Turtlethon Extra Slices: "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III"
US Release Date: March 19, 1993
UK Release Date: August 6, 1993
Following a two-year break, the Turtles returned to cinemas for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, the concluding chapter of their original live action movie run. With Turtlemania entering its downswing at the commencement of this project, producers Golden Harvest approached it as one last play to win over what they expected to be a declining audience and budgeted accordingly. Stuart Gillard was the director of this sequel.
Japan, 1603: A man is pursued on horseback by a group of armoured warriors. We’ll get back to him. In 1990s New York, the Turtles cavort during a training exercise to the mid-eighties ZZ Top track “Can’t Stop Rockin’”. If the second film’s saving grace was the continued advancement of the animatronics used to bring the team to life, it immediately becomes clear that all of that has gone out the window now: Jim Henson’s Creature Shop has been replaced for this outing by the All Effects Company, the life-like Turtles we once knew exchanged with bug-eyed, rubbery, downright unpleasant looking substitutes. Their synchronised dance antics go on for a painful amount of time until Raphael, frustrated by engaging in what he views as pointless training exercises while the team remain holed up in their subway hideout, hurls a sai at a hi-fi speaker. April – played here by Paige Turco, returning from The Secret of the Ooze – arrives bearing gifts, providing the Turtles with an opportunity to clown around some more. One of the items she’s brought is an antique Japanese sceptre, intended for Splinter.
We return to the captured individual from the opening, Kenshin (Eidan Hanzei), who’s reunited with his father, the villainous Lord Norinaga (Sab Shimono). The young man is reminded that he’s forbidden to leave their castle, but protests his dad’s ongoing civil war against a group of neighbouring villagers. Their argument is interrupted by the arrival of Walker (Stuart Wilson), an Englishman flanked by a crew of rogues who forge an arrangement to provide Norinaga with ammunition, initially in exchange for rice, though it’s the Lord’s gold and silver that’s truly sought after.
Following Walker’s departure, Kenshin is seen driving a group of priests out of a temple. He examines a scroll on which four kappa are illustrated – resembling the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – as well as a sceptre, the same one recovered by April in the future. In a flash of light, April and Kenshin are switched into each other’s places, even swapping clothes. As the Turtles struggle to make sense of what has just happened, April is approached by the hostile guards in the palace, who assume her to be a witch who has captured Kenshin, a situation exacerbated by her personal stereo accidentally playing the sound of “Conga” by the Barrio Boyzz to the bafflement of everyone looking on. She decides to play into this, telling Walker that she could “melt him into a puddle of puke” if she wanted to. This psych game turns out to be unsuccessful, and April is taken prisoner to be interrogated about Kenshin’s whereabouts.
The Turtles hatch a plan to use the sceptre to head into the past and bring back April, but determine that in doing so it’ll require a temporal exchange with four people in ancient Japan of equivalent mass to themselves. To keep an eye on things while they’re away they bring in Casey Jones (Elias Koteas), returning from the 1990 film after sitting out TMNT II for being too darn violent. Michaelangelo adopts a pair of pyjama bottoms so that his counterpart won’t be naked after the exchange is made.
Arriving in ancient Japan, the Turtles find themselves in the place of a group of Honor Guards on horseback in the middle of a battle, struggling to find their bearings and ultimately landing in a ditch. Along the way Michaelangelo, wielding the scepter, is separated from the group. Mistaken first for being one of Norinaga’s men and then for a kappa, Mikey is knocked out and recovered by Princess Mitsu, who's leading the fight against Norinaga and Walker. She orders that Michaelangelo be carted off to recover in the village.
Norinaga boasts to Walker about the superiority of his Honor Guard to any weapon and becomes enraged upon learning that they’ve vanished, alongside the sceptre. Meanwhile Leo, Donnie and Raph infiltrate the palace. After freeing April from her cage, the reunited group escape via a chute that ejects them out the side of the castle into another ditch outside.
As the children of the village spot Michaelangelo without his helmet and are horrified by the sight of what they assume to be a kappa, the other Turtles and April adjust to their new surroundings, with Raphael noting how idyllic feudal Japan is versus the chaos and pollution of 1990s New York. The group are attacked by villagers assuming them to be aligned with Norinaga, and stop the fight by removing their masks to reveal their true identities. Mitsu puts two and two together and assumes they must be allies of Michaelangelo.
The Turtles are celebrated as heroes by the villagers, and are asked by Mitsu to stay and help them fight back against the daimyo (a term for feudal lords of the period, referring here to Norinaga). Our heroes stress that they need to reclaim the sceptre before their opportunity to return to their own time is gone, but until then they agree to assist.
