June 10, 2016
The critical and commercial failure of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III didn't just derail plans for subsequent films in this franchise - it also represented a pretty definitive end point for our generation's "Turtle-mania". No one's suggestion that the movie hasn't earned its bad reputation, but it's grown so aggressively hyperbolic over the years that the HDYR gang couldn't help but wonder if the slide in quality was really THAT severe.
Well. We have our answer.
When we revisited the first two films with a more objective point of view, we realized that each of them had their issues - but boy oh boy is this third one a different beast entirely. It's probably no great revelation that this isn't a very good movie, but what was surprising were the reasons it felt like such a spectacular failure to us now... because the terrible Turtle costumes are the least of its problems.
Topics include: how the studio's recognition of the Turtles' dwindling popularity influenced their decision to cut corners, the story behind those hideous new suits, the baffling choice to bring back Casey Jones and do nothing with him, some absolutely insane time travel logic and how easy it would have been to simplify this whole scenario, a more satisfying backstory for these new villains, a discussion about the right time to age out of this stuff, and much much more!
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