Alright, I’ve watched Turtles Forever, so my thoughts/review on the thing:
It’s a decently entertaining little special, and at least an interesting idea for an anniversary-type thing (that’s the main reason this was made, right?). The show wastes *no* time hooking the ’03 Turtles up with their ’88 counterparts, and from there it’s pretty much a steady stream of the two groups bouncing off each other. There’s the inevitable contrast between dialogue styles and attitudes (though I swear, they actually toned *down* the amount of late 80’s/early 90’s slang from what I’d expect the ’88 guys to throw around), with ’03 Michelangelo thinking the ’88 team is a lovable bunch, ’03 Raphael thinking they’re annoying clowns, ’03 Donatello being bemused by the whole situation and mildly interested in his counterpart’s approach to science, and the Leonardos generally being devoid of personality throughout the whole thing (how is it the films are the only things that can ever make Leonardo interesting?). The clashing gets a bit more heated when ’88 Shredder retrieves his ’03 counterpart, setting off the special’s actual plot, in which the disparate Turtles must work together to save their own multiversal existence! Yeah, not the most original base plot in the world, but the context in which it’s handled keeps it more fresh and interesting. There’s plenty of expectedly self-aware humor (it basically gets within millimeters of acknowledging the whole thing takes place in a television cartoon, and even that’s completely unambiguous by the very end), mostly from the ’88 Turtles, whose style has such things at its core (’88 Raph gets several one-liners to the camera, leading to amusing confusion on the part of the ’03 characters), though by the end when they make it to the Eastman & Laird universe, pretty much everyone’s getting in on the metahumor (more on that later). And of course, there’s plenty of pizza.
At first glance, the special honestly does seem to be taking a negative view of the ’88 cartoon. ’03 Raphael’s job in pretty much the whole thing is to insult and complain about the ’88 Turtles and how annoying they are, and even ’03 Mikey, who initially likes the ’88 guys, ends up changing his tune and getting fed up with how un-serious the old versions are. But all this can kind of be read as simply different characters clashing. For all ’03 Don protests that the ‘science’ used by his ’88 version doesn’t make sense, the fact is it works, and to a frightfully more competent degree than his own. In fact, there’s an underlying idea that the ’88 Turtles more ‘cartoonish’ nature actually allows them to be just as effective in battle as their more ‘serious’ counterparts, simply because they’re ‘allowed’ to make more outlandish battle tactics work (witness the ridiculous stuff they pull off in the first fight with the Technodrome). Honestly, the one who comes off really bad is ’88 Shredder. I have no doubt that the character probably started out genuinely threatening in his home series, and that this portrayal is simply based on his status late in the series as the Turtles’ years-long antagonist who had constantly suffered failure after humiliating failure, but even in that context he still comes off as needlessly buffoonish and wimpy. Sure, he still has flashes of brilliance such as when he realizes the possibility of recruiting his doppelganger, followed by that cool exploding barricade of Foot Soldiers maneuver, to even realizing that teaming up with the other Shredder may be more trouble than it’s worth. But as soon as the ’03 version assumes command, Shredder ’88 is relegated to full-on joke-character status, chasing after his hijacked command chair and munching on popcorn with Krang and chatting with him about how much cooler than him Shredder ’03 is. It just comes off as needlessly harsh to a character who they already acknowledge took years of abuse, and it would’ve been more interesting to, I dunno, see ’88 Shredder get some technology or power from the ’03 universe and become competent again. That said, by the end of the thing, I was genuinely wondering who they were really taking the piss out of here. For all the build-up he gets for how scary and effective he is, Shredder ’03 still has the awful habit of making grandiose, time-wasting speeches right before he’s won, he still goes plan-disruptingly mad with hate-fueled superpowers, he still lets his ego allow him to underestimate the heroes, and he still lets Bebop and Rocksteady bumble up his seemingly important grunt work. Say what you will about his light-hearted 90’s villain cartoonishness, but Shredder ’88 gets to go home at the end with his Technodrome intact.
I can see some people being ‘insulted’ by the portrayal of the ’88 characters, but if you don’t see the goofiness as a bad thing and rather just something inherent of their nature, then the story becomes a much nicer one about people who are completely different learning to work together because of the things they do have in common. You could just as easily contextualize things as the good-natured ’88 Turtles being picked on by the callous jerks that the ’03 guys are because they don’t know how to have any fun, but our heroes accept them and their help anyway. And even the ’03 Turtles learn this lesson when they all go to the E&L universe, and their grim ‘n’ gritty comic book versions make the ’03 guys look as cartoonish as the ’88 versions by comparison (It’s very telling when ’03 Raph tries to point out how stupid the ‘88 belt-initials are, only for Comic Leo to counter with his opinion on multicolored headbands). The scene in the ’88 universe with all the mutants attacking a terminally-distressed April could be seen as a little harsh, but I think it’s clear that we’re supposed to be laughing with them on this one, the same way we laugh with the E&L universe with its over-the-top-badass narration and scary lightning everywhere. More than anything, I think the special is making fun of people who make a big deal out of arguing which is best. Both have their good and bad points, and nothing of import gets accomplished if everyone just stands around arguing over who’s the most stupid/least fun. I could almost see ’03 Shredder’s plan of using the Turtles to locate and destroy the source universe as a metatextual point that such arguments will only ruin the entire franchise for everyone in the long run, but that might be giving the writers in this case a bit too much credit.
The art direction in this was what really tipped me in its favor. Blending styles from two different cartoons (from two different eras!) under the pretense of alternate universes is an ambitious idea, and they pull it off with flying colors here. As I mentioned earlier, the ’88 Turtles even move and fight with the same styles that you expect from a 90’s-era cartoon. The (comparatively brief) scenes in the ’88 cartoon world is just a treat, with all the extras drawn in the classic style, old-school background cels used, even the *camera angles* things are drawn from is indicative of series from the era. It’s one reason I can’t say they must have disliked the ’88 cartoon that much, since they clearly did their homework on it. The way the universe gets ‘erased’ towards the end (color draining from ink outlines before fading to blue roughs) was especially clever, given the context. And the black-and-white screentoned comic universe in the climax was just expertly done. This special is as worth watching as a unique string of animation concepts as it as Ninja Turtles fanservice.
And fanservice is pretty much what this is, at the end of the day. If you don’t care at all about TMNT, there’s no reason to watch it, but if you were a fan of the ’88 cartoon, or the ’03 cartoon, or the comic books, you’ll probably give out at least one “Oh HELL yes!” during the course of this. And you’ll probably laugh. Laugh with the franchise, at itself, since I think that’s all it was really trying to do. After all, wasn’t the original point of Eastman and Laird’s old comics that people shouldn’t take stories like this so seriously?
Really, the only missed opportunity: Why the hell wasn’t The Song in there somewhere? Plus, if this was all going back to the original origins of the Turtles, then where was
Spoiler
Daredevil
Oh, did I say review? Apparently I meant essay.