Norinaga reveals the contents of his scroll to Walker, asking about the resemblance of the visitors to the four kappa depicted on it. The daimyo recalls how old priests told him his ancestors were defeated by these demons, who he believes have returned to confront him: to stop them, he agrees to Walker’s earlier offer, now willing to provide him with silver and silk in exchange for guns. Walker has upped his price due to the severity of the situation, now insistent on being provided with gold for his goods, angering the feudal lord.
The Turtles scour the area on horseback in search of the sceptre, but without success. Later, they inform a mortified April of their new plan, which involves building an entirely new sceptre. This task won’t be handled by Donatello, but instead by a local blacksmith. In the downtime that follows, the Turtles grow closer to the villagers, with Michaelangelo working alongside a cook in an unsuccessful attempt to invent pizza while also developing an attraction to Mitsu. Meanwhile, Raphael forms a friendship with Yoshi, discouraging him from fighting other kids and teaching him the importance of controlling his temper.
Checking in with events in New York, we see Casey and Splinter attempt to calm an increasingly on-edge Kenshin, who demands to be given the sceptre so he can be reunited with Mitsu. Casey cooks up a distraction by switching on a nearby TV, the assembled time-travellers mesmerised by the sight of an ice hockey game being broadcast.
At Kumano Castle, Norinaga agrees to Walker’s terms, with the Englishman declaring that as the dungeon is becoming crowded his men will instead kill their enemies. Back in the village, the Turtles assemble around the new makeshift sceptre, but while arguing amongst themselves manage to drop the fragile item, causing it to shatter. Now left with no time to construct another before their window to return to the future closes, the Turtles are informed by Mitsu that Norinaga’s men will arrive in the morning, now heavily armed.
Raphael checks in with Yoshi, offering him a gift of a yo-yo. The youngster is burdened by the knowledge that tomorrow the Turtles could die in battle but is assured that everything will be alright. To prevent Raph from being lost in the oncoming clash, Yoshi offers his friend an item he recovered in the forest: the original scepter. It dawns on the Turtles that Mitsu ordered it to be stashed under their home to deter them from leaving, placing them in a position where they’d have to stay and help defend the village. Yoshi’s grandfather reveals he was the one who stashed the sceptre, not Mitsu. Before they can patch things up, the Princess is captured by an ex-member of Walker’s crew named Whit (played by Elias Koteas in a dual role in addition to Casey), who challenges the Turtles to bring Kenshin to the castle in exchange for her return.
Mitsu is offered up to Norinaga and accused of stealing the daimyo’s son. She counters by declaring Kenshin is “on a magic journey” and can only be brought back using the sceptre, which she announces is in Walker’s possession. The Englishman denies this is the case, and is allowed to leave. Later, he meets up with Whit, who accuses him of having kept the knowledge of the contents of the scroll a secret.
The Turtles infiltrate the castle for a second time and free Mitsu, before leaving again intent on meeting up with April. Along the way, the team discover the scroll prior to being confronted by Norinaga. The feudal lord is about to finish off the Turtles himself until Mitsu intervenes, with Michaelangelo making the save to stop her being hurt. Mikey is cut in the fight, a sign that Norinaga takes as confirmation the Turtles aren’t demons after all, but rather mere mortals.
Our heroes take on Norinaga’s men, ultimately emerging victorious. The green teens watch as the damiyo makes a bungled attempt to escape on horseback. He soon finds himself face to face with Leonardo and asks to be finished off. Rather than killing his enemy, Leo cuts off a portion of his hair before trapping him under an enormous bell. Still more challenges emerge for the Turtles as Walker has captured April. She reunites with the team as they face the prospect of being assassinated by a crew of heavily armed Englishmen, to Whit’s horror.
Walker is psyched out by the Turtles, who goad him into shooting them himself, insistent that he won’t do it as he’s afraid of being haunted by demons down the line should he be the one pulling the trigger. Enraged, the villain fires a cannonball which Leonardo dodges by retracting his head. The sight of this shocks Walker and his men, providing the Turtles with an opportunity to disarm their enemies.
The Turtles split up to corner Walker, surrounding him on the roof of the castle. He tosses the sceptre, using the distraction as an opportunity to mount an escape while Michaelangelo narrowly manages to catch it, but a fireball launched via catapult by Whit destroys his rope, sending him plunging into the sea to his certain demise.
