TMNT's Disastrous First Rehearsal Bled Into Raphael's Angry Persona
For those of us who were alive when Steve Barron's 1990 film "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" was released, it felt like the culmination of a phenomenon. The Ninja Turtles had taken the world by storm in the mid-to-late 1980s, having moved from their comic book origins to a massive media franchise at a head-spinning pace.
After appearing in a popular animated TV series and spawning multiple video games — not to mention landfills worth of toys and ancillary merch — it was finally time for the Turtles to infiltrate theaters. Barron's film realized, for the first time, the quartet of ninjas in live-action. The production employed Jim Henson's Creature Shop to construct lightweight latex full-body costumes for the Turtle actors, as well as complicated masks that would mechanically mouth lines realistically. Four actors would play the bodies and other voice actors (except in one case) would read the dialogue. The result was surprisingly convincing.
According to a 2015 retrospective in the Hollywood Reporter, however, the Turtle costumes were hardly the most comfortable things in the world. One might instantly intuit that an actor's vision and hearing are at least muffled and could likely be cut off entirely. Also, a performer would need to move lightly and convincingly inside the giant suit, a performance that must have been physically exhausting.
Josh Pais was the one actor who played both the body of a Turtle as well as his voice. Raphael was the rebellious, angry Turtle, a character trait he didn't possess in earlier iterations; Raphael was, as the cartoon previously dictated, cool but rude. Now he was an embittered adolescent. It turns out that anger came not from an acting impulse, but from the sheer annoyance of having to wear a slippery, non-functional latex suit.
The opening scene
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" begins with a montage on the streets of New York. A pickpocket steals a man's wallet, and it is immediately passed to an accomplice. It seems a whole network of pickpockets is operating in the city, passing wallets from one to the other rapidly and expertly. The tone is that of a '70s crime movie, not a whimsical mutant adventure. Ninjas are also stalking the streets in the shadows, perpetuating a mysterious crime ring. The Turtles stop a crime and then, as the movie's upbeat theme music kicks in, shout words of positivity as they enthusiastically return to their home in the sewers. Their first appearance astonished many a child.
But, as Josh Pais pointed out, the actors were wearing their full-body suits and shooting on a wet floor in the dark. It seems that the filmmakers didn't count on the effect the water would have on the latex ensembles, and Pais recalled every problem they encountered. He said:
"The first thing we shot might have been when you first see the Turtles walking through the sewer and coming into where they live. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. There was water on the ground and we realized the latex was very slippery. We'd be going along, and one of us would wipe out. That opening sequence took about eight or nine hours. Things would break down."
The opening sequence, all told, is only about two minutes long.
Raphael is not cool with this
But, as Pais said:
"Those frustrations helped me to really find a way to physicalize Raphael's anger — his fury. The whole situation, I just used it to create this guy."
This was a brilliant move. The Ninja Turtles, if we're being generous, previously had maybe one character trait apiece. Leonardo was "the leader," Michelangelo was "the party dude," Donatello was "the brains," and Raphael was the rude one, I guess. In the early days, one could swap around their colored bandanas and weapons be no one would be the wiser. The Turtles were ciphers, and little kids could only extrapolate favorites based on how well they could project themselves into the empty vessels.
The 1990 film turned Raphael into an angry character, frustrated with his lot and aching for more. He communicated a common adolescent experience of free-floating rage. After the movie, that rage and dissatisfaction became a codified part of the character. In the 2023 film "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem," Raphael openly has rage issues.
It seems that rage was all because a latex suit was slippery and Pais hated performing in it. A twist of serendipity forever altered the character for the better.
Also, credit where credit is due: Pais played the voice and acted in the Raphael suit, but the automated mask was operated by a puppeteer named David Greenaway, and Raphael's fight double was stuntman and fight choreographer Kenn Troum. Pais went on to a long, active career that continues to this day.