Post by stefancrosscoe on Mar 26, 2021 10:45:34 GMT
What always struck me about the film was its urban grittiness. The Foot behaved very much like a real criminal gang, only with added martial arts. It's a shame they abandoned this in the ensuing movie. It wasn't until the 2003 animated series arrived that we were once more offered up a somewhat more mature take on the turtles or The Shredder.
RE the hysterical parents (our own parents generation in this case), Batman Returns received the same reaction a few years later. Too dark, too violent, too sexualized for kids, etc. The end result was exit Tim Burton and enter Joel Schumacher. Another fine mess we got there.
The Foot clan, was kind of "shocking", when I saw it the first time as a kid, as I was so used to them being completely outthought and easily beaten by the Turtles, and also knowing they were just a bunch of robots (for most of the shows run), and having them suddenly turn human, with different personalities and how they behave during battle, but also during training, where as failure surely was not an option. Something which is learnt the hard way, by Tatsu:
"Never lower your eyes, in front of an enemy!"
or something similar, shortly after, almost taking the head off, of one of his younger students, when making sure, that a sign of respect towards your opponent, is dismissed as a sign of weakness.
I loved the original animated show, but yeah, the 2003 and onwards tv-series was really great, and I enjoyed it way more than what I thought I would.
Yeah, the Tim Burton films, I guess were becoming harder to sell towards moviegoing families, with little kids, as you had a crazy and scary looking villain, who wanted to bring down all of Gotham's first born children, and kill them off, in the sewers, sex jokes, people getting their noses bitten "off", Catwoman, Batman killing people (and doing quite a good job at it as well) where some unlucky villain, ends up getting torched into a huge wandering fireball, another blown to kingdom come, and yeah, probably lots more to go with.
But all this, is why I love the Burton movies so much.