So after photoshopping a ninja turtle nose onto myself last night, I got nostalgic and decided to watch the first two live-action movies (they’re both all over the place with regards to the source material, but at least we will always have this)

Continuing on with the nostalgia - I decided to watch the 2009 straight-to-tv animated ‘Turtles Forever’ movie featuring the 1987 animated characters…

For the record, the original 1987 animated ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ cartoon series was MY ABSOLUTE JAM. I remember watching ‘Thundercats’ (and loving it), I remember watching ‘Bravestarr’ - but nothing was a bigger piece of my childhood than the ninja turtles.

I never actively watched the 2003-2009 reboot cartoon, but from what I had seen from it - I thought the reboot was stupid. The new theme song sucked. The redesigns weren’t great. So when I saw these two cartoons had come together in ONE movie - I thought “Cool, now I can enjoy my old cartoon one more time”

But that didn’t happen. From the start, the 2003 turtles mocked and made fun of the 1987 turtles, right down to the initials on their belt buckles. The 2003 turtles couldn’t understand why the 1987 turtles were cheese-head goofballs. WHY SHOULDN’T THEY BE? THEY’RE CARTOON CHARACTERS.

I understand that some cartoons have to have some level of seriousness - ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ (the forms are all based on actual real-life martial arts), ‘Samurai Jack’ (more for a feeling or a tone than anything else), etc. AND the original comic book turtles were serious and gritty themselves. But since WHEN did cartoons have to be “grown up”, “mature”, “serious” all of the time?

The 2003 turtles made fun of the 1987 Party Wagon, and the Turtle Blimp, which were the coolest toys EVER. The 2003 turtles even made fun of 1987 April O’Neil and her classic yellow jumpsuit. Not one part of my childhood was safe!!

WHY make fun of the thing that actually allowed you to exist in the first place? If 1987 turtles wasn’t a hit - there would be no 2003 turtles.

Maybe it was a better time back then (… in the 80s?) but whatever. I didn’t get where the hell the 2003 turtles was coming from. But whatever. To sum up the plot for this - the turtles travel though alternate dimensions to stop the 2003 Shredder (who is actually an Utrom in a robot suit which again = stupid)

The only cool parts in this movie is subtly spotting Tokka and Rahzar from the second live-action movie, and briefly seeing all the other turtles in their different dimensions (the CG movie turtles, the dark-future turtles, the robot suit turtles, etc) and ultimately the turtles that started it all (AKA “Turtle Prime”) the comic turtles.

Skip this movie if you are, like me, a kid from the 80s.