Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3The third Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is a major drop in quality from the first film, and even the second.

It tells the story of a war set in early 1600’s in Japan.  With the use of a magic lamp, April O’Neill is sent back in time and trapped in the past. So naturally, the Turtles find their way back there also.  When they arrive they are wearing Samurai Armor and get caught up amongst the battle between two families, and eventually take sides and try defeat the evil leaders who are causing all of the trouble.

Having no normal Villians from the rich and existing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Franchise, this movie becomes the ultimate kids movie.  With movie critics like  James Berardinelli stating that “any adults accompanying their kids will have to invent new and interesting ways to stay awake. Not only is this movie aimed at young children, the script could have been written by them.”

I have to agree.

Not even fans can find nods in this one, it’s a completely original story idea gone ever so wrong.

The fights still have some martial arts in theme, but ultimately the movie leaves little to be said.  The turtles become more focused on stupid dialogue and there’s absoultely no serious themes to their characters at all.

Perhaps the most interesting and potentially disappointing part of this movie was an existing drawing of four turtle ‘demons’ in Japan who defeated an evil warlord.  This had me asking a few questions until I realised that they were obviously planning another time travel movie – not cool.

More so than that, there’s a staggering difference in the look of the turtles and Splinter as Jim Henson’s creature shop were not involved in this movie.  You’ll see what I mean by comparing the costumes of the first and third movies below:

comparison of ninja turtles movies

The organic look and feel of the original costumes is replaced with a shiny plastic look, and the mouths on each turtle seem to move in a really unnatural fashion – but splinter has the same problems multiplied.  I literally could not wait for it to finish when I was watching it, it’s pretty damn terrible.  Go back and watch the first film – it’s a classic 🙂

On Blu Ray –

Region FREE (plays anywhere)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trilogy[Blu-ray]

On DVD –

Region 1 (US & Canada)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4 film DVD Collection

Region 2 (UK, Europe, etc)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 on DVD

Region 4 (Australia, New Zealand, etc)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3
More info on Movie Regions here.

25 Martial Arts Movies All Fans Must See - FREE


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