MovieChat Forums > Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) Discussion > At what point did Raph switch from being...

At what point did Raph switch from being the jokester to the angry one?

posted 8 years ago by jakemon-45338
3 replies | jump to latest

Most of my memories of TMNT have been from the original movies rather than this original series. Likely because I've continued to watch the movies all through my life. Raphael is the angry one. The bad ass. He was that through 3 original movies and the animated one. Now in the new movies. Not sure about the '03 cartoon series or the most recent one, however. Anyway, now that I'm finally revisiting this original cartoon series for the first time since watching them when they aired, I was surprised to remember that Raph was ALWAYS cracking jokes! I know there were 3 seasons of this before that first live action film came out, so did he change in the cartoon at some point before then, or was the movie what invented the change in him?

[–] pferreira86 8 years ago

You have to understand that when David Wise wrote the scripts to Season 1 (1986 I think?) the Mirage comics were still brand new and the Turtles personalities hadn't been properly fleshed out. It wasn't really a character trait at that point that Raph was angry all the time so Wise took creative license and fleshed out the characters for the cartoon. In the mean time Eastman and Laird did their own take on the Turtles, utilising some of Wise's characterisation/rejecting other bits and that's why every simple iteration of the Turtles Raph is angry apart from the 80s cartoon.

[–] jakemon-45338 8 years ago

Okay so that happened in the comics. Gotcha. Thank you. I didn't know if that first appeared in the original movie and all the other iterations just followed suit or what. Thanks for the explanation.

[–] pferreira86 8 years ago

The movie came out in 1990, three years after the cartoon show started. Glad to help.