The Power Rangers of our Youth has Returned
Powers Rangers follows five outcasts who stumble upon magic coins one night in the mountains of Angel Grove. The coins give each of these five teens (Billy, Jason, Kimberly, Trini and Zack) immense powers and they must come together as friends to save their town from the evil Rita Repulsa.
Sam: As the number two movie on my list of most anticipated movies for the year, I obviously had a crazy amount of hype for this film. Along with that came very high expectations. Did it live up to them?
I’d say yes. While this film had a lot of flaws that I’ll point out through the review, there is no question I enjoyed this film and came out wanting to see more (something we’re likely to get if Saban has anything to say about it).
I know your hype level wasn’t remotely as high as mine for this. So how did you feel coming out of the theater? Are Power Rangers back or are we going the Transformers route here?
Cody: Going in, I’d say I was expecting it to flop. So coming out of the movie I was more relieved than anything. It was a pretty good film. You could definitely compare it to Transformers in that way. Where you go in not expecting it to be as good as it was (although I hope they don’t take a Transformers route after the first movie). I imagined a movie that was not near as deep as Power Rangers was as well. They really captured the issues a teenager can go through perfectly.
Sam: Yeah, my Transformers mention was more about it being mindless action. I wouldn’t describe Power Rangers in the same vain because like you said it had some emotional depth to it. That’s actually a pretty good unintentional comparison though. We both thought the original Transformers was going to be awful and we both came out loving it. I’d be lying if I said a part of me wasn’t worried about this going in. With that said, this movie had a lot of areas to improve upon.
Cody: Yeah, there were a few things that could’ve been improved. The pacing was a huge issue. They had two hours to work with so I wouldn’t think it would be too hard to get more depth in this team coming together. It seemed like they weren’t truly starting to get to know each other until the night before Rita’s attack. Rita was also kind of annoying. I think mainly it was her voice. I understand they were trying to capture some of the shows cheesiness in dialog but it went a little overboard at times (especially the Krispy Kreme mentions).
Sam: I thought the pacing was fine after the beginning. Certainly not as bad as something like Dawn of Justice on that front. A few unnecessary scenes here or there being changed could’ve swung this film a lot. I thought the third act was an absolute mess. The tone completely flipped from borderline gritty to flat-out ridiculous and the fighting for the most part was a joke. The hand-to-hand combat has always been a staple of the Power Rangers franchise and they did that for all of a minute before getting into an awful CGI bout with the fodder minions and Goldar (who wasn’t handled too well).
Rita went from a legitimately scary character in the first two acts resembling something out of the mummy to over the top silly in the third act. The movie in general had some trouble determining the tone of the film and it kept switching back and forth between grounded and kind of childish. Not to mention the rendition they gave of the theme song was just about the worst they could’ve done and was about 50% too soft. In fact most of the intense moments in the film needed louder music to build excitement.
I also feel that Zack and Trini could’ve been integrated into the group better. They both kind of just did a 180 with their personalities. Like adding a scene as simple as Kim and Trini walking home from the lair, Kim tries to connect with Trini and she begrudgingly opens up a little or maybe even just cracks a smile would’ve gone a long way towards making the relationship seem more meaningful. The run time adds one minute but now the characters are more fleshed out and things don’t seem as rushed. Zack’s acting stood out a few times to me as being laughably bad too.
No movie is perfect though and we both enjoyed this, I actually really enjoyed most of it. It did a lot of things right.
Cody: Yeah, I think the most impressive actor was RJ Cyler (Billy Cranston aka Blue Ranger). He had such great timing. A lot of the humor came from him. I also liked their take on high school and wished they would’ve expanded on that aspect more. They had a really solid beginning going. Dacre Montgomery (Jason aka Red Ranger) and RJ had some great chemistry.
Sam: No question. RJ Cyler is going to be a star. He was the no-brainer highlight of this film. He had chemistry with everyone and his charisma jumped off the screen from the get-go. He was tremendous and brought so much humor to this. He made things work here that shouldn’t have and usually flop in other movies. I’d be pretty surprised if this didn’t lead to more big roles for him.
Chris Pine…I mean Dacre Montgomery was fantastic as Jason. Like you said, his chemistry with Billy (and Kim as well-played by Naomi Scott) was off the charts. I thought all three of them knocked it out of the park in their roles. Naomi has come a long way since Lemonade Mouth.
They really did such a good job with the casting for this movie. Bill Hader was a fun Alpha 5 and I thought Becky G did a really good job with the limited material she was given. I want to see more of these rangers interacting with each other, that was one of the best parts of this film and something I’m looking forward to as they proceed with the rumored 5–6 sequels. You can tell the cast had a lot of fun working together.
The first two acts of this film were so good because they actually put a big emphasis on fleshing out why each ranger was an outcast and showed their struggles. That was what excited me so much about the first trailer and I was thrilled to see it so well down in the actual film. We got the theme song (though done poorly), we got Jason David Frank, Amy Jo Johnson and we got “It’s Morphin Time” so it checked all of those boxes. We also got the Tommy Oliver reference at the end which was necessary but still a bit of a let down. Overall the great first two acts counteract the mediocre third and left me happy. I’m giving this a 7.9.
Cody: Yeah, there is so much more to explore in this series. If it gets a sequel hopefully we crack into relationships again. Still more to improve on but nevertheless a good start to a series. I’d give Power Rangers a 7.5.
Coming up: Life and the March podcast.