As Casey tries to round up the Honor Guards ahead of the time exchange – who have now ventured outside to enjoy the sights and sounds of New York, such as uh... the 1985 Italo-disco hit “Tarzan Boy” by Baltimora? - the Turtles begin to have disagreements about whether they even want to return to their own time at all, with Donatello and April missing their modern conveniences, while Raphael and Michaelangelo feel strongly about remaining in 1603. The situation becomes urgent as Kenshin’s patience runs out and he activates the sceptre ahead of the Honor Guards returning. Finally, the Turtles agree to go back, but Mikey is separated from the group in the moments before the teleport begins.
Arriving back in their home, the Turtles and Splinter are shocked to discover Michaelangelo didn’t return, the remaining member of the Honor Guard panicking and attempting to escape with the sceptre. Moments later he vanishes as well, Michaelangelo emerging to reunite with his brothers. Back in ancient Japan, Kenshin is reunited with Mitsu, the two embracing as mood lighting kicks in.
Michaelangelo is saddened by having had to make the difficult decision to leave Mitsu in the past, but is cheered up by Splinter placing a lampshade on his head and talking about the Elvis Presley movie “Blue Hawaii”, something Mikey himself did at the beginning of the movie. We end the same way we kicked things off as the Turtles perform another synchronised dance, this time to Technotronic and Ya Kid K’s “Rockin’ Over the Beat”.
While the first TMNT movie is widely celebrated and the perception of the second could be considered mixed, there’s no getting around the fact that the third is generally viewed as a stinker, one of several Turtles project from this period that nearly everyone now agrees to be a mistake alongside “We Wish You a Turtle Christmas”, “Turtle Tunes” and everything connected to the “Coming Out of Their Shells” tour. The simple fact of the matter is that a movie in which the Turtles interact with a bunch of new characters in ancient Japan wasn’t what the remaining kids who made up the bulk of TMNT’s fanbase wanted in 1993. It’s tempting to imagine a third Turtles film which throws everything and the kitchen sink in as a course correction after The Secret of the Ooze went out of its way to avoid introducing Rocksteady and Bebop: maybe this time we could have both mutants make their belated debut alongside Krang, the Technodrome, and a bunch of other recognisable elements drawn from the cartoon, the comics and even the toy line to win an increasingly jaded audience back. Such a film would have been an ambitious project that would have required an adequate budget and the craftsmanship of the Creature Shop, but what we got instead was an adventure with a relatively modest scope, created with the expectation that it would generate minimal returns, and it shows. It’s a bitter pill to swallow.
Okay, okay, but... hear me out. Yes, TMNT III is a disappointment, but I don’t think it’s entirely irredeemable. Like season seven of the cartoon, which aired later in the same year, this outing benefits from the fact that by 1993 the moral panic surrounding the Turtles had largely died down, parental groups and the press moving on to condemn Night Trap and Mortal Kombat instead. With no-one paying attention, this time around we get a film where the Turtles fight a lot, even if the use of their trademark weapons remains only nominal. I assume the production got away with this, in part, due to the action scenes representing historical violence. As a result at least we get to see the Turtles cut loose in a way that we maybe wouldn’t have had the film instead involved them fighting in their home turf of New York. (As with the first two outings, scenes involving the use of Michaelangelo’s nunchucks were cut for the initial UK release, and just like those earlier films the excised content was restored beginning with the DVD release in the early 2000s.)
There are other elements to appreciate about TMNT III beyond the emphasis on action. While the Turtles fire off one-liners and pop culture references here to the point where it can become grating, they’re also afforded moments to reflect and consider the differences of the era they’ve found themselves in to their own. Michaelangelo and Raphael’s arcs, in which they form connections with Mitsu and Yoshi respectively, allow both to demonstrate their ongoing personal growth; there’s a sense that both return to New York with a newfound maturity they didn’t have when they left.
In the Turtlethon entries for the first and second movies I neglected to mention that both received comic adaptations, published by Archie. The same is true again here, the comic version of TMNT III belatedly published in November 1993, closer to the film’s arrival on home video than it was to its cinematic run. Dean Clarrain and Chris Allan from the then-ongoing TMNT Adventures series adapted the story for print and did an incredible job: in fact, unless you’re particularly hung up on experiencing Turtles III as a movie, I’d go so far as to say you should just read the Archie version instead. The shoddy Turtle designs that encumber the story on celluloid here are transformed into wonderful, engaging characters, and their quips are by necessity pared down to fit into sixty pages. Writing this entry would have been a far greater chore for me if the Archie adaptation didn’t exist to provide me with a different perspective on it.
Well readers, it’s come to this. Together, over the last two years, we’ve meticulously dissected three films and a staggering 184 animated episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, reflecting on the highs, the lows, and the many moments that were downright inexplicable. Now, a mere eight episodes remain. We’ll start checking them off next time, as season ten commences with “The Return of Dregg”.
