Ok guys….so….let’s be real here. The Power Rangers movie is probably going to suck. No no no! Wait I’m NOT here to hate, I’m here to help. You see I’ve been through this before….Twice. I’ve had two beloved stories of my childhood adapted into just...awful movies.
So now I know what they look like, and I’m here to help soften the blow of disappointment you’re probably gonna be hit with this Friday. The reason why is really simple. The Power Rangers movie has a clear identity crisis.
The director Dean Israelite appears to get it...mostly. He clearly cares about the property, and him talking about how the movie is mostly about a group of teenagers becoming friends and heroes together is a good sign. You can see this in the trailers which are mostly comprised of the kids interacting with each other. They seem like they’re all into it and have decent chemistry, but we actually haven’t seen that much when you re-watch the trailers, so that could just be clever editing by the trailer makers.
What’s concerning, is whenever the filmmakers talk about anything in the movie besides the kids. The director saying that they wanted to re-imagine certain aspects to be more “grounded” has become code in Hollywood for grim and depressing.
Then we got Bryan Cranston saying the film does for Power Rangers what the Dark Knight Trilogy did for Batman. Which you know makes total sense. Because you know when you’re adapting a property that’s been successful for decades as a colorful, optimistic, team based adventure, you definitely want to take inspiration from the dark gritty crime drama centered around a lone protagonist.
To be fair, Cranston goes on to clarify his comparison. Saying that the movie and the original series are as different as The Dark Knight and Adam West Batman. Not that it will be as dark as Nolan’s Batman, but they’re from different eras, and can’t really be compared. What’s more concerning is that such comments make me worried that the filmmakers have moved too far away from what made the original appeal to kids of the 90s, as opposed to embracing what made it great, and telling those stories with modern sensibilities like the Marvel movies have been doing.
Then we have the designs of the Zords which looks like they were doing their damndest to make sure they looked as little like robot dinosaurs as possible
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| Someone got paid for these designs |
And Goldar literally looks a giant walking polished turd.
I won’t lie, the costumes are way better than I thought they’d be. Like holy crap they had the guts to do the mouths. But they still look over designed, like they were trying too hard to "be cool". Then all the shots in the trailers of them walking in the suits with the colors muted. Like they were afraid of being made fun of for having their costumes compared to tights or something.
Also, it's more of a personal nitpick, but I don’t like that all of their helmets are more or less uniform, instead of each helmet incorporating the imagery of their Zord. There are slight differences, but it feels like another sign that they fear people won’t take the film seriously. Like they’re afraid people will say “HAHA! Look her helmet is shaped like a kitty! HAR HAR!”
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| The Saber Tooth Tiger Helmet remains one of the coolest Ranger helmets ever. As proven by science. |
And this is where the biggest red flag for this movie pops up. We’ve seen very little action for this movie in the trailers. And what we have seen of them fighting in the costumes looks like it's had lots of un-finished CG layered on top. The third trailer that recently dropped is even more evidence of this. Little more than a collection of lightning fast cuts, which feels like it was meant to get the viewer hyped up without giving them anything substantial to think about, and come to the conclusion that this movie might not be very good.
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| The yellow kitty helmet was so cool in fact, they based a whole other Ranger on it |
And NO, they’re not holding back because they don’t want to "spoil" it for people. No no no. This is a modern Hollywood movie, and if you hadn’t noticed, they want this to be the set up for a LONG lasting Marvel style film franchise. (Which is really weird since aesthetically the film looks like it's trying to be less like Avengers, and more like all those failed YA novel adaptations, that tried to tried to ride off the success of Hunger Games.)
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| Yeah they want to make Avengers money with this movie. What? Didn't you notice? |
If they had more cool stuff to show, you can bet your ass they’d be filling the trailers with it, and we would have seen it LONG before when that first teaser dropped. Instead, based on the rest of the trailers, I'm betting we'll get at least an hour of tedious build up and mystery sprinkled with exposition on the kids and their cliche’ angsty teenage backstories, before we get to the actual Power Ranger parts.
All of these things add up to give the impression that they could never settle on a tone for the movie. Or it came from the perspective that there was something wrong with the source material so they had to “Ground” it to make it work. And look, I’d like more than anything else to be wrong on this one. I’d like it to be the case that the marketing was cynical and decided to sell the movie more like Dark Knight than Avengers, and that the finished product is way more upbeat and tonally consistent. Or that they somehow make a “grounded” Power Rangers approach work. I'd like this movie to be great and have lots of sequels and in the fourth or fifth movie the Ninja Alien Rangers show before going off to have their own movies.
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| These are the Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers. Yes they look like Babylon 5 rejects. Yes they were still cool.
I'd love there to be a movie where the Blue Senturion shows up and they have a Terminator style adventure to save the future.
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| Blue Senturion, defender of intergalactic space law. Yes its spelled that way. No, I don't know why. And hey it looks like there aren't going to be any more of those crappy new Ninja Turtles movies. So maybe Nick and Saban can get together and do a reboot / crossover. |
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| This was actually my first exposure to Ninja Turtles as a kid. |
But I have to call them as I see them, and this one looks bad.
