“GO NINJA GO NINJA GO”
– indeed, go, viva la revolution!

The series concludes with the third movie one which completes their self-realization by breaking the diachronic limitations through the act of time travel. From receiving the signs from the future the turtles’ reaches a state of self-realization, in confronting their revolutionary core of the past, they can choose their fates in the future.

The entire third movie was a series of random accidental events not of their choosing (shit just happened so to speak) causing the turtles to go through a wild adventure trying to rescue April who is lost in time, lost within feudal era japan. In their attempt to logically rationalize how feudal era Japanese people can speak English, the perfect setting for revolutionary training was created: a group of farmers exploited by the Daimyo, Daimyo and his empire exploited by western colonial threat and the western colonizers that were slaves to the very system of commodity exchange (regardless of which side wins in the struggle everyone loses, there is no end to striving). A whole series of random plot-less events takes place until the scene in which the turtles come into contact with a painting (“The battle of the thousand swords”) from the past (past within the feudal era) that depicts turtle like demons vanquishing their enemies (the down fall of the Daimyo’s family, in other words revolution) within a coming future (the future to come, in this case this future references a frame of time that does not exist for that image must of came from a time beyond both the turtles’ and the audiences’ perception) does the movie at the moment come into conception.

Notice that the perspective within the scroll painting is completely unorthodox, there is no chronology like a typical scroll and in this instance they are being attacked from everywhere.
When your enemy is capital you have no allies.

 “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and man’s enemies will be the members of his household.” – Matthew 10:34-9

It is within the turtles’ destinies to lead the revolution; it is the image from the future interpreted in the past. A image that had no meaning for all the characters of the film until the Daimyo,  the turtles and Mitsu (leader of the rebellion) all at once confronts each other and the image beyond time and beyond the very audience that are watching the movie that the movie reintegrates itself back into a chronological order and flow; past, present and future all flow towards each of their own event horizons.

the scene of the beginning and the end, the moment of the “big bang”

The battle scene that follows and the movie’s hasty ending afterwards sums up the revolution that the turtles’ were destined to lead. At the end only one character dies, and it’s a death of disappearance (symbolic destruction) instead of a scene of his physical destruction through violence. The western colonizers were destroyed by the very product they produced, by the traitor Whit (the Casey Jones look-alike), hence the corruption destroys itself. The class struggle between the Daimyo and the farmers were resolved through complete synthesis, Kenshin (the son of the Daimyo) marries Mitsu (the progressive female leader of the farmers); both polar opposites embrace under this new red glow that covers the entire scene. Lord Norinaga (the father, the Daimyo), does not die and does not lose his symbolic role of authority as he receives the religious family scepter representing his position of power. The very image of impossibility; the conclusion of class struggle which does not lead to the annihilation of the other class but emancipation and solidarity through union, true synthesis.

The true image to the struggle of revolution, a third path that interjects itself into the image completely destroying all its coordinates of a final (impossible) conclusive ending; a future without an image.

Michelangelo stands between two classes heading towards the complete annihilation of the other

A situation in which it is not two exaggerations occupying the same space and having their struggle resolve through a middle neutral point, but true synthesis in which the exaggerations cease to exist, the disappearance of the struggle through the revelation of the truth by pushing these very exaggerations to their extreme conclusions; the union of opposite extremes of female and male, coming to terms of the symbolic role of power, capital exploitation pushed to self-annihilation, Hollywood Japanese stereotypical representation pushed to cultural understanding (“Huukie”), etc, etc.

This very image is what is missing throughout all of the recent revolutions that has taken place to their very detriments, ie, Egypt. This even addresses the very deadlock of conflict even in places like Israel and Palestine.

It is this scene that everything changes and nothing changes; all the coordinates are still in place, the very coordinates that was the cause of the very struggle, and yet all the coordinates have been changed, the struggle completely dissolves itself. This complete castration of power, without destroying the circuit of reality; an image that confronts the impossibility, the utopian aspect, of the complete destruction of the system, any attempt at equilibrium will result in complete failure, there would be no circuit, there would be no discussion, a revolution that can only end in failure; “the condition of impossibility of realizing the Goal is simultaneously its condition of possibility.”

The ending scene after revolution: The new brilliant red future

One must not fall in love with the self, the moment of revolution is only the beginning, it is the moment after the revolution that love can truly exist.

The return of the turtles at the end of the movie, exactly like the beginning of the movie, marks the scene where nothing changes and it is precisely at that moment everything changes. The return to normal shown at the end of the movie marks the eye of the storm in which the turtles have reached their full revolutionary potential. This is expressed by Michelangelo sulking at the end of the movie where he explains to Splinter what is deeply troubling him, “Growing up, I don’t think I will ever laugh again…” It is this point in which the turtles’ reach maturity, no longer teenaged, that they reach their full potency; coming of age, losing their innocence and now ready to commit the Red sin of revolution. Each turtle can be seen coming together to form the very square of necessity (Leonardo), possibility (Michelangelo), impossibility (Raphael) and contingency (Donatello), the ideological frame work that holds society within the universal Lie that will be ruptured through their very embodiment. Hence, there is not a fourth movie, the series had to end with the third for the fourth meant insurrection and the very end of capital, an image that cannot possibly exist, there is no image after capital and there will not be a movie after the third in which the turtles are the meta-heroes of revolution. Even the coming Hollywood remake had to be a reboot for it is impossible for a continuation after the loss of capital. Any articulation of that image would be a failure, it is precisely this future without an image that can sustain itself once integrated into the chronological frame work.

“COWABUNGA!”

cowabunga, int. slang (orig. U.S.).

Brit. /ˌkaʊəˈbʌŋgə/, U.S. /ˌkaʊəˈbəŋgə/

Forms: 19– cowabonga, 19– cowabunga, 19– kawabonga, 19– kowabonga, 19– kowabunga

[Origin unknown.
The word was first popularized as the characteristic cry of Chief Thunderthud, a character on the U.S. television programme Howdy Doody (1947–60). It later became associated with surfing culture, and was further popularized by its use on the U.S. animated television programme Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987–96).]

Expressing astonishment, enthusiasm, or exuberance; ‘yahoo!’ ‘wow!’ Now freq. humorous.