90 Minutes in 300 Pages: Surf Ninjas

Column by Ed O.

Welcome back to “90 Minutes in 300 Pages” where one guy with an attention span too short to watch a movie reads it instead.  This time we’re saying goodbye to summer by catching some gnarly waves and kicking ninja butts.  That’s right, my dudes, we’re watching the 1993 cinema masterpiece that is Surf Ninjas.  The novelization is written by A.L. Singer based on the script by Dan Gordon.

This is the book that started it all, dudes.  A year ago while on a book quest I found this novelization in the “Please take this so we don’t have to throw it away” pile at my local used bookstore.  My initial reaction was, “Brah, this radical movie had a bodacious book based on it?”  That was swiftly followed by, “I wonder what other weird, righteous novelizations are out there and am I a bad enough dude to milk this idea for a series of substack posts?”

We all know the answer to that question, don’t we? 

[On a side note, why was surf (and by extension, skateboarding) culture so prominent in the early 90s?  Or am I simply biased because I watched way too much Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at an impressionable age?  Eh, whatever.  Let’s yell “cowabunga” and dive in.]

The book opens with a one page prologue where a narrator sets up the premise.  Who is this narrator?  No idea!  In any other book this would be a staging device to make it seem like we are hearing a story being told, but it’s never revisited.  There’s just a voice telling us of Johnny and Adam McQuinn who are “surf rats,” “Seekers of the Perfect Shred,” and “Princes of the Pound Masters.”

(Note to BookNarwhal, how many times can I say “Pound Masters” and keep my PG rating?)

This prologue is completely superfluous.  If it was cut from the final novelization, then you wouldn’t notice. It is a slang filled nonsense of a passage that will never be mentioned again. 

All it does is give you a warning. Don’t make the same mistake I did.  Be ready to AskJeeves what various slang mean.  I didn’t, I was too proud.  I went through the entire book not knowing what squank means, and at this point I’m too afraid to ask.

The story properly opens on the McQuinn brothers eating breakfast.  Adam is having cereal and Johnny tells him that sugary stuff is bad for you.  Adam should really be eating more fruit, since it’s healthier.  Johnny then grabs a box of Fruit Loops to prove his point.

As far as character intros go, this isn’t that bad.  It shows the brothers’ dynamics.  They’re goofy and loving towards each other.  It’s a good establishing moment.  I’ll give Singer that, he wrote loving friendships pretty well.

We also meet Mac, their adopted dad who owns the local diner.  The text goes into how the bros were adopted, but they’re a happy family.  It’s actually rather sweet how the text makes it a point to highlight that Mac may not be their biological father, but he is their dad.  Again, mad props to Singer. 

Then we meet Iggy…  Oh God, why did we need Iggy?  I get it, at the time all action movies had to have some comic relief.  But come on.  In the movie he’s played by Rob Schnieder, and in the book he feels like Rob Schneider.  Iggy is just awful.  He’s the guy who lies all the time about everything, but it’s confusing whether or not he actually believes his own lies. 

But in the shadows, ninjas are watching… dun dun DUNNNN!!!

The three teens head off to school where Johnny is in a bit of a jam.  The school is hosting the Baba-Ram, the great spiritual leader from Southeast Asia.  Johnny has been tasked with giving a speech welcoming the guru to America. Why is the equivalent of the Dali Lama at a nondescript High School?  For comedy of course!  Though it does make you wonder, why is Johnny forced to give the speech?  He’s shown to be a terrible student.  Is it because he’s also Southeast Asian?  Is the principal racist? (Probably)

Well, Johnny has been too busy catching tasty waves to have written a speech, so instead he sings the Beach Boys classic “Barabra Ann.”  Hilarity ensues. 

Adam, meanwhile, is in geography class and he’s forced to point out where Spain is on the map.  Gosh, teach, talk about impossible tasks!  He stalls and hopes for a miracle.  If only something would happen to cancel school for the day.  Like maybe ninjas attacking armed cops…

So some ninjas attack some cops who were there protecting Baba-Ram.  Thankfully, a mysterious stranger defeated the ninjas before anyone could be harmed.  This is also where we meet Detective Spence, a LAPD officer who just wants to go on vacation.  Sadly, he has to cancel plans with his girlfriend to figure out why ninjas are attacking people in LA.  You know, that old problem. 

