Disc Reviews

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Trilogy 4K Review

10th Dec 2025

All three original live-action Turtles movies leap up to 4K this December and they come packed with lots of lovely extra features!

Arrow Video have put together a colourful box set for this release, with reversable sleeves and three double-sided posters! There are also eight trading cards, a pizza loyalty card, a set of stickers and a booklet with writing on the films. Quite the package then, and three vintage films to revisit along the way.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The first film actually holds up pretty well. The story is acutely put together and features most of the main characters fans had come to know from the comic/cartoon series.

The four main heroes are immediately identifiable by the different coloured masks (Take those off and you’re fucked!), their weapon of choice, but also by personality traits. Strangely, this also seems to apply accents as well, but whatever! The main allure here is the Jim Henson Creature Workshop art on display. What was state-of-the-art then, still passes muster now. Of course, for the rebooted live action series they chose to go CGI (Sadly), so it makes seeing these films again a pleasure for the eyes.

Master Splinter is less of an achievement, but still looks passable by today’s standards. Oh, and does anyone remember Corey Haim randomly voicing Donatello? He skips out for part two, but comes back for the third one? Inconsistent or what? If you hate that, then just remember that Raphael was a different voice in each film.

The human element has no problems with Judith Hoag’s reporter April O’Neal, and street hoodlum Casey Jones (a vibrant Elias Koteas) partner up with the sewer-dwelling crime fighters and take on their greatest foe – the BBFC’s James Ferman, also known as the Shredder! Yes, Ferman was villain to many a movie back in the day, not just the video nasty, but also “fucking Kids Films” to make sure threat us dumb drone public members would not be seduced by sex, gore and violence. And in this case: Nunchaku. Yes, poor Michealangelo got stripped by the censors of his weapon of choice in not just the original, but also the second movie (wait until you see the sausages in TMNT 2, and Yes Ferman had issue with that too and cut them down! Sausages?).

Jokes aside, we get the films in uncut glory here and you’d have wonder what all the fuss was about, especially when two other members of the team wield either dual swords, or dual Sai which look altogether much more threatening.

So, the actual Shredder in the first two films appears to be played by a tiny man in dressed up American football gear (Giant shoulder pads, giant helmet) and given a gravely deep voice (cause he has to be somewhat of a threat), a bald sidekick who licks to kick the shit out of his own men and a horde of foot soldiers, called, er, the Foot (all but led by Sam Rockwell in an early role which the filmmakers take pride in pointing out now on the bonus materials).

The story zips along at a good pace and has enough action in it to keep fans tuned in. Sure, you can see the limitations of the suits, especially when there is action on screen. The jokes do swing wildly to the childish (but they are teenagers, right?), which almost comes to blows with the more serious darker edge of the tone. The fact that they retained the darker edge at all is a win. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles then was a success then and is worth revisiting now. It kicked off a live action trilogy after all.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze

Speaking of which, Part 2 drops a lot in favour of currying favour with kids and the people in charge. Bizarrely, they dropped the lead actress and replaced her for the next two movies with Paige Turco (Who is fine, it was just an odd thing to do. Even Hoag doesn’t have an answer why she was replaced). A new director came in as did a much more colourful tone. Yes, the sequel dumbs down, adds in more creatures (again, astonishing work.

To give the film some props, well first of all they hired David Warner! Why? Don’t know! Probably had young kids at the time, but he’s here and he’s never bad. Doesn’t do a heck of a lot except get pushed around by Shredder (Yes, he’s sadly back, as is the bald sidekick). But you do also get the new puppet players, Tokka and Rahzar (No, not rocksteady and Bebop). These two are mildly diverting, but further proof of the Henson workshop doing great work for the screen.

On the middle side of things, it is as aforementioned a bit brighter. There is another sidekick added to the team in the form of a pizza delivery guy who knows martial arts. Hmmm. And the humour is definitely raised higher than before. Then the third act rolls around and it all goes to pot. The action is lacklustre, the finale isn’t particularly satisfying, and then Vanilla Ice (God bless him) rocks up for a stage performance.

To say the film was rushed (it was a year to the month of the previous films release) is an understatement. And they slowed it down before the next one, not that that helped matters.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time

Two years later and we get the closing chapter of the trilogy, not like it feels like it, it just happed to be the last one they did at the time. We at least get a returning Elias Koteas pulling double duty as Casey Jones in the present, and as a new character featured in the past in feudal Japan where the Turtles find themselves transported.

It’s a lark, not to be taken seriously. And despite the film’s budget being close to the second film’s, the Henson Workshop abandoned ship on this one and it was left to another company to come in and do the turtles and you can just tell straight away that this is cheaper and less effective. It still sort of works, but this sort of thing should never go backwards, less you want your audience to turn on you; like they did with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. This isn’t that level of bad, but it’s still stepping back.

Don’t expect this one to be on your rewatch list.

Extras:

Each disc comes with a new set of extras. Plenty of interviews with crew, mainly, but the occasional cast member from some of the films. The highlights are the people who worked with the Henson workshop, the players of the turtles themselves, Judith Hoag and Steve Barron. Everyone there gets to dive deep on their participation.

Each film also comes with a director commentary, and lucky for the films, the directors are sufficiently proud of their work.

The restoration work is fine, but there is still an amount of grain left over. Fans will make of that what they will. But this is a box set for collectors and fans of the series and Arrow have had a decent swing at bringing it all up to date and it is one of their key releases for December this year, so might make that ideal nerd gift for your nerd friend!

Steven Hurst

3-DISC 4K ULTRA HD LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

• Brand new 4K restorations of all three films by Arrow Films
• 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentations in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) of all three films
• Perfect bound collector’s booklet in the style of a Roy’s Pizza menu, featuring new writing on the films by Simon Ward, John Torrani and John Walsh
• Reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matt Frank and Roberto Rivera Padro
• Double-sided foldout poster featuring original artwork from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the “Map of the Kappa Realm”, a stylised re-creation of the ancient scroll that appears in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
• Two additional double-sided foldout posters featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matt Frank and Roberto Rivera Padro
• Eight character trading cards
• Roy’s Pizza loyalty card
• Four character stickers

DISC 1 – TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES

• 4K restoration of the film from the original camera negative by Arrow Films approved by director Steve Barron
• Two lossless stereo mixes (original theatrical mix and alternate “warrior” mix) plus newly remixed Dolby Atmos audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Brand new commentary with director Steve Barron
• Brand new commentary with comic book expert and podcast host Dave Baxter
• Rising When We Fall, a newly filmed interview with director Steve Barron
• Turtle Talk, a newly filmed interview with actors Robbie Rist, Brian Tochi, Ernie Reyes Jr and Kenn Scott
• O’Neil on the Beat, a newly filmed interview with actor Judith Hoag
• Wet Behind the Shells, a newly filmed interview with producer Simon Fields
• Beneath the Shell, a newly filmed interview with puppet coordinator and second unit director Brian Henson, and Rob Tygner, puppeteer for both Splinter and Leonardo
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turf, a newly filmed featurette exploring the film’s locations in New York City and North Carolina
• Alternate UK version with unique footage prepared for censorship reasons, presented in 4K via seamless branching
• Alternate ending from VHS workprint
• Alternate Korean footage
• Theatrical trailers
• Image gallery

DISC 2 – TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES II: THE SECRET OF THE OOZE

• 4K restoration of the film from the 35mm interpositive by Arrow Films
• Original lossless stereo audio and optional DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Brand new commentary with director Michael Pressman moderated by filmmaker Gillian Wallace Horvat
• John Du Prez to the Rescue, a newly filmed interview with composer of the trilogy John Du Prez
• Hard Cores, a newly filmed interview with Kenny Wilson, mould shop supervisor at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop
• The Secret of the Edit, a newly filmed interview with editor Steve Mirkovich
• Behind the Shells, an archive featurette from 1991
• Theatrical trailer
• Image gallery

DISC 3 – TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES III

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Trilogy is out on 4K Blu-Ray December 15th

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Trilogy 4K Review

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