The road to the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is weird. The comic that originally “hatched” the turtles (holding for applause) began as a black-and-white series of limited distribution and appeal, violent and adult at a time when very few mainstream comics were, intended to parody some of the popular properties of the time: Daredevil, the Punisher, X-Men, the gritty and ninja-redolent work of Frank Miller. A lot of kids’ brands of the 1980s and ‘90s were turned into hits to sell toys, and TMNT is no different: a licenser was looking for a toy brand, they created the show to sell the toys, the cartoon show and the toys both became wildly popular, everybody forgot the comic, by then the Turtles had entirely lost their satirical or dark trappings, and here we are.