Bad Movies/Good Party Themes: Teenage Mutant Ninja Vs. Pirate Turtles (III) Battle of the Wits

Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello make up the team with one more fellow, Raphael. He’s the leader of the group, transformed from the norm by the nuclear goop.

I am an unabashed fan of all heroes on a halfshell and subsequently sang the above song fairly regularly throughout my childhood. Though, I’ll admit to being a bigger fan of Leonardo than Raphael.

And time travel? Who doesn’t love time travel??

So, naturally, when you mix the two together, you get something….interesting. Sadly, no Vanilla Ice this time, but Corey Feldman does return as the voice of Donatello. Win some, lose some, I guess. Plus, this one does have a magic scepter! Because, why not?

You know what it doesn’t have, though? Pirates.

Is it just me, or could they have used this time traveling storyline to finally put an end to the timeless Ninja vs. Pirate debate? Just have them transported to the high seas, am I right? Well, apparently they weren’t interested in a seven-year-old’s ideas and went in a different direction.

Together, however, we have the power to rectify this horrible wrong. So, grab a group of friends and divvy them up into two groups: The Ninja Turtles and The Pirate Turtles. Each group then chooses from their ranks, their Splinter or Speck (the young rat raised by a noble pirate who was killed by the evil Captain Shearer. Speck escaped, though had part of his nose cut off by Shearer’s cutlass, and later found a group of young turtles in the belly of a ship transporting nuclear waste).

Xander went pirate and bought herself a cannon. Meaning Willow, of course, went ninja and is no longer visible in any pictures.

Once the mentors have been chosen, the two teams will meet on the battlefield, AKA in front of the TV. This will not be a physical altercation, of course. Mom always said not to have turtle fight clubs in the house. No, this will be a battle of one-liners. Throughout the night either side will have to come up with the cheesiest, pun-iest comebacks against the other team. This excludes Splinter and Speck, who can only speak in deep, mentoring tones.

Every original comeback gets a tally (this means that repeating exactly what the person before you said, but in a more sarcastic tone, while hilarious, does not earn you any points. Still worth doing for the sake of being annoying though). At the end of the night, more tallies win and finally put to rest the who-would-beat-who in a fight argument.

My contribution to this great earth.

Crackerjack dialogue to look forward to:

-          “Help! I’m a turtle and I can’t get up!”

-          “It just your, uh, ordinary time travel equal-mass-displacement kind of thing.”

-           “You’re turtles?” “Yeah, of the Teenage Mutant Ninja variety.”

Tagline: Ancient Japan, 1593. Without a map. Without a clue. Without a pizza.

For a Teenage Mutant Ninja Vs. Pirate Turtles (III) Battle of the Wits of your very own, here’s what you need:

-          Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993)

-          Teams dressed in appropriate attire to reflect both their professions and their turtle-ness.

-          Pizza. Of course, pizza. Regardless of whether they fight with in a mask or a ruffled shirt, turtles, particularly teens, love pizza. It’s just a scientific fact.

-          Poster board/square of clean wall to keep tally of the zingers.

-          A group of early 1990s nostaligaists and/or folks looking to get all their sarcasm out in a safe space and/or people who are determined to put the pirate/ninja question to bed, once and for all.