Turtles Forever: Review

The wait is over.  Turtles fans can finally exhale because  Turtles Forever has aired. What’s Turtles Forever you might ask.  Well, as reported earlier this year, Turtles forever is the series finale for the 2K3 TMNT television series that is not only a straight to TV/DVD full length feature film, but also the first time the multi-verse of turtles properties has been leveraged to create a cross-over experience spanning 25 years of Turtles history.  So, needless to say, its huge piece of Turtles fan service.  Definitely the biggest piece of fan service that the franchise has ever seen and a fitting conclusion to one of the most important years in turtles history.

With the recent buyout of the Turtles franchise by Nickelodeon, and Viacom, everyone knows that big changes are on the way for the green machine However, 4Kids still had one masterpiece to pump out before signing off.  Forever stars the 2K3 TMNT in their present universe.  Very quickly they find that out of nowhere 4 additional Turtles pop up and upon further investigation its discovered that these extra turtles are from a different dimension.  In fact they are the turtles that starred in the original Murakami-Wolf-Swenson cartoon turtles, or for you non-fans, “the turtles from the 80’s”.

The old TMNTs are animated pretty accurately and bare a very distinct visual difference from their 2K3 counterparts.  The original voice actors are absent and the cartoon-ness of the characters is overly played-up, but for all intents and purposes these are the Turtles you remember.  Their not perfect, but they are close enough to get the nostalgia juices flowing.

It is also found that not only have the old-school turtles been transported there but so have their evil counterparts, The Shredder, Krang, Bebop, Rocksteady and the Technodrome.  After some interesting and mindblowing introductions the story gets churning and secondary characters are introduced.  Everyone from the old school April, and Splinter, to Hun, Casey, Karai and the two rarely mentioned mutants from The Secret of the Ooze Tokka and Rahzar make appearances in the film.

The primary antagonist is The Shredder from the 2K3 show, which is a good choice seeing as he is really the only villain the Turtles have ever had that would still seem like a threat by today’s standards.  He’s cunning, crazy and absolutely vicious.  I’m not going to spoil the plot, but the movie does assume that you know a nice chunk of knowledge about the respective shows from which the characters are taken.  By the end of the story, the multiverse of Turtles is revealed, in what might be the most amazing sequence to ever appear in a TMNT property (you’ll know it when you see it) and the Turtles Prime are introduced.  If I go any farther, there too much will be given away.  Let me just say that a significant amount of act three is set in a black & white dimension.

As a stand alone film, non-fans of the series will not be able to see the care put into the production.  It will just look like a generic Turtles movie.  However, to the hardcore turtles fan, this piece of film will resonate deep within their psyche.  By touching almost every aspect of the history,  Forever blatantly ignores the common/casual Saturday morning cartoon viewer and caters to an audience that rarely gets this type of attention.  Jokes that call back to the old show are plentiful, and some lines of dialog are pulled directly from the independently released Mirage comic books.  The plot makes enough sense to hold the film together and the plethora of characters is well balanced.

As a huge fan of all of the source material, its very hard to find a flaw in a movie that was basically created specifically for me.  If you only have a passing interest in the TMNT or are not familiar with the source material then you may want to stay away.  Taking Turtles Forever for exactly what it is (fan service) then I am very confident in saying that this film is perfect and a fantastic way to close the book on the first 25 years of the TMNT.

Verdict:  Homework Maybe Required

It should be noted that this still does not have a DVD release date, and from what I understand not even a concrete DVD publishing deal.  With Nick in charge now, I don’t see how this would not eventually hit DVD, but I don’t think it will happen before the all important Christmas Holiday, but I could be wrong.  In the meantime, the movie will be chopped up and sired over the next three weeks on the CW’s 4kidsTV segments and will be availble to stream via the 4kids website later this year.

Check out the trailer below (warning possible spoilers)