CraveOnline: What would you say about the ones that aren’t as popular? Like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III. Do you have any thoughts about why that is? Do you have any regrets about that, or do you still think that’s a pretty solid flick?
Kevin Eastman: Actually I sort of put, in the original series, Turtles 1 as my favorite, Turtles 3 as my second favorite. Nothing against Turtles 2. I enjoy Ernie Reyes and I enjoyed a lot of aspects of Turtles 2, but it was more like a version of the cartoon than it was a movie for all ages, like the [first] movie accomplished. Turtles 3 I fhought was just a great way to take them out of the city in this time-traveling story, something we’d done in the original comics, and to me I enjoyed that story quite a lot.
So with each of these things, much like we’d try out in the comic books on a much smaller scale, we’d try to take them to other places and see what we could discover about the other characters on the journey, and hopefully tell a good story in the meantime. That was the intent for pretty much every version we’ve done of the Turtles, to keep the heart and soul there. I know I’ve used that [expression] a lot but it’s like I want to keep the characters the way I originally envisioned them, but take them to other places and push the boundaries a little bit.
You know, when I was a kid I saw that movie and I was actually really bummed because I was hoping Usagi Yojimbo would be in it, after watching the cartoons.
[Laughs.] One of my favorites. You know Stan Sakai, who created Usagi, is not only a fantastic person in his own right but also a wonderful creator. The minute we met Stan and were exposed to Usagi we had to do a crossover, much before Usagi was introduced in the original cartoon series and even the crossovers we did in the original comic books were just huge. I would love to have had in there. Maybe we’ll see him in a future movie! Ahaha!
That would be cool. Are you actually hinting at something or are you just being hopeful?
You know, when we look at the IDW comic series I’m doing or working with Nickelodeon on the animated series, we look back on our personal favorite characters and we see if there’s a way to fit them into the storyline and make them all work, not only for the story but for the fans and all the other creatives and all those characters. I’m hinting only in the sense that we would love for that to happen and we’re having discussions and let’s see if we can make it possible, because that would be awesome.
It would be totally awesome.
Yeah. [Laughs.]
“When that character came out we’d go, ‘This is either going to work great or fans are going to hate it.'”
Is there any character from the lore that you don’t think we’re ever likely to see again? Like, “Eh, we don’t need to see more Mondo Gecko,” or I dunno, however?
We just introduced…! [Laughs.] We just introduced Mondo Gecko in the new IDW series.
Oh, then never mind.
No, it’s funny because he’s been hugely popular with the fan. You know, Pigeon Pete, and sometimes the other toys that we’ve done in the early 90s resonated with the early series, the Archie series or even the animated TV show. But there were great qualities in them, and again, we always strip it down to… if we can create a new mutant, create a new character, or at the end of the day pull out an existing character and make it work in the existing storyline and make it work as a good story, we’ll try it.
We’ve tried a few things in the past that haven’t worked out. I know a lot of fans don’t like Venus de Milo from the live-action series but I’ve never minded her that much. I worked hard on that series. But that was one of the least favorite versions that fans had of this. You probably won’t see Venus in any new versions of the Turtles any time soon, but who knows who else will pop up since there was a lot of fun stuff back in the day.
It’s a little hard to criticize the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles given how popular and successful they are. It seems like you did everything right more or less, but is there anything – looking back – that you regret, or that you feel you had to compromise on?
You know, I have to say no. Only in the sense that from the original black and white comics books and to all of the original versions of the Turtles, I think Pete and I worked on easily almost 300 episodes of the cartoon show, and all of the original live-action movies and all the different versions and there were qualities… The intent was always the same and there were qualities that we wish we could have done better, there were things that might not have panned out the way we envisioned them, but yeah… There’s certainly no regrets.
I can’t think of a particular character that comes to mind and think, “Oh man, I wish we hadn’t have done that.” [Laughs.] Because it’s the ones that you… We actually put characters out that, like Mondo Gecko, when that character came out we’d go, “This is either going to work great or fans are going to hate it.” And it ended up being up the middle. Half the people that saw him really liked him and the other half were like, “Uh… we could have lived without that one.” But the purity of the intent was always the same.
I’m sure you have the inside line on what the next movie is about, but ignoring that… ideally, what would you want the next movie to focus on and look at?
What was so great for the intent for the movie that came out this year was that we wanted to strip it down to the very basics: the Turtles, Splinter, their origin story, the Shredder introduction of course, which was from the first Turtles comic book, and April, which was [originally] in Turtles too. So we wanted to make that the foundation on which we could build everything off from and keep the story simple enough and have fun with it and tell a good story.
For the second one of course I’d love to see Casey Jones and more mutants, be it Bebop and Rocksteady or some other characters from the Turtles Universe, and Krang. Krang, I’d love to see him. He played a key role in the original series and the cartoon show, and he’s just a great guy who is just so much fun to play with. Look what we’ve done with him in the animated series, in the IDW comic book series. I think there’s a lot of room to have fun with Krang. [Laughs.] So I’d like to see all those things! A bigger, better version of The Turtles.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
