1. The New Jack swing of that gorgeous 1990 soundtrack. I don't want the CGI-afflicted humanoids of a 2011 version to sway with the sounds of Hi Tek 3's "Spin That Wheel" or Partners in Kryme's "Turtle Power." Abuse the Vanilla Ice "Go Ninja Go!" rap from Secret of the Ooze all you want; I just can't handle a revamp of the slack-swag cookout jams from the original.
2. The dour NYC denizens! April's boss Charles can't figure out where Danny picked up a boss pair of headphones. (He stole them.) A police chief snorts at a too-inquisitive April, "Just what is it you hope to accomplish out there, besides busting my chops?" We're even treated to the Dragnet-style deadpan, "This block's got a crack the size of the San Andreas" at one point. Grittier than old pebbles in a turtle aquarium, this movie.
3. Judith Hoag's downtrodden hots as April O'Neil. Where have all the despairing, trench-coated TV reporters gone? Now that's something Geraldo could investigate.
4. Mean Turtle name-calling: "Elf lips" and "Gak-face" are my favorites. Man, I miss stupid word wars in kid movies. As far as I know, no one in, say, Super 8 or the Transformers franchise has insult-comic brass. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley would crack in half if you called her "hose brain."
5. And most of all: righteous '90s slang. "Tubular," "radical," "bodacious," and even Casey Jones's insistent use of the word "punker" are quintessential tenets in the TMNT saga, and Appelbaum and Nemec will need a full-body, definitively 2011 makeover to keep the new version from sounding like a sad throwback. I'll allow more "Chevy Nova" puns, though.