re: Official Saban's Power Rangers Movie Thread

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Holy shitballs. I really wish I was a Power Rangers fan because that is a team that won't rape your childhood.

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For its majority, Power Rangers is a heavy-handed, character-forward teen drama with a little bit of Rangers stuff sprinkled in. It’s way, way less interested in the characters as color-coded superheroes than it is with their struggles to grow up and accept the responsibility of being Power Rangers. It’s not a bad story, but it’s so devoted to its teen drama it doesn’t have time for fighting and Zords and everything that makes the franchise fun, so overall the movie feels wildly uneven and, ultimately, disappointing.

As you could tell right from the characters’ muted, overcomplicated uniforms, it’s obvious director Dean Israelite (Project Almanac) didn’t want to make a bright, colorful Power Rangers movie.

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Yes, it gets to the Power Rangers stuff fairly quickly but it all feels secondary to the teenagers’ problems. Zack (Ludi Lin) has a sick mother. Trini’s (Becky G.) parents don’t understand who she truly is. Kimberly (Naomi Scott) is dealing with a bad case of cyber-bullying and Billy (R.J. Cyler) is ostracized because he’s on the spectrum. Add that to Jason’s problem of throwing his life away for a dumb prank and these kids obviously have some issues.

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But once you get past all that the kids finally put on the costumes and jump into action. At this point, the audience I saw the film with cheered, because the movie has finally delivered on its promise. It’s the Power Rangers! Zords! Rita! Goldar! Fighting! But something is off... literally. The kids don’t wear their iconic masks, so we can see their faces almost the whole time. Even in this huge, ludicrous action scene, the film refuses to fully embrace the mystique of the Power Rangers.

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Despite the fun of the third act, it can’t erase those first 90 minutes, and the harsh tonal shift between the two. It’s hard to imagine that young kids—arguably the prime Power Rangers audience—would enjoy sitting through all that talking and angst before getting to the good stuff, although maybe they will

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But walking out of the movie I had a revelation: The problem with Power Rangers is that it establishes a world where five kids in robot dinosaurs don’t belong. In a film devoted to exploring Billy, Jason, Kimberly, Zack, and Trini’s teenage angst, somehow it’s the Rangers who end up not fitting in.

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