The Reel Rejects - TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 3 (1993) IS NOSTALGIC TIME TRAVEL FUN!! MOVIE REVIEW!!

Episode Date: August 17, 2025

THE LAST RONIN?! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III Full Movie Reaction Watch Along:   / thereelrejects   LIQUID IV: Visit http://www.liquidiv.com & use Promo Code: REJECTS Support The Channel By Getting Some REEL REJECTS Aparrel! https://www.rejectnationshop.com/ With the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back in theatres for the 35th Anniversary, Aaron & Johnald are BACK to give their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III Reaction, Recap, Commentary, Analysis & Full Movie Spoiler Review!! Aaron Alexander & John Humphrey team up for their Reaction, Review, Breakdown, and Spoiler Discussion of the 1993 action/adventure sequel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III! This third installment in the live-action TMNT movie series follows Leonardo (voiced by Brian Tochi – Revenge of the Nerds, Police Academy 3), Michelangelo (voiced by Robbie Rist – The Brady Bunch, Balto), Donatello (voiced by Corey Feldman – The Goonies, Stand by Me), and Raphael (voiced by Tim Kelleher – The Road to Wellville, First Kid) as they are magically transported to 17th-century Japan after April O’Neil (Paige Turco – The 100, NYPD Blue) acquires a mysterious scepter. Teaming up with rebel leader Mitsu (Vivian Wu – The Last Emperor, The Joy Luck Club), the Turtles must help overthrow the corrupt Lord Norinaga (Sab Shimono – Waterworld, Pacific Overtures) while Casey Jones (Elias Koteas – The Thin Red Line, Shooter) protects their modern-day allies. Featuring samurai sword fights, time travel chaos, hilarious fish-out-of-water moments, and the Turtles’ trademark pizza-loving humor, TMNT III is packed with famous scenes like the Turtles in samurai armor, horseback battles, and the final showdown for Japan’s freedom. Follow Aaron On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealaaronalexander/?hl=en Intense Suspense by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Support The Channel By Getting Some REEL REJECTS Apparel! https://www.rejectnationshop.com/ Follow Us On Socials:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reelrejects/  Tik-Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@reelrejects?lang=en Twitter: https://x.com/reelrejects Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheReelRejects/ Music Used In Ad:  Hat the Jazz by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Happy Alley by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... POWERED BY @GFUEL Visit https://gfuel.ly/3wD5Ygo and use code REJECTNATION for 20% off select tubs!! Head Editor: https://www.instagram.com/praperhq/?hl=en Co-Editor: Greg Alba Co-Editor: John Humphrey Music In Video: Airport Lounge - Disco Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Ask Us A QUESTION On CAMEO: https://www.cameo.com/thereelrejects Follow TheReelRejects On FACEBOOK, TWITTER, & INSTAGRAM:  FB:  https://www.facebook.com/TheReelRejects/ INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/reelrejects/ TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/thereelrejects Follow GREG ON INSTAGRAM & TWITTER: INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/thegregalba/ TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/thegregalba Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thank you to Liquid IV for sponsoring this video. More on them in just a bit. All right. Now let's do it. It's for the Foot Clan. Well, we did it. We traversed all of time and space. Horse stunts were staged by Danny Virtue.

Shouts out to Danny. Leave a like on the video if you've made it to this point. Also, don't forget to subscribe, ring that bell. That's right. If Aaron was a ninja turtle, he would have the bell. I have a ninja turtle. And big thanks to the folks over at Prepper for slicing and dicing, the true ninjas, the true mutant ninjas of the Reject Nation, chopping these highlights together, getting them across all of time and space for you to enjoy. Pizza slicing them here, just so you can see them.

