Heroes In a Half-Shell… What Are Those? August 2, 2006
Posted by tonywgoodwyn in Film, Geekery, Turtle Power!.add a comment
Sometimes it’s difficult for me to remember that, believe it or not, I am getting older, and that the things I liked as a kid are waaay different (in the specifics, anyway) from what my little sisters are interested in.
For example, take Pokémon. All I know about it is that there seem to be a million different little stupid creatures with cute names and whacky abilities that seem to come out of something called a Poké-ball. That’s it, and I could care less about it. To my sisters, though (at least, as of a couple years ago), they could name each type, what it evolved into (?), what each stage’s powers were, and probably even tell me more about its origin.
Me, I’m a proud Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles man. And I’m sure my parents had little knowledge or interest in the Turtles when I was watching them as a pre-teen; to them, I’m sure there was little difference between TMNT and the Transformers or He-Man cartoons I watched as a tot. It was all action-oriented animation that not-so-subtly told their young viewers, "Buy all of our playsets and toys!"
And I’m sure my obsession with the Turtles worked as planned. I remember having quite a few of the action figures (Donatello was my favorite), some of the comic books, and let me tell you, I saw the first movie several times when it came out in the theaters in 1990 (and I own a copy of it today). I went trick-or-treating as Donatello one Halloween (and my mother considers it to be one of the most awesomest costumes she’d ever put together), and could deliver lines and quotes from the shows and movie with rapid fire reflexes and uncanny accuracy.
Unlike He-Man or Transformers, however, I think I have to credit TMNT with providing some of my earliest inspirations to write fiction. While I’m not yet a published fiction writer, I have that spark in me, and think TMNT had a lot to do with kindling an interst in serialized, sustained stories. Yes, it was fanfiction, of which many people have a low opinion (eh, what do they know?), but it was my start. Some of the earliest bits of writing I can remember doing–aside from school assignments–involved me placing the Turtles in a tense standoff with the Foot and having to fight their way through them. And to this day, a lot of what I’m working on is serialized fiction–a testament, in my opinion, to the Turtles. Okay, and the X-Men comic books, too. 
Recently the Turtles seem to have experienced a resurgence in popularity, and of course it was Sarabeth who caught the bug and passed the geekiness on to me. Mirage Studios, the comic publisher that originally did the pre-commercialized, grittier TMNT, recently started "continuing" the adventures of the Turtles, apparently in the present-day, which could make for interesting reading–I haven’t been able to check it out yet. There has also been the new animated series, started in 2003, which seems a lot more complex and true to the original vision of the Turtles than the 1987 series. Finally, there is a new movie due out in March 2007 for the Turtles. It’s done completely in CGI–and if the trailer is any indication, it looks like it’s going to be a whole lot of fun!
So, we decided to bring my sisters in on this bit of geekery, and showed them the 1990 movie again (I’d shown it to them a few years ago, but they seemed to not remember much of it). My youngest sister provoked a hard bit of laughter from me and Sarabeth when she first saw the Shredder. As soon as he walked on screen she went, "Look, it’s Vader!" Which was true enough: superficially, they look similar (imposing figures, menacing armor and deep voices). What really made us laugh was when the Shredder uttered the (now-infamous-to-me) line, "This is your family. I am your father!" Without missing a beat, she shrewdly uttered, "See? I told you!"
We haven’t told them about the new movie yet. Knowing Sarabeth, we’ll end up showing them the second and third movies (of which I’m not a big fan), and maybe the cartoons (old and new) and comic books. We’ll get ourselves hooked (Sarabeth’s already there, and I’m well on my way), then the girls. The older one seems lukewarm to the idea, but the youngest seems fairly eager to check this new stuff out with us.
Thank goodness. I thought they’d never grow out of Pokémon. 
