The first live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, released March 30, 1990, was a high point for many of us during childhood.
Who can forget Corey Feldman voicing Donatello? Or the ridiculous(ly) advanced (for the time) lip-synching they pulled off with the turtle costumes?
But what really stands out to us is how the version of New York City in the movie feels so different from the one we inhabit now.
In a lot of ways, the antagonist in the film isn't just Shredder, or the Foot Clan, but NYC on the whole.
The introduction of the film tracks April O'Neil's reporting on the recent crime wave terrorizing NYC, and the viewer is led to believe that the entire city was ready to reach through the VCR, out of the TV and kidnap, rob, or rough you up.
So, we're looking at five ways the NYC we see in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is drastically different, or at the very least just less watered down than the NYC of today.
1. The very first shot in the movie is of the Twin Towers
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This was true for almost any movie set in NYC until 9/11. It was extremely common for stock shots of the skyline prominently featuring the Twin Towers to signal the setting was in the city.
After 9/11 though, a lot of these shots were edited out of films that were replayed on television. There was even a controversy surrounding this practice with episodes of Friends.
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At the time of the TMNT movie release, the initial terrorist attempt on the World Trade Center in 1992 hadn't yet been perpetrated. The idea of terrorism wasn't what it is now-- by any means.
2. People still bought newspapers at newsstands
Another common piece of footage you'll see in throwback movies set in NYC is people buying newspapers at news stands. This was before the age of smart phones. There were no online media outlets.
The internet barely existed back then, so the main place to get your news was in fact the news stand. Nowadays it's kind of strange to see people reading the paper, unless it's AM New York, or something else handed to you by people at the subway.
3. Pickpockets-- are these real?
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Yes! New York State combined crime index for larceny-theft and burglary is 744,825 in 1990. Remember that's for the whole state, but it gives you a rough answer-- yes, pickpockets were (down to 343,116 in 2013) very real.
The Foot Clan sneaking around the city stealing anything that's not nailed down isn't so far fetched. TMNT came on the heels of a real life giant crime spree amounting to the highest crime rates in decades.
There may be an exaggerated feel to the constant theft going on in the film, but it's not too far off for an artistic representation of a real life trend.
4. Michelango uses a phone book to order Domino's pizza on a pay phone
Before everyone's Google contacts, Facebook friends, and all other contact lists were synched on various devices, people used to need a way to look up phone numbers. The natural solution was a book that contained every phone number you could want. They called it a "phone book."
They were often divided between commercial listings and personal phone listings. If you were famous or paranoid, you could request not to have your phone number listed. Imagine such a thing...
Now, we still have pay phones around the City in some places. They're nowhere near as common as they used to be.
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This is why buildings that haven't seen major interior remodeling often have little booths built into the walls-- they used to be for private phone conversations. Now they're just for whatever sketchy purposes you may need a little booth for.
Let us not forget, in TMNT, the pizza only cost $13 for a large with multiple toppings. Cheap! Even better, Mikey got away with only giving the Domino's delivery guy $10 because it was three minutes late.
That's a thing places used to do. If you didn't get your food in a timely manner you didn't have to pay as much. Now you're lucky if GrubHub even has your back.
5. That 'Jose Canseco bat' joke...
Jose Canseco was a famous baseball player who would later be a Yankees outfielder and designated hitter. A lot of people liked him, and many more didn't.
In retrospect, Raphael's joke about the worthlessness of Canseco's signature series bats makes a lot of sense, because Canseco has since admitted to using steroids. Also, he was playing on the Oakland Athletics at the time of the film.
Naturally, Raphael wouldn't have anything good to say about him unless he was a Yankee, or maybe a Met.
But at the time, as in while the movie was being written and shot in the late 80s, accusations of his steroid use hadn't yet come around. So it's even funnier to know that Canseco would later play for the Yankees and the writers were onto something with the idea of trashing him.
Check out 10 Trends That Prove the 90s Will Live On Forever.
[Feature Image Courtesy: Mix 1049]