All right, gang. Oh. We are going to. jump into this we got a few questions from our friends over at the patreon our royal rejects to start off our review yeah buddy but but uh but uh let's just just just a quick thought just like how you feeling quick moment just just here in the afterglow of the immediate moment after glow of the immediate moment you know i the only thing i knew about this movie is this was not people's favorite turtle movie and coming out of it you know i still had fun it wasn't a perfect movie

and i could probably say it's my least favorite but it wasn't god awful and it had a sweet moments had some fun fights had some interesting logic or lack thereof but you know at the end of the day as long as we're having the turtles we're having a totally good time and yeah i had I had some fun with this one and you know we had some life lessons about CPR that was a great moment all the stuff with Yoshi I really

enjoyed all the stuff was really fun but yeah I'm sorry they're playing the friggin Tarzan boy song which apparently was a very big hit in the 80s that I only discovered recently from a YouTube video about one hit wonders

but I'm just having a moment that this has appeared twice in this movie Anyway, I'm sorry. Interesting. But yeah, overall, this was all right, you know, and I still love the Turtles. I'm very curious to know the behind the scenes about this movie and like what happened for making this one the way it is. Because this feels like an elongated episode of a Turtles TV show episode, then it does a movie. So, yeah, it's, it's very. very totally different from the first two each one of them is is different in its own right i still think the first one's probably the strongest the second one's the most fun um but this one has fun to be had as well man but uh yeah that's that's how i feel coming out of it how do you feeling i would agree yeah it's like it's not the best one and i feel like yeah they do kind of descend in order of quality but this still had a ton of stuff to appreciate about it was still fun i was

still happy to be here like there are a lot of obvious ways you could make this better rounded i think but yeah generally speaking i mean like this as a trilogy could have turned out so much worse like this could have been a more major drop-off and uh you know i can imagine probably at the time it may have been viewed that way but uh i appreciated a lot about this experience uh especially the production values like i think the thing about something like this is like the fact that they chose to go

feudal japan for this is like kind of neat and that forces you in the 90s to like, you know, go all out on locations and, you know, period accurate or at least something approaching period-esque, you know, garb and, you know, props and things like that. So, yeah, you know, I had a good amount of fun even still. Let's start off the cues. Let's see. We got comment from Bubble Troy here. Thank you for Bubble Troy, chiming in.

bubble Troy says I hope TMNT is a part of the Turtles watch list TMNT is the sort of fourth movie in this line of films actually there is a TMNT what 2007 the animated movie there is a reaction to that on this channel was that me and Andrew I don't know I've never seen it though well maybe we can revisit it or something like that not making any promises but uh there is one reaction up right now maybe we'll get another one up in the future

uh all right Resonances. Resonance Zed for John and Aaron. Thank you so much for chiming in. While I still enjoy the movie for what it is, especially since time travel movies are a guilty pleasure of mine. Same Zies. I felt a bit led down by this sequel. The new antagonist wasn't as memorable and the Foot Clan played a minor role. How would you rank this trilogy? Also, what do you think of the redesigned costumes? So yeah, definitely would rank them one. two, three, you know, I think, yeah. The first one was kind of magical, even, you know, in this day and age to behold. You're just like, wow, understood the assignment. As you said, the second one, really fun, really enjoyable. And because, you know, I grew up with the cartoon going more cartoon for the sequel, despite the creators not wanting that, made sense to me anyway. I get the choice. And I think they did well embodying the choice. There were certain things about that movie that could have been a bit more smoothed out or fleshed. out or rounded or whatever and same here i thought the conceit was very charming i like the you know feudal japan setting i think you could have done more with casey jones in the present i would

have enjoyed a bit more of him and kenshin too i feel like kenshin ought to have been an actual character i feel like he should have had some kind of story in the present rather like i forgot about him part way through when the present story became more about kacey and the other guys which I also thought was fun I just thought yeah you could have done I felt like the present day stuff cutting back and forth was an afterthought that yeah

could have been a lot more interesting or fun or whatever and I thought there'd be some sort of narrative tie for why the guy in the past looked like Casey and why Casey's here but they never did anything with that really yeah like it's kind of neat in a time traveling like oh distant ancestor kind of way but even the way that character

you know unfolds is a little undercooked you're like okay so he's like he's a prisoner so you like the whole spy thing is interesting but you know you meet him and you think he's on the up and up and he's like talking to april and he's like i want to go to new york and you're like okay cool like they're starting to bond or whatever

and then he's the double agent and then at a certain point i was like oh maybe he's actually going to double cross the freaking walker guy but then no he just kind of falls out of his good graces and then gets lumped in with april and the turtles and yeah like that could have just been better for the fact that you did bother to bring back Elias Cotayas and give him two roles. It felt like he, I'm glad

he was here, he's fun to watch, but like both of those felt undercooked in a way and it felt like a pointed thing to include. It's kind of wasted. Yeah, not in a way that's like horrible, you know, like I'm not mad about it, but I'm also like, this clearly could have easily

been improved upon. And yeah, like I thought Kenchin could have had some kind of substantial storyline with Master Splinter or join him in with the other guys learning hockey and stuff like that.

You know, I don't know. And the foot client, like, you know, I don't mind in a time travel movie like this, things being like a little loose or not having to be like completely like punctuatedly connected to things. So like the foot being more minor

is like that's kind of okay with me. And I did I guess expect because in the scroll you see a guy who looks like Shredder. So I was like, oh, is this Walker guy going to, you know, I don't know, take some turn and become like a horrible, even though Shredder's not a white guy, but I don't know. Yeah, there's a lot of like mumbo-chumbo in here that definitely feels like they're going like, oh, time travel stuff is big right now. We should do that. And, uh, yeah, I think like all the stuff with the turtles doing the seven samurai thing is nice. You know, like that's, and that's the most important stuff I guess to get right in a Ninja Turtles movie is like making sure the turtles are fun and their turtle adventure is fun. um i thought the designs were pretty good still i mean like there's some trade off obviously yeah it's noticeably different but yeah some stuff like some of the facial emotions look look good like like the eyebrow raising and stuff but other parts look a little weird like leo's teeth i don't know they're just like really freaky to me like are a kid watching this

so you'd scare me sure sure but yeah i don't know if uh they're pretty mobile in all the suits but maybe something about them seemed a little bit smaller which made them more mobile in this one yeah i don't know i'd have to go back and like compare and contrast but yeah it has some pros and the cons the neck probably looked the best out of the three of them yeah i think they did that thing where like yeah the the helmets or the masks whatever you want to call them have like an extended sort of neck bit that goes down and then the costume the body part probably has an extended neck bit that goes up so it's like a pretty simple fix but it worked pretty well and yeah they gave them more like you know muscular in the neck area and their collar bones yeah yeah like the fighting still looks pretty good like i think they did wisely to you know really capture a lot of the stunts and i thought a lot of that stuff was fun uh and yeah like i liked the shogun-esque quality that this went for in that um yeah you know you have a slightly historical bent to this and i thought that's a good choice i liked the attention to detail on again the sets and the locations was really lovely it made me want to jump into it like i did get why they wanted to stay even though that was a weird

tonal shift and a weird thing that didn't feel really like it was percolating throughout the rest of the movie it felt like a very sort of like last minute thing and then all of a sudden we're in this dramatic like will they won't they are they going to come back at all uh despite the the strangeness of that i did feel the sort of i understood the desire to want to to stay. And I think if they had made that more of a thread throughout the movie of them being like, you know, I really like it here, you know, despite the burnt pizza. So yeah, like, it's weird. There's a lot of stuff that's fun in games that they achieve. There's a lot of stuff that I think they could have easily made better. And I think I guess with the villains, it's like I like the

show gun thing and I like the fact that they tried to go for a slightly more historically reasonable. Yeah, you've got these traders who are here and who are, you know, trying to manipulate the daimio or you know they're clearly two self-interested parties you know kind of dubiously dealing with one another but i think it could have used uh i think in a step an upgrade somewhere in the cart like if you'd had some kind of crescendo with the antagonists that involved some kind of equal opposite comic bookie type like the last movie we had the mutant to the the the turtle and the wolf guy the snapping turtle and the wolf and in the previous movie to that we had shredder you know and so this one is just like oh it's just a bunch of guys and it's just this guy who's a jerk and he's got cannons and like on one hand i'm like okay neat we're we're going in the opposite direction than something supernatural however in this context it feels like it might have been more appropriate to introduce some kind of heightened supernatural or sci-fi element to the physical antagonist's thingy somewhere because you do have a mystical

macuffin that transports people through time like I would believe in this universe that they could conjure up some demon or whatever or an ancestor of shredder or whatever but yeah it's weird like yeah there's a bunch of stuff you could say about things you could have done differently to make this great

but it's pretty fine like I had pretty good time with what they did do you know yeah yeah it could have been a little bit more mystical a little bit more magical you could have cleared up the rules of how the sceptre thing works sure but you know it's who it's at the end of the day it's a it's a movie marketed towards children so we're not going to be super critical about the logic of it um but still even even with

that being the intention it's still really fun though minimal pizza in this one minimal pizza they they doubled down on the pizza from the intro in the last one then throughout the movie but we had one pizza show up in this movie and it was the burnt pizza they should have friggin in the present taking those guys out for pizza they should have Dude, Casey, what the hell? Yeah, like, again, the funning games could have been funner and gamier. But, yeah, I do like the turtles help in the village. I thought that was nice.

That was a good one. Nice turn. So thank you, Resonance. Let's move on to Rejignation. It's that weird time of the year where you're still holding on to the end of summer. But as it's wrapping up, you're also kind of getting ready to go back into a routine. My routine, long filming days, a lot of editing sessions, a lot of meetings. And not much time to think about the basics, like hydration.

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bracket okay yeah so geriatric uh radioactive um um samurai samurai i um nirnobos there's already samurai pizza cat so um m m m a uh uh uh like a gerbil me a gerbil i have one i'm trying to think of the acronym for it so okay okay because so all i have right now are adlex adolescent axolotles adolescent what what axelotles are no dude look how do you even spell that? They're awesome. What do I type? How do I spell?

Text to speak. Axoaddle. Axo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o. Axolotle. You don't know what axolotos are, dude? You guys know what axolottos are? All right. I'm going with, oh, these guys.

Yeah. If you can see that. I don't know if you can because it's out of focus and I'm not going to mess the focus up. Okay. Secret Agent Adolescent Axelotles Okay, cool

Yeah, that's what I want to be I'm going with Yeah, geriatric, radioactive MMA Capabaras Okay Some Capabara, you know Ninja fighters

MMA fighters You some Capi Bar karate Yeah Yeah Or Capi Bar Kung Fu Yeah

Okay Yeah It'd be kind of nice I think Yeah Oh yeah I can see it do i think yeah there's so many animals in the animal kingdom this is the kind of question that

is designed to cook my brain forever me thinking of what the perfect answer would be i want to be an acrobatic adolescent acolato that's me there's no way i'm gonna beat that jesus christ assignment understood well thank you guys for chiming in with your questions while i continue to stew on the animal kingdom here any other stray thoughts or feelings about Ninja Turtles 3? I think it was an interesting and

bold new direction to put them back in time and change up the formula from what we know the first two to be. It's going to build and Tedness of that. Yeah, yeah. It was very cool in that regard. I appreciated them taking some time

to really try to teach kids lessons in this movie, you know, like harnessing your anger, the importance of CPR, Not growing up too fast. Not growing up too fast, you know, take it easy. Enjoy being a kid. Yeah, I appreciate the goofiness of it, the lightheartedness of the turtles,

even though it's something that's fairly consistent with all of them. But yeah, I think there's, I see why they wanted to go for this plot. I think some stuff could have been a little bit more refined, but overall, still a pretty fun time. Yeah, not a bad call, not a bad idea. And we got a little bit more of the special. turtle specific weaponry in this movie which was cool

and I like the way that they definitely if they did make an effort in the second movie to be more conscientious of the violence and stuff like that I thought it was a solid choice to portray the you know traitors and their guns as the sinister force

as you know the villainous presence in the movie and you know even the daimio is like no I don't need your guns and stuff and then you know eventually when he's desperate he turns to that so you know yeah I thought this thematically in a lot of ways

at least had its heart in the right place and yeah the stuff with Yoshi was very sweet the CPR seat was like honestly very nice really quick before we get out of here I just want to see I was going to say you're not rotten tomatoing are you right okay I'm going to look up just

real quick to see if there's any interesting triv before we shut it down but Yeah, I'm gearing up my rotten tomatoes brain right now. Because the previous ones didn't get amazing tomato scores, did they? I don't remember them getting amazing tomato scores, but I'm going to look up those as well, so we have comparisons. Back in the 90s when, you know, IMDB was invented.

Then we had enough internet. Let's see. Starting in this film, here's a piece of trivia, all effects company took over and worked on the animatronic effects for the turtles and Splinter costumes. Hence, this creature shop was a company who worked on the mutant creatures in the previous two movies. I'm curious. So who's that cover again?

All effects company is the group. Let's see. In the original comics, the Times Scepter is normally associated with Renet, the Time Apprentice of Lord Simultaneous. She often encounters Savanti Romero. None of these characters appear in this film. Damn. Just their magic mcuffin. Yeah, and this film was originally going to be followed by a fourth installment to the franchise TMNT, the next mutation.

the next mutation. In this concept, the ooze that transformed the turtles in Splinter was still in their bodies causing a much more drastic second mutation. Another plan was discussed

to add a fifth turtle named after the iconic comic artist Jack Kirby. However, the project got stuck in development and plans for a fourth theatrical live action movie fell apart.

The concept of having turtles mutating the creatures did see the light of day in the new mutation saga of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 cartoon. Later, the live action next mutation installment moved to television in a live action series produced by sabon titled ninja turtles the next mutation in 1997 this series delivered on the promise of a fifth turtle but changed it to a female turtle named venus demylo yeah okay okay okay okay okay yeah interesting

fascinating okay this is the last one I'll do okay the concept for this movie is loosely based on a story called masks from issues 46 and 47 of the original Mirage comics. The story features the Turtles and Renate traveling back to feudal Japan to fight an evil shogun and engage in the samurai battles. Okay. That's pretty cool. Okay. That's pretty cool. Okay. And last but not

at least, do I'm going to tell you the previous turtle ones? Yeah, yeah, what did we get for? Turtles one, critics gave it a 43. Audience gave it an 81. Okay. Turtles two. The audience there. Turtles two, 36 for critics. 67 for audiences you get a guess turtles three 25% for critics so a 30% for critics 30%

30% for critics for critics okay do you want to guess audience or do you want to lock in 51% audience okay critics 19% damn I was way too high I'm going back to to 25. You're optimistic. Okay, for audience, you're going 25? I was very optimistic on that, yeah, going 46% audience. Still very optimistic, 33.

33, all right, fine. Well, my critics score guess was close to the audience won, so I'll take that. I will warp that into a victory for myself. Yes, sir. Well, gang, thank you for joining us on this turtle journey. This has been a real joy.

all three of these, regardless of where you'd rank them, have been a lot of fun. And it's been a joy getting to just trip down this 90s time capsule with y'all. So, yeah, leave us your thoughts on any of the questions we answer. Leave us your thoughts on the movie. A lot of fun character actors, great production designs, some fun action and whatnot. Definitely a lot to appreciate.

So, yeah, be well. And, uh, cowabunga, dudes. Get some pizza. Love being a turtle. Go Ninja Go. All that stuff. Watch out for shredder. You've seen the movie War Dogs, two guys, one laptop, and a $300 million arms deal,

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