An Old School Fan’s Opinion Of The New-School Power Rangers Movie
Does the new movie do the old series justice?
Note: While I’ve tried to keep this “review” mostly spoiler free, frankly there is not much to spoil about it. It’s a fairly straight-forward movie.
This may come as a shock to you, but growing up in the ’90s, I was a huge Power Rangers fan. I know, you’re crushed, I’ll give you a minute to pick your jaw up off the floor. No, but really, what kid wasn’t a fan though? When it comes to entertaining children or young people, ‘Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers’ had everything going for it and nothing to lose. There were live-action actors to idolize, punches and kicks galore, monsters, robots, aliens, a pretty awesome metal theme song, and a lot of lore to sink your teeth into.
The original series peaked with the movie, ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie’, which featured the despicable Ivan Ooze as the villain. Man, that was a great movie. It still kinda is, too. The movie came out in 1995, but reruns of Power Rangers were on TV for many years after that. I had the movie on VHS of course, and I watched that poor tape until it started to wear out. After my brother was born, he used it as a nightlight of sorts to help him fall asleep, and I watched it even more when I would stay with him and my mother for the weekend. He’d be snoozing away next to me in bed, but I was too entranced by the movie. Watching it now, pushing twenty years later, I can recall it beat-by-beat if I watch it. It’s like a song that I know almost by heart. I’m no longer a Power Rangers megafan, I don’t have posters or statuettes adorning my apartment, but liking it as a kid was fun.
What was fascinating about the old Power Rangers, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, was the tangibility of it. Live-action kid’s shows are popular for many reasons, and one of them is simply the fact that it gives children something that exists in real life to look up to, instead of what they get in a cartoon. In regards to Power Rangers specifically, despite the series’ limited budget, the same thing that made it cheesy was actually what gave it a distinct personality. The show, and the movie, had real martial artists on set. Real stunts were being performed. Even the faceless goons were people in costume and makeup. Even up through the feature film, Power Rangers almost always prioritized its trademark “cheesy” special effects, only employing CGI for the tall orders. From today’s perspective it seems silly, and I’m sure today’s kids would laugh it off the air, but at the time it was impressive.
This is where the comparisons to the new movie begin, naturally.
Even from watching the trailers, it’s easy to see that the new Power Rangers movie, officially titled ‘Saban’s Power Rangers’ is one-hundred and ten percent about being fresh and new. It wants to take the ‘Power Rangers’ franchise and place it squarely in the context of modern day teenage pop culture, smart phones, hip hop, and all. And, there’s nothing wrong with that, really. That’s a perfect approach for it, otherwise how would they expect to grab young audiences? The problem is the new movie updates way more than it needs to, and tries way too hard. It changes quite literally everything you know about Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, aesthetically at least. Let me describe it this way: they should have went “J.J. Abrams”, and instead they went “The CW”.
For one, the art director, and whoever else is responsible for the set design and monster design, needs to be fired and replaced. Beyond the movie’s newfangled armor costumes for the Rangers, which I have no problem with, the movie replaces anything that was practical in the series with something made with CGI, and none of it looks good. Alpha 5 is a cliché short and smarmy CGI character now, likely caused by the influence of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ (it’s been said on record from industry insiders that major studios have taken notice of Disney’s success with Rocket and Groot, and are green with envy, brainstorming similar characters). Zordon, the Rangers’ concerned father figure, is no longer a hovering face in a beam of light over a seemingly lifeless corpse. He’s now a talking wall. The monsters are made of easy-to-animate cloud-like rocks that are not unlike fart cloud Galactus in ‘Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer’, or fart cloud Parallax in ‘Green Lantern’. The Putties are no longer people in costumes, they’re just nondescript globs. Rita Repulsa, the movie’s villain, even forms her baddies from dropping her staff onto the ground and raising them from the rocks, as if we haven’t seen something similar to that before. All the monster and bad guy designs in ‘Power Rangers’ are phoned in, as if someone ripped them from the pages of “Easy Monster Designs”. It helps a little that Rita Repulsa says one of her famous lines about the monsters, but it’s a cheap bandage on self-inflicted wound.
While we’re on the subject of Rita Repulsa, let me take a moment to thank Elizabeth Banks for putting on a stellar performance. She doesn’t don the odd costume the original character did (nobody does in this movie), doesn’t need to, and she’s quite intimidating, sexy in a villainous way, and very entertaining to watch. As a matter of fact, she might be the best part about the whole movie, and I look forward to more of her. That’s as far as the villains go in this movie though, in terms of quality. If you recall from the trailer, Goldar, her servant warrior, makes an appearance in this movie, but only by name. In the series, Goldar was a humanoid ape that wore a golden suit of armor and had wings; Goldar was a live-action thing, he was people wearing a suit, and it was cool that way. All of Rita’s cohorts and monsters were people wearing suits. The new Power Rangers takes Goldar hilariously literally, and now he’s apparently a being without any personality or soul at all that is made purely of gold. He has no face, voice, or discernible features. His face is replaced with boring glowey light, which we can get from almost any sci-fi action movie on the market. To be fair, it’s fun watching Rita complete her mission while she’s on screen, but I don’t understand why they’d change something that way unless they have plans to do it differently later. Some context would be valuable.
This is the crux of what’s wrong with the new Power Rangers: save for the Rangers themselves, it completely ditches everything that was iconic about the series to begin with. Why replace all the practical effects? J.J. Abrams proved in both Star Trek and Star Wars that practical effects can still be great, so what’s Saban’s excuse? It had nothing to lose, nobody was expecting a good movie from this. Power Rangers aims for the idea, teenagers with attitude fighting monsters, but misses the concept: teenagers with attitude fighting monsters for real. The new Power Rangers wants so badly to be flashy and awe-inspiring, that it zooms right by inspired film-design and makes a bee-line for “cash grab”.
What’s sad, and ironic, about it, is the fact that the movie is reverent of the series. There are Easter eggs referencing it throughout, some of them more subtle than others. It even plays the original theme song at one point, but for only a brief moment. That’s part of what keeps me on the fence about this movie. It’s clear that they tried, and some effort was put into this. The movie has lots of redeeming qualities, and I’m willing to bet that the best parts of the movie are Dean Israelite's handiwork. The opening scenes are surprisingly great, engaging the viewer by dropping you into the thick of things under serious and dire circumstances, and showing you that there is some mythology behind the events you’re seeing on screen; the mythology might be potentially more interesting than the current events, but that’s beside the point. Not only is there mythology for the Zordon and his Rangers, but there’s mythology for the human characters too, and through the course of the movie you will appreciate and relate to at least one of them. “Po-faced” is not a description I’d use for this movie either, in contrast to most superhero blockbusters (and that’s not a criticism). It’s pretty funny at times, and the combination of the clever altruistic writing and the freshly picked actors makes for some good laughs. One joke that was more subtle which made me laugh was noticing that Billy Cranston, the Blue Ranger who openly admits he is autistic, wears a tee shirt with a cartoon hot dog leaping into a bun. This made me laugh because it reminded me of the old slang definition for “hot dog”, which would be describing someone as odd, flamboyant, or a bit of a show-off. Billy is neither flamboyant or overconfident, but his personality quirks make him seem a little odd, so the description could fit. Memories of ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ flittered into my mind, “ You’re a hot dog, but you better not try to hurt her, Frank Furter”. So, you could say that ‘Power Rangers’ is a versatile movie in terms of tone. In general, my only issue with the story is that it all feels a little too convenient, but maybe that’s because this is an origin story, and an obvious one at that.
It’s difficult for me to place a defining opinion on this movie. On one hand, it has almost nothing in it that I thought made Power Rangers likable in the first place. On the other hand, there are moments sprinkled throughout it that made me smile, laugh, or think “Heh, that was cool”. Some of the cinematography is beautiful, including but not limited to some extremely realistic underwater shots that I’m interested in watching a behind-the-scenes video on. The soundtrack is on point, even though it falls back on one song that feels overused now. The characters are enjoyable, and the actors do their best; I empathized with (the Red Ranger) Jason’s struggles with pleasing his father, for one, which is the introduction to the plot in the movie. In many ways, Power Rangers feels like a CW Power Rangers, and whether that’s a compliment or insult depends on you. It comes dangerously close to being a good movie without ever sealing the deal, which sucks because, again, it has several truly great moments. I hate to pull a Beetlejuice here, and evoke something by calling its name, but it honestly reminds me of the Ghostbusters reboot in some ways, and none of them good. I’ll concede that Power Rangers is a much better movie than Ghostbusters though, as long as we’re keeping track.
If I had my way, that is to say if I were making this movie, I’d take a much different approach. Everything new except for the looks of it can stay. To save this series that they allegedly have six movies planned for, they need to completely overhaul and redo the design and art direction. Right now, it looks like it’s at about 85% green screen, and it needs to be lowered to about a 50% at a maximum. Ditch the cloud monsters, and hire someone who knows how to create a fricking monster for crying out loud, like Guillermo del Toro (that’s asking for a lot, but a man can dream). While you’re at it, let Elizabeth Banks do whatever she wants, she did a heck of a good job as Rita Repulsa. Actually, fire everyone except for Dean Israelite and the actors. Pull a J.J. Abrams and go out of your way to make it look and sound the way it did way back when. We’ve already come this far with the whole “nostalgia” thing, haven’t we? We might as well go whole hog and do it right. The best thing that can be said about ‘Power Rangers’ is that it ultimately leaves us with a positive message, some potentially iconic moments, and a promise that there’s some cool stuff on the way.
It used to be, that once you grew to a certain age, your peers would make fun of you for liking Power Rangers. More specifically, still liking Power Rangers after a certain point. That was my experience, at least. It’s one of those silly things about kids, you know? It was cool for kids of a younger ilk, but once you got older you were expected to take an interest in things that other kids deem to be more mature. Power Rangers wasn’t cool anymore once you made that transition into “big kid” territory. It was faux-pas. Unintentionally, Saban and Lionsgate Entertainment might have doomed ‘Saban’s Power Rangers’ to fall into that category yet again. Power Rangers has always been a little bit bubblegum to most people, and a one-hundred million dollar “meh” of a film will certainly not help, but there’s enough that’s earnest in this reboot to inevitably draw in old and new fans alike. Other people I know have said that this was “Definitely a Power Rangers movie”. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?
