:42)
and actually, and I'm not a Seth Rogen fan at all, but the, mayhem, the Ninja animated Ninja turtle movie that came out maybe last year, really, really good. I liked it a lot.

Tug McTighe (1:01:53)
Yeah. No, I looked at

it. It did everything right that this didn't get right. They were teenagers. They wanted to go to prom. They wanted to be in high school. It all made. Yeah, I really liked it. I really liked that movie. Me and both the boys did.

Matt Loehrer (1:02:01)
For sure.

I did too. So I think this was kind

of like, this was kind of like the last vestige of a certain kind of movie that I think fortunately, we've kind of moved on from we can do we can do better things than this.

Tug McTighe (1:02:18)
Yeah, for this, you and I

both adore the fantastical, right? We love sci-fi and fantasy and comics. And so this is right in our wheelhouse. But yeah, think you're right. think it's an era. This kind of closed the door on an era. And by the way, they're laughing all the way to the bank. They made a shit ton of money on a $13 million budget. And then it's like, all right, well, what's the next thing? So are you happy that you?

Matt Loehrer (1:02:40)
for sure. God, they made $200 million. That's crazy. Right.

Tug McTighe (1:02:48)
saw it and you have cinemist it no more?

Matt Loehrer (1:02:53)
I won't Sinemus not seeing it again. But I will say I'm glad that we talked about it, because I think we had a pretty interesting discussion, especially when we got rolling. yeah, think I'm glad we discussed this, because a lot's changed in the last 20, 30 years. And this is kind of a way to talk about that. So yeah, I enjoyed.

Tug McTighe (1:02:56)
Right.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

you know what else sorry

yeah well good I'm glad that's the point right and I'm also gonna say this sort of based on this piece of the conversation which I did not expect us to get into again that's the joy of it this was also an era where there were not 500 superhero movies there were not 500 space movies

Matt Loehrer (1:03:16)
Mm-hmm, for sure.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Tug McTighe (1:03:41)
This

was this came out in the middle of 90 when it was just like a rom-com a thriller a murder turtles in rubber suits another another thrill like die hard like that it's hard for us now to remember when the top 10 movies of any year were not Iron Man spider-man dune

Matt Loehrer (1:03:53)
That's it.

Tug McTighe (1:04:04)
right? It's hard for us to remember when that was not the case. And it was not the case for a long ass time.

Matt Loehrer (1:04:05)
Absolutely.

And for a long time, didn't want to make, know, studios didn't want to make PG movies. They're like, you can't make any money off of PG movie. And I think the rise of family entertainment and animation and having a new respect for that, like you can do that now. You can be like, Hey, I'm going to Avengers and it's going to be PG. and it's it'll make a billion dollars. So why wouldn't we make that? Which I think is great.

Tug McTighe (1:04:16)
Right, right.

13 at the worst.

Yeah, a billion, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (1:04:35)
that you can actually see movies made for families and for kids. I think that's great. It always should be that

Tug McTighe (1:04:45)
All right, so this was fun. All right, so what are we gonna do next?

Matt Loehrer (1:04:45)
All right, this was a great conversation. Hey, that was fun. Yeah.

I think next time we should do one of my favorite movies. That's a comedy. And it's by one of my favorite actor favorite directors who, as it so happens, is doing a remake of the Running Man this year.

It's Edgar Wright and the movie is Hot Fuzz.

Tug McTighe (1:05:06)
I've never seen it. I love Sean of the dead and I love Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. And I have to tell you that I, I tried to see hot fuzz, but I was hammered.

Matt Loehrer (1:05:06)
I know, I told you.

No.

Tug McTighe (1:05:19)
It was one of those nights I got drunk and I came home and I'm like, I'm watching Hot Fuzz, I can't wait and then...

Matt Loehrer (1:05:19)
Okay.

Yeah, we'll assume you didn't see it, because it's one of my favorites and it's one of those relatively few movies that I can watch again and again and again. I never get tired of it. I've seen it probably 25 times. I just watched it.

Tug McTighe (1:05:36)
Well, and Edgar

Wright also of one of our both of us love this movie. So we won't talk about it because we've both seen it multiple times, which is Scott Pilgrim. Adore Scott Pilgrim. Yeah, maybe we'll we'll our own rule to talk about why the fuck if people don't like this when they fucking should. Remember to go check us out.

Matt Loehrer (1:05:46)
100%. I wish we could do that. Such a great movie.

I don't know.

Tug McTighe (1:05:57)
on social media look for Cinemisses. We have a new email address. We'd love to get your ideas on what you want us to cover, but what you think we might have Cinemissed. Matt, what is that email address?

Matt Loehrer (1:06:04)
Yes.

It is cinemisses at gmail.com. That's C-I-N-E-M-I-S-S-E-S at gmail.

Tug McTighe (1:06:14)
Yeah, send us a note, send us some feedback, and again, if you like the show, please share it with somebody else who might like it and go give us a rating on Apple. It helps us spread the word. Until next time.

Matt Loehrer (1:06:21)
Yeah, please do.

Yeah.

Tug McTighe (1:06:27)
I love being a podcaster!

Matt Loehrer (1:06:27)
I don't know.

All right. Good job, buddy.