 By the way, if you notice I don’t mention Spence again, it’s because this character does nothing.  I have no idea why he exists, except that he’s played by Tone “Funky Cold Medina” Loc in the movie, so he needs to be in there.  But still, the character doesn’t do anything.  He could be completely cut and nothing would be changed.  IGGY is more important to the plot than he is! 

School is canceled due to ninjas, so the boys hit those waves.  Except Iggy doesn’t really surf.  He just waxes his board over and over again.  Prince of Pound Masters indeed. 

After a long day of being cool, the kids go home.  Then suddenly… NINJAS! 

Thankfully, their mysterious protector arrives.  His name is Zatch (Zatch? Really?) and he is awesome and is way better at fighting than those sad excuses of ninjas.  Plus, he has an eye patch.  Which officially makes him a pirate. Meaning that the long age debate between Pirate vs. Ninja is settled. 

 Sadly, Mac is captured in the fighting and the McQuinn home is blown up.  Zatch tells the kids the story of how they came to America.  They are actually the princes of Patu San.  Their kingdom was taken over by the evil Colonel Chi who pulled a colonialism.  They escaped because Zatch gave them to an American sailor, named Mac, who was loyal to the monarchy.

 Their destinies are not to be mere surfers.  Johnny is to become a great warrior prince.  Adam is to be a seer of great renown.  Iggy is just a dumb white boy and doesn’t have a destiny, but he can tag along too, I guess.  They must defeat Colonel Chi and save their people!

The heroes flee the wreckage of their home to the Little Patu San district of LA. A real thing that really exists for some reason. There they meet up with refugees and learn more about their culture.  Johnny also discovers he’s in an arranged marriage!  He doesn’t want to marry some stranger!  As he tells Zatch, he wants to marry an “A-One Steak Sauce Betty!” (I refuse to believe anyone ever used that as slang).  Thankfully for Johnny, his fiancée, Rom Bey, is hawt, so he’s now cool with it.

 At this point we start jumping to Patu San, into the torture dungeon of Colonel Chi.  We discover Chi is a cyborg.  Half of his face is robotic, he has a battery pack on his chest, and one of his hands is replaced with a “tiger claw.”  These scenes serve two purposes.  The first is simply so we meet the villain before the climactic fight.  The second is zany, wacky torture antics! Fun for the whole family!

 Little Patu San is attacked by ninjas, dang.  This fight scene goes quite a bit different this time.  Adam’s Sega Gamegear begins to show him a video game called Surf Ninjas that lets him see and affect the outcome of the fight.  I guess Sega really does what Nintendon’t. 

Johnny also suddenly realizes he knows kung fu!  Whoa!  With his new destiny powers, Johnny quickly defeats the ninjas with the help of an octopus (it makes sense in context).  With the ninjas defeated and humiliated, the heroes flee with their allies to the docks where a boat is waiting to take them to Patu San.

Of course, Spence reappears in the narrative to remind us he exists.  He tries to stop the boys, who are minors, from fleeing the country to fight a sociopathic dictator while accompanied by a complete stranger.  Zatch knocks him out and kidnaps him because…destiny(?).  Now our adventure party consists of Johnny (warrior), Adam (seer), Iggy (fool), Rom Bey (love interest), Zatch (awesome ninja-pirate), and Spence (Tone Loc).  They totally got this.

 They get to Patu San and now the fight really begins.  The adventuring party starts up the revolution.  All these people needed to overthrow this dictatorship were a couple of American surfer bros!  Fight scenes happen.  At a certain point they retrieve some mystical weapons that the kings of Patu San used.  Some more action scenes occur.

 Pretty soon it's time for the climactic battle.  The revolution is going to storm Colonel Chi’s base.  Unfortunately, Chi has been expecting them and has fortified all the walls, except the seaside beach.  But that beach is too shallow for boats, it would take some small wooden board to get over that surf!

Then Adam has a vision of turning trees into surfboards.  That’s crazy enough to work!  Overnight the revolution turns a forest of koa trees into makeshift boards.  Come morning the revolution is ready to storm the beach and hang ten.

Except Iggy reveals that he can’t surf!  Thankfully Johnny and Adam give him a pep talk that amounts to, “Just surf anyway.”  Everyone surfs into the enemy base and the battle begins.

 More ninja fighting happens, the heroes win.  Colonel Chi is defeated because he didn’t waterproof his electronics and didn’t have a bowl of rice to put his robot hand in.  Mac is reunited with his children.  The love interests kiss and there’s a laugh when the Baba-Ram is revealed to be a native of Patu San. 

  The heroes announce they are abolishing the monarchy and heading back to America to go back to school.  So they came in, destroyed the government, and left a void in leadershipledership.  I’m sure that will work out well for the people of Patu San.

 

The Good?

 It was short.  This was only about 120 pages and this brevity was a strong suit.  This book didn’t overstay its welcome.  This story got in, said what it needed to say, and left.  Plus with only 120 pages to work with, the author didn’t have space to focus on Iggy that much. 

The biggest strength of this novelization, though, was not the humor or the action.  Those fell flat for the most part.  The strength of the writing was the character interactions.  Johnny and Adam felt like actual brothers.  They joke with each other, support each other, and get each other.  Their friendship with Iggy even makes sense.  He’s that “weird” kid at school who has no friends, so they have made it a point to be kind and in return Iggy is an actual good friend to them.   There are higher regarded novels that don’t do as well as Surf Ninjas does in their character relationships. 

      

The Bad:

 I didn’t realize I’d have to be bilingual to comprehend this book.  I thought I was a hip dude who knew the lingo, but I was lost at points.  I’m pretty sure most of this slang was just made up.  I refuse to believe that anyone ever said the phrase “I was going Richter till that Val dropped in”  Maybe these surfers need to just get off my lawn.

Also, I really found Iggy annoying.  All his jokes fall flat, and even on page I can just hear Rob Schneider’s voice.   Though, at least he actually added to the plot, unlike Spence.

 

The Ugly:

The only ugly part of this novel is the scenes with Chi.  They’re in a torture dungeon and the text makes it clear it’s supposed to be Looney Tune style shenanigans, and if I was a kid, I guess they would land as funny?  Like, “haha, that silly evil dictator is sharpening an electric carving knife!  Those are for turkeys, not people!  Wakka wakka!” 

But as an adult?  Yikes, that is still going to hurt.  And they are describing people being brutally tortured and murdered, but in wacky ways.  All I’m saying is, slapstick comedy only works if at the end everyone is okay.  At the end of “The 3 Stooges” shorts everyone still has all their eyes.  Here someone is impaled on a bed of nails as a comedy beat and it's funny because Chi wasn’t planning on killing him at that moment.  He was saving him for later. Big Yikes. 

 

What’s different?

This is a pretty faithful novelization.  The main cuts were to things that just would not translate to the page well.  For example, the movie opens with about five minutes of surfing montage.  You can’t have that in the book.  It looks cool on screen, but in the book it would just be “and then they wiped out” five times in a row. 

 There were also a few gags that were left out, but that’s probably for the best.  They weren’t funny in the movie and they wouldn't have been better on the page.  Except, and this is important, the author cut out Zatch defeating a ninja with chopsticks.  Yes, I know the most iconic fight scene in all of cinema!  The blasphemy of not showing everyone’s favorite one-eyed protector shoving chopsticks up someone’s nose! 

Also, the movie begins with a narrator too, but it is clearly Zatch.  This doesn’t make sense at all for the book.  There is no way that Zatch would say “tasty waves.” 

Finally, there’s Iggy.  In the movie it’s unclear how much of Iggy’s behavior is because he’s not the brightest crayon in the shed, and how much is a teenage boy just goofing around.  In the book it’s pretty clear that he just lies.  Like all the time.  He’s that kid that just lies to make his life sound cooler than it is, and it’s unclear if he believes his lies.

 

Final verdict:

The movie is a time capsule of 90s pop culture.  It’s cheesy, lame, and fun in all the right ways.  It has a famous rapper playing a cop.  There’s Leslie Nielson as a big, bad, evil guy.  There’s martial arts and surfing!  It has everything you’d want.

The book?  It’s fine.  It cuts the parts of the movie that don't work and adds a little bit more heart to the character relationships.  Just don’t go looking for the same cheesy goodness, because that level of cheese cannot be contained on mere paper.

With Surf Ninjas in the can, we say goodbye to summer and hello to fall!  When the leaves change, and ghosts and ghouls prowl the night, we need to ask ourselves:  Who are we gonna call? 

Catch you next time as we celebrate Spooktober with Ghostbusters!