2.21.2009

Turtle Rant

Today Nikki and I are going to a birthday party in Greater Minnesota- it's going to be quite a slog to get there, but it should be quite an amusing romp. I'll be missing the opportunity to see the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie playing at the Uptown Theatre in the Uptown neighborhood in Minneapolis, but gaining some good merriment with people I haven't seen in a long time, and snow tubing.

I know I've ranted about this before, and I'll probably end up repeating myself, but the first TMNT movie (the live action one) is perhaps my favorite movie of all time. It eloquently summarizes the first core arc of the comics, is gritty (for a kids movie), has great cinematography, cheesy music, and a wonderful performance by Elias Koteas as Casey Jones, who is a huge character in the comics, but was only used 5 times in the original animated series- the use of Casey was strange to us who hadn't read the comics, but faithfully got up early on Saturday to watch the gnarly opening sequence (though watching Hamato Yoshi turn into a rat was traumatizing).

Then they did two sequels, followed by a live action TV show, and then another great animated show, and a so-so CG animated movie.
So it got me to thinking, after seeing the [relatively] recent CGI movie, how I would do a TMNT movie.

First off, I would set it in 1992. That year, to me, seems like a tipping point, in domestic politics, world politics, the history of New York City, and in greater American culture. The year Bill Clinton became president, upheavals in Yugoslavia and Russian, in two years Apartheid ends in South Africa, two years before the Berlin wall falls, it's a year before Rudolph Guiliani becomes Mayor, and the NYPD has been using the Broken Windows Theory to crack down on crime (though it's still a grimy, thrilling place to be), and AIDS is still considered a gay man's disease.
Culturally, there's a bunch of great movies, TV shows, video games, comics, and music, which is too extensive to list here.

By setting it in this crux of history, I can then go back and build up characterization based. If the Turtles are 15-16 in 1992, then they were probably born in 1976 or 1977. Since the mutagen/ooze that turned them into what they are now gave them human life-spans, they are truly children of the 80's. Their cultural points of reference are shaped by specific political events, world upheaval, Communism, music, movies, TV, video games, food products, and radio. Also, they're growing up when NYC was a scary place to live, the divide of the haves and the have-nots, poverty levels, street crimes, racial tensions, and gang violence was at un-imaginable levels.

But the new twist is that they're being raised by an immigrant.

More on this soon!

TTYL!

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