YMMV / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III

• Awesome Music: The movie has ZZ Top's "Can't Stop Rockin'" and Baltimora's "Tarzan Boy," both '80s chart toppers.
• He Really Can Act: Elias Koteas does an excellent job as both Casey and his (possible) ancestor Whit. Some viewers even questioned if Whit was indeed played by a separate actor.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Near the end of the film, the Turtles bluff Walker and his men into thinking they're Immune to Bullets, and that their bullets would just bounce off and kill them instead. Come the next live-action film, and in that continuity, their shells really are bulletproof, and bullets do bounce off.
• Older Than They Think: Fans lament that this film has little to nothing to do with the first two films and barely feels like a TMNT story. But in reality, the film actually works quite well as a condensed, simplified retelling of the two-part Masks storyline (issues 46 and 47) from the original Mirage comics, just with some characters and any fantastical elements (like Savanti Romero and the lizard man Chote) taken out.
• Questionable Casting: Matt Hill as Raphael's suit actor. While Hill has acted in live action movies and TV shows, him being the suit actor means, he has no actual lines of dialogue at all and he just acted physically under the suit. He eventually went on to voice Raph in the 1997 TV show.
• Replacement Scrappy: Walker and Lord Norinaga are considered a major step down from the Shredder.
• Sequelitis: The film has a rather dull time travel plot, two uninspired villains, fewer fight scenes (although the fights that are in the movie are longer and more elaborate), and costumes/animatronics that looked unbelievably cheap due to the absence of Jim Henson's Creature Shop. There wouldn't be another Ninja Turtles movie until the franchise was rebooted in 2007, and no live-action movies until over twenty years later. Some longtime fans go as far as to say this film was the end of the initial Turtle mania wave that started in the late 80s and early 90s, arguing this film didn't just hurt the film series, but the franchise as a whole, something many longtime fans still resent the film for. A live-action TV series, which seemed to loosely follow the continuity of the movies, did come out four years after this movie, but lasted only for one season before it was canceled. It was not until Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) came along and proved that the Ninja Turtles had staying power well past their initial popularity.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Walker's death, where he falls to a watery grave without making a splash, apparently just disappearing while making a splash sound. After examining this failure, AVGN noted that if the crew didn't want to spend extra money on animating a splash, they could've cut to a shot of the turtles watching the plunge as an off-screen splash is heard.
  • The turtles and Splinter look a lot more cheaply made this time around (albeit, not as cheaply made as their Next Mutation counterparts). The turtles have mouths that move too quickly and robotically, visible seams where the neck meets the headpiece, eyeholes under the bandanas that are just slightly visible in half the film, giant overbites, and poorly blended spots on their bodies, giving them a more rubbery, cartoony look. Splinter is a very obvious robotic puppet as opposed to the advanced hand puppet of the first two films, and was seemingly only built from the waist up, as the viewer never sees his legs like in the first two^*his feet and tail are shown in one scene, however, when he's sitting in a chair cross-legged, though his legs are still obscured implying separate props were constructed. Behind-the-scenes material uploaded by All Effects does show they built a full-bodied puppet for the movie akin to the previous films. He also has barely-existent lip sync between the voice and the animatronic mouth movements. This is largely due to the Jim Henson's Creature Shop not returning, and a company less experienced in creature effects, Eric Allard's All Effects Company (who are better known for their robotic and on-set effects work in the likes of Short Circuit, Class of 1999 and Demolition Man), taking over instead.
    AVGN: "He looks like a puppet that should be used on Sesame Street!"
  • The first film used angles and puppetry techniques to pull of Mikey pulling his head into his shell. in this film, they just slide Leo's entire upper body down into a stationary shell. And it is very clear the actor was replaced with a full animatronic prop for the scene. The Undercrank applied to this moment doesn't help in the slightest.
  • When April and Kenshin switch places, Leo's arm and elbow is in the same shot (though slightly out of focus) and it jumps around a lot, switching position, revealing that a series of shots were spliced together to achieve the effect of April disappearing and Kenshin appearing in her place.
• Spiritual Successor: This movie felt more like an Usagi Yojimbo movie than it did a Ninja Turtles movie.
• Tear Jerker: The film comes close to one at the end when Mikey admits that he would rather stay in the feudal Japan of the distant past, which he actually finds preferable to the 20th century, where he has to live in a sewer. Raph and even Leo agree that they feel better off in the past than in their own present. It's a rare moment where Mikey steps outside his usual "party dude" persona and shows a different side of himself.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: As noted above, the suits were not handled by the Jim Henson's Creature Shop this time around, and the results speak for themselves. Only being a step above the ones from the 2014 film. Common complaints include their rubbery appearance and jerky facial animatronics and very visible eye slits under the masks. Their teeth are quite visibly larger than the previous film and baring them in anger or determination makes the turtles look like they have shit-eating grins instead. Splinter fares worse, being fully mechanical this time with movements that look outright broken.
• Vindicated by History: While it's still not considered a good film, and widely considered the worst film in the original trilogy, the reactions to the 2014 film have caused many to look back on this film and at the very least, no longer consider it the worst in the franchise. Plus, newer fans who go back and watch the older films have the benefit of knowing that the damage this film did to the franchise ultimately didn't last. Some fans (and franchise co-creators Eastman and Laird) have actually said that beyond the Special Effects Failure, this movie actually holds up better than the previous one, due to better martial arts action scenes, with the Turtles using their weapons and because of the more epic feel of the movie.

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