In a sign of how box office has changed over the decades, the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie opened in late March of 1990 to $25 million. At the time, that $25 million debut the fifth biggest opening weekend of all time. The $13.5m New Line Cinema release was basically the most successful independent film of all-time, earning $201m worldwide. Frankly, if you consider Batman to be something of a timeless fantasy/1940′s film noir, then Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is basically the heir apparent to the modern comic book superhero adaptation. It was set in the real world and in the present day while being based on characters that were popular right then with young kid demographic. Had Hollywood copied its success instead of trying to copy Batman by adapting 1940′s pulp heroes like The Shadow or The Rocketeer, we might have gotten films like X-Men or Blade a lot faster.

Watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3D Online Free

Anyway, twenty-four years later, because everything old must be new again, we have a new “part I” Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. While it’s tempting to say that the film is attempting to cash in on 1980′s/1990′s nostalgia for the property during its peak popularity as a much-watched animated series and a video game juggernaut, it bears worth remembering that the property never really went away for any long period of time. We’ve had two animated series since the “classic” one went off the air in 1996,various video game incarnations, a 2007 animated movie, and of course the actual comic books that… uh… well, okay, I don’t know anything about the comic save for the original black-and-white incarnation. Point being, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was always going to return to the silver screen because it never really went away as a viable property.
Paramount (a division of Viacom VIAB +0.9%, Inc.) bought the rights to the characters several years back and this new live-action movie was the preferential end game. Sadly the buzz leading up to its release has been less than positive, with much ink spilled about how different the turtles look from prior incarnations, whether or not the origin has been changed, and to what extent the Michael Bay production (via Platinum Dunes) resembled the insanely successful but much loathed Transformers series. The good news is that most of the people venting online are probably going to see the film anyway if only to hate-watch or because they are film writers and it’s somewhat their job to see high profile releases such as this one. Moreover, Paramount isn’t concerned with the would-be diehard fans or whether or not that Australian “9/11″ poster is an actual controversy (No!) so much as whether this  TMNT variation is going to play to the kiddie demographic.

Tracking suggests around $40 million for the weekend, with the genuine phenomenon that is Walt Disney's DIS +1.57% Guardians of the Galaxy not helping one bit. Arbitrary ranking aside, there is a risk of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles being the equivalent of Sony's  Robocop remake with Guardians of the Galaxy playing the role of Warner Bros.’ (Time Warner TWX +1.62%, Inc.) The LEGO Movie. Most of the buzz around the $125m franchise reboot isn’t terribly positive, and the foolish PG-13 rating may-well scare off the parents of younger kids (I wavered on taking my daughter to the press screening before deciding against it). The good news is that this isn’t a mega-expensive production that needs to set records in order to break even. The bad news is that the film runs the risk of playing to no one, with parents of young kids turned off by the rating and adults and older kids disinterested due to having outgrown the franchise and/or wanting to see Guardians of the Galaxy instead. Like a certain web crawler from this summer, what was one a towering franchise in its sub-genre is now just another $100m+ reboot hoping to recapture former glories.