Sunday, August 3, 2014

The Similarities and Differences Between Warriors of Virtue (1997) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)



This Friday, a movie is going to be released into theaters that plays with my childhood in a major way.  That movie is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, directed by Jonathan Liebesman.  It is a reboot or reimagining or whatever you want to call it of the 1980s comic, television, movie, and action figure mega-franchise.  I grew up watching the movies on repeat.  The action, comedy, and special effects transfixed my mind as a child.  I still have a fond memory of the film series and I own a DVD set of the movies that came in a case designed to be a manhole cover.
                                              
That is why this week’s movie is one that had the same basic idea as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies.  People dressed as animals and used martial arts.  And that brings us to Warriors of Virtue, a movie about a child meeting up with five virtuous kangaroos and helping to defeat the evil Komodo.  Komodo wants to destroy the kangaroos’ home so that he can remain youthful.

Now that you know the basic premise of Warriors of Virtue, it seems only fitting that we go through the similarities and differences between the two franchises.  The differences will be noticeably longer, but I will pair them up with a similarity because that is what I feel like doing.  Let us undertake this adventure thusly.  Be warned, there will be some spoilers.

Similarity: A team of like-species animals fight evil.
Differences: In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, the animals are turtles.  The title deems that so, not that all titles tell the truth.  There are four turtles.  Each one is named after a classical artist.  You can tell them apart by their colour eyeband, weapon, and personality.  In Warriors of Virtue, the team consists of five kangaroos.  They vary in looks.  Each kangaroo is defined by their weapon, element, and their virtue.  They are given Chinese names.

Similarity: The team looks up to a wise, old mentor figure.
Differences: Splinter is the mentor in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  He is an old rat that was mutated along with the turtles.  He ends up in danger during the first movie but makes it out okay.  Master Chung is the mentor in Warriors of Virtue.  He is an old man living in the Land of Tao.  He ends up in danger during the first movie and dies at the hands of Komodo.

Similarity: The team of animals uses martial arts.
Differences: The stunt work in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles relies on the physical prowess of the people in the turtle suits.  They tumble, flip, punch, and kick as a normal person would.  There is little to no outside help for what they are doing.  Warriors of Virtue, on the other hand, heavily relies on wirework for the stunts.  The kangaroos fly across sets when they jump.  They flip and spin in mid-air.  They float around scenery, defying gravity.

Similarity: A human youth helps the animals defeat the villain.
Differences: In Warriors of Virtue, Ryan Jeffers automatically sides with the kangaroos after arriving and hearing the story of what Komodo has been doing.  He is a good kid who does good things.  The youth in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is Danny Pennington, a New York City delinquent.  He does not always work with the turtles.  Instead, he betrays them at some points by leading the Foot Clan to their whereabouts.  He ends up helping the turtles in the end though.

Similarity: A female aids the animals in their quest.
Differences: The female in Warriors of Virtue is a princess from Tao who ends up turning to the side of Komodo and then dies near the end of the film.  In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, we get introduced to April O’Neil, who befriends the turtles and survives the entirety of the movie.  April O’Neil is in both of the sequels, as well as the animated film and the reboot.

Five of these similarity/difference comparisons seems like enough for the time being.  If I keep going, you might get annoyed by the writing format.  Those are also the main similarities between the movies.  They are very vague and general, but they are similarities all the same and needed to be noted.  The two movies are similar in their basic premise though quite different in their execution of the material.

Do the similarities make Warriors of Virtue into a movie that I will take joy in returning to one day?  Nope.  Not at all.  Do the differences help to make the movie stand out and be better?  A little bit; however, it is not enough to salvage what ended up being a boring experience.  Much more attention was paid to the Ryan Jeffers character as well as the kangaroo leader Tsun than any of the other characters.  This meant that I didn’t invest in or care about anyone else in the movie.  Plus, the ending negated everything that had happened in the movie and was extremely abrupt.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will always have a place in my heart.  Being a movie I grew up on, and a movie I still enjoy each time I see it, I will always care about it.  Warriors of Virtue will not end up with that same love and adoration.  It is a movie very similar to TMNT in concept, yet vastly different in the final product.  That’s filmmaking though.  Similar ideas with varied results.  Sometimes they are good and sometimes they are bad.  I thought Warriors of Virtue was bad.  That’s just me though.
There are a bunch of notes this week, so here you go:

  • An actor named Michael J. Anderson was in Warriors of Virtue.  He was also in a movie called Tiptoes that got covered a while back.
  • Garry Chalk showed up in Warriors of Virtue.  He was also in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2.
  • Do you remember Monster in the Closet?  Jack Tate was in that and Warriors of Virtue.
  • There’s also Jay Brazeau in Warriors of Virtue.  He showed up in House of the Dead for a bit.
  • Are there any similarities I missed when writing about Warriors of Virtue?  Tell me about them in the comments and maybe I’ll make an amendment.
  • I’m about to put together the schedule for weeks 101-125 of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I’m always looking for suggestions of what I should include in the schedule.  If you have any suggestions, put them in the comments or tell me on Twitter.

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