Arrow Video’s highly-anticipated limited edition release of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trilogy 4K UHD set will emerge from the sewers on 12/16, but we here at Conskipper have been poring over every wonderful detail of the set over the past few weeks. This product is simply the definitive edition of all three original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films, chock full of impressive transfers and engaging bonus features to satisfy even the pickiest of turtleheads!
I grew up in the height of Turtlemania, so these films all hold a special place in my heart. Even as an adult, I particularly enjoy the the first film and its sequel. There have been several DVD and Blu-Ray releases over the years, but they’ve tended to be a little fuzzy and washed out. Going over the trilogy again with Arrow’s new 4K UHD set was like night and day. All three transfers are crisp and colorful, with the first film having particularly good black levels. The beautiful grain of the original film stock is preserved, and the movies and their color palates look like how I remember them in the theater. Sadly, The Secret of the Ooze was always my favorite as a kid, but it always had more of a hazy blue tone to it. That exists ones more in this transfer, but it’s still a delight to see in this premium format. If I had to rank the look of the films, it’d have to go I, III, and then II. I was always more serious and film nourish than everything that followed, and I feel like this is the first time in my life I was able to appreciate those film aesthetics coming across in Arrow’s impressive release.
The bonus features in this set are simply incredible! We get to hear from the actors, the puppeteers, the stunt performers, the composer… pretty much everyone who worked on these wonderful films. Most of the material is brand new, filmed exclusively for this set. It’s so fun to see these talented people reminiscing about the good old days of working on these productions, and Arrow included the features on each disc in a way that helps tell the story of the entire trilogy even for people who worked on multiple movies. My absolute favorite new feature shows the real-life locations where many areas from the movie were filmed. We get to see shots from the film and then new video from this day and age so we can see just how much things have (or haven’t) changed. It’s just a wonderful time capsule of a time where so much of films were shot out in real places instead of the over reliance on computer technology.
Arrow always does an incredible job of packaging their films, and this set is no different. Each film is housed in its own case with designs which are reflective of the color palettes of each respective movie. The printed materials are top notch, right down to the beautiful slipcover which goes around the finished product. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trilogy is such a perfect match for what Arrow does, and the set looks so good with Arrow’s iconic imagery set against the blast from the past colors which were originally part of the iconic movie poster chosen for the cover.
There’s no debate on this one: if you like the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films, this limited edition set is a required addition to your collection. I wouldn’t wait to order it, either. Arrow’s limited edition 4K stuff hasn’t been sitting on shelves for too long before selling out and going out of print forever. So if you want all of the bells and whistles that come with this beautiful limited edition, act fast! It’s the kind of product that has so much going for it that you can spend an afternoon admiring all of the printed materials and the details of the packaging before even popping a disc into your player. But once you start spinning those discs, that’s when the real nostalgic magic happens! Thanks to Arrow Video… it’s turtle